"You do not escape me so, sir," replied the young Count; "if I know any thing of the laws of the land, or, indeed, of the laws of common sense and right reason, you are first bound to prove that a crime has been committed, before you dare to accuse any one of committing it. You must show that there ever has been, in reality, a commission in that packet. If I understood Monsieur de Rouvré's letter right, the seals of the King were found unbroken on the packet, and not the slightest appearance of its having been opened was remarked, till you, Monsieur Pelisson, discovered that there was such an appearance after the fact. The King may have been jesting with you; Monsieur de Louvois may have been making sport of you; a drunken clerk of the cabinet may have committed some blunder in a state of inebriety; no crime may have been committed at all, for aught we know." "My good sir," said the Bishop haughtily, "you show how little you know of the King and of the court of the King by supposing that any such transactions could take place." "My Lord," replied the Count, gazing upon him with a smile of ineffable contempt, "when you were a little Curé in the small town of Castelnaudry, my father supported the late King of France with his right hand, and with the voice of his counsel: when you were trooping after a band of rebels in the train of the house of Vendôme, I was page of honour to our present gracious monarch, in dangers and difficulties, in scantiness, and in want: when you have been fattening in a rich diocese, obtained by no services to the crown, I have fought beside my monarch, and led his troops up to the cannon of his enemies' ramparts: I have sat beside him in his council of war, and ever have been graciously received by him in the midst of his court; and let me tell you, my Lord Bishop, that it is not more improbable, nay, not more impossible, that Louis XIV. should play a scurvy jest upon two respectable ecclesiastics, than that the Count of Morseiul should open a paper not addressed to himself." "Both good and true," my young friend, said the Duc de Rouvré; "no one who knows you could suspect you of such a thing for a moment." "But we may his servants," said the Abbé de St. Helie sharply, though he had hitherto remained silent, knowing that he himself had been the chief instigator of the charge, and fearing to call upon himself the indignation of the young Count.