"I have already told you that I cannot imagine who it can be." "Well, it's the officer at whom you laughed so much, and who, with inconceivable stupidity, allowed your Highness to escape from Chantilly." "Monsieur de Canolles?" cried Claire. "Yes." "Monsieur de Canolles governor of Île Saint-Georges?" "Himself." "Impossible! He was arrested before my very eyes!" "True. But he has a powerful protector, no doubt, and his disgrace is changed to favor." "And you fancied him dead ere this, my poor Claire," said Madame la Princesse, laughingly. "Are you quite sure?" asked the viscountess, amazed beyond measure. As usual, Lenet put his hand into the famous pocket and produced a paper. "Here is a letter from Richon," he said, "giving me all the details of the new governor's installation, and expressing his regret that your Highness did not station him at Île Saint-Georges." "Madame la Princesse station Monsieur Richon at Île Saint-Georges!" exclaimed Madame de Tourville, with a smile of triumph. "Pray, do we dispose of governor-ships of his Majesty's fortresses?" "We can dispose of one, madame," Lenet replied, "and that is enough." "Of what one, I pray to know?" Madame de Tourville shuddered as she saw Lenet put his hand in his pocket. "Monsieur d'Épernon's signature in blank!" cried the princess. "True; I had forgotten it." "Bah! what does that amount to?" said Madame de Tourville, disdainfully. "A scrap of paper, nothing more." "That scrap of paper, madame," said Lenet, "is the appointment we need as a counterpoise to the one recently made. It is a counterpoise to Île Saint-Georges; in fine, it is our salvation, for it means some place on the Dordogne, as Saint-Georges is on the Garonne." "You are sure," said Claire, who had heard nothing for the last five minutes, and whose mind had remained stationary at the intelligence announced by Lenet and confirmed by Richon; "you are sure, monsieur, that it is the same Monsieur de Canolles who was arrested at Jaulnay, who is now governor of Île Saint-Georges?" "I am sure of it, madame." "Monsieur de Mazarin has a peculiar way," she continued, "of escorting his governors to their governments." "True," said the princess, "and there certainly is something behind all this." "To be sure there is," said Lenet; "there is Mademoiselle Nanon de Lartigues." "Nanon de Lartigues!" cried Claire, stung to the heart by a terrible memory. "That courtesan!" said the princess, with the utmost contempt. "Yes, madame," said Lenet, "that courtesan, whom your Highness refused to see, when she solicited the honor of being presented to you, and whom the queen, less punctilious than yourself in matters of etiquette, did receive; which caused her to make answer to your chamberlain that it was possible that Madame la Princesse de Condé was a more exalted personage than Anne of Austria, but that Anne of Austria most assuredly had more prudence than the Princesse de Condé."