“Yes, but after you had fired off your thirty thousand guns they would take the donjon; the donjon being taken, I should be obliged to let them hang you—at which I should be most unhappy, certainly.” And in his turn the duke bowed low to Monsieur de Chavigny. “For myself, on the other hand, my lord,” returned the governor, “when the first rebel should pass the threshold of my postern doors I should be obliged to kill you with my own hand, since you were confided peculiarly to my care and as I am obliged to give you up, dead or alive.” And once more he bowed low before his highness. These bitter-sweet pleasantries lasted ten minutes, sometimes longer, but always finished thus: Monsieur de Chavigny, turning toward the door, used to call out: “Halloo! La Ramee!” La Ramee came into the room. “La Ramee, I recommend Monsieur le Duc to you, particularly; treat him as a man of his rank and family ought to be treated; that is, never leave him alone an instant.” La Ramee became, therefore, the duke’s dinner guest by compulsion—an eternal keeper, the shadow of his person; but La Ramee—gay, frank, convivial, fond of play, a great hand at tennis, had one defect in the duke’s eyes—his incorruptibility. Now, although La Ramee appreciated, as of a certain value, the honor of being shut up with a prisoner of so great importance, still the pleasure of living in intimacy with the grandson of Henry IV. hardly compensated for the loss of that which he had experienced in going from time to time to visit his family. One may be a jailer or a keeper and at the same time a good father and husband. La Ramee adored his wife and children, whom now he could only catch a glimpse of from the top of the wall, when in order to please him they used to walk on the opposite side of the moat. ’Twas too brief an enjoyment, and La Ramee felt that the gayety of heart he had regarded as the cause of health (of which it was perhaps rather the result) would not long survive such a mode of life. He accepted, therefore, with delight, an offer made to him by his friend the steward of the Duc de Grammont, to give him a substitute; he also spoke of it to Monsieur de Chavigny, who promised that he would not oppose it in any way—that is, if he approved of the person proposed. We consider it useless to draw a physical or moral portrait of Grimaud; if, as we hope, our readers have not wholly forgotten the first part of this work, they must have preserved a clear idea of that estimable individual, who is wholly unchanged, except that he is twenty years older, an advance in life that has made him only more silent; although, since the change that had been working in himself, Athos had given Grimaud permission to speak. But Grimaud had for twelve or fifteen years preserved habitual silence, and a habit of fifteen or twenty years’ duration becomes second nature. Chapter XVIII. Grimaud begins his Functions.