The most meagre intelligence came to me from the outer world. I
no longer saw Gabord; he had suddenly been with drawn and a new
jailer substituted, and the sentinels outside my door and beneath
the window of my cell refused all information. For months I had no
news whatever of Alixe or of those affairs nearest my heart. I
heard nothing of Doltaire, little of Bigot, and there was no sign
of Voban.

Sometimes I could see my new jailer studying me, if my plans were
a puzzle to his brain. At first he used regularly to try the bars
of the window, and search the wall as though he thought my devices
might be found there.

Scarrat and Flavelle, the guards at my door, set too high a
price on their favours, and they talked seldom, and then with
brutal jests and ribaldry, of matters in the town which were not
vital to me. Yet once or twice, from things they said, I came to
know that all was not well between Bigot and Doltaire on one hand,
and Doltaire and the Governor on the other. Doltaire had set the
Governor and the Intendant scheming against him because of his
adherence to the cause of neither, and his power to render the
plans of either of no avail when he chose, as in my case.
Vaudreuil's vanity was injured, and besides, he counted Doltaire
too strong a friend of Bigot. Bigot, I doubted not, found in Madame
Cournal's liking for Doltaire all sorts of things of which he never
would have dreamed; for there is no such potent devilry in this
world as the jealousy of such a sort of man over a woman whose
vanity and cupidity are the springs of her affections. Doltaire's