Sullenly Sainte-Croix resigned his sword to the officer in command, who attended him to the fiacre; and then, mounting beside him, they set off at a foot pace to the Bastille. During the short journey Sainte-Croix was silent; and as the fiacre rolled over the drawbridge of the frowning fortress, which he had traversed under such different circumstances but the evening before, and along its barbican lined with low cabarets, wherein soldiers were gaming and drinking, to the inner gate, it would have been difficult to say which was the official and which the prisoner. On their arrival at the lodge of the Under-Governor a parley was held, which ended in that functionary expressing his regret to Monsieur de Sainte-Croix that he could not accommodate him with a separate apartment.
‘Do not trouble yourself, monsieur,’ replied Sainte-Croix, with a forced laugh. ‘Provided my fellow-lodger is silent and cleanly, I had rather have his company than that of my own thoughts. I have no doubt we shall be long enough together to become excellent friends.’
‘If you do not object, then,’ answered the courtly deputy, ‘to another inmate, I have a chamber that will suit you exactly. Galouchet, conduct Monsieur de Sainte-Croix to Number Eleven in the Tour du Nord. I wish you a good night, sir.’
With mutual inclinations they separated, and Sainte-Croix followed the gaoler along the gloomy passages. His guide at length paused at a door numbered eleven, and, unlocking it, threw it open with a polite ‘Par ici, monsieur.’
Gaudin entered. The room was not a cachot. It had a boarded floor and a tolerably large window, though heavily barred. There was nothing in its appearance of those terrible underground dungeons, which, in the notions of the vulgar, formed the only places of confinement in the Bastille. It contained some rude furniture and two truckle beds, one of which was occupied.
The gaoler set the light on the table, and, as he turned to depart, the unwonted glare roused the original tenant of the room. Starting up on his pallet he disclosed to Sainte-Croix the livid face of the prisoner of the preceding evening—the physician of the Carrefour du Châtelet.
It was Exili!
CHAPTER X.
WHAT FURTHER BEFEL LOUISE IN THE CATACOMBS OF THE BIÈVRE
As the last of the lawless band departed from the carrière Lachaussée advanced towards the altar, at the foot of which Louise Gauthier had claimed a sanctuary. In spite of Bras d’Acier’s last threat, the denunciation of the Abbe Camus had somewhat awed him. But Lachaussée was less scrupulous. He was as dead to all religious feeling as the others, and besides this, superstition had no power over him. Advancing to the cross, he seized the arm of Louise, and tore her from the altar into the middle of the apartment.
The knocking which had struck such terror into the hearts of the subterraneous gang still continued, and again Louise raised her voice for assistance.