"What! Really?"
To go to Soissons was always a great treat for me. Soissons, a garrison town of fifth or sixth rank, was a capital in my eyes. Its gates had iron portcullises to them; the ramparts that I was going to see once more were riddled with the bullets of the last campaign; the garrison, the noise of arms, the odour of battle were all to my young mind intensely entrancing.
Besides, I had a dear friend in the son of one of the gaolers of the prison there (I ask my aristocratic friends of to-day to pardon me), who, when I went to see him, made me shiver by taking me into the most delightful dungeons under his father's care.
So my first call was always on him, and the thought that flashed across my mind was that, as soon as we were once more in Soissons, I would ask what had become of him, for I never liked to deviate from my old customs.
His name was Charles.
The news of our going to Soissons pleased me much. I ran upstairs to my room, I dressed myself as quickly as I could, and then I went down.
A little shabby carriage, half cab, half tilbury, belonging to a livery stable-keeper called Martineau, was waiting for us at the door.
My mother and I got in, and we took the way by the park. Behind the Castle wall we met (whether by accident or by design I know not) a lawyer of Villers-Cotterets, whose opinions were extremely Republican, and who clung to Bonapartism as a means of opposition. My mother left the carriage to speak to him, and she returned with a packet which she had not had when she got out, at least so it seemed to me; then we drove by les grandes allées, and in ten minutes' time we had reached the high road.
Three hours later we were at Soissons, which we entered about five o'clock in the afternoon—that is to say, two or three hours after the prisoners.
The town was in a great uproar, and they demanded our passports; it was, as the reader may guess, the very thing my mother had forgotten to bring with her.