“I am off to Paris, when you shall have given a certain letter.”
“For whom?”
“M. de Lyonne.”
“And what do you want with Lyonne?”
“I wish to make him sign a lettre de cachet.”
“‘Lettre de cachet!’ Do you desire to put somebody in the Bastile?”
“On the contrary—to let somebody out.”
“And who?”
“A poor devil—a youth, a lad who has been Bastiled these ten years, for two Latin verses he made against the Jesuits.”
“‘Two Latin verses!’ and, for ‘two Latin verses,’ the miserable being has been in prison for ten years!”