And now she is actually within the venerable edifice in which, once upon a time, the recluses of Port Royal indulged their craving for solitude and community life combined, and out of which it was easy to contrive a prison without making any structural change.
Seated on a bench whilst the registrar enters her name, she thinks—
“Ah, God, why are these things permitted; and what more do You demand of me?”
The turnkey’s aspect is rather surly than evil, and his daughter, who is pretty, looks enchanting in her white cap, with cockade and knot of ribbons in the national colours. By this turnkey Fanny is conducted to a large courtyard, in the middle of which grows a fine acacia. There she will wait till he has prepared a bed and a table for her in a room which already contains five or six prisoners, for the house is crowded. Vainly each day is the overplus of tenants led to the revolutionary tribunal and the guillotine. Each day anew the committees fill up the gaps thus created.
In the courtyard Fanny catches sight of a young woman busy cutting a device of initials on the bark of the tree, and at once recognizes Antoinette d’Auriac, a friend of her childhood.
“What, you here, Antoinette?”
“And you, Fanny? Get them to put your bed by the side of mine. We shall have countless things to tell one another.”
“Yes, numbers of things.... And Monsieur d’Auriac, Antoinette?”
“My husband? Upon my word, my dear, I had rather forgotten him. It is unfair on my part. To me he has always been irreproachable.... I fancy that at the present moment he is in prison somewhere or other.”
“And what were you doing just now, Antoinette?”