“You talked once of the wicked licence of the times. How could I know, oh, ma mie! And now all my heart is melting with love and rapture.”
“But I had a knife, Jean-Louis. Well, but he was courteous to me; and at that I told him who I was—no jill-flirt, but an unhappy waif of fortune. Now, mon Dieu!—it turned out that this was the very man that had come en mission to Pierrettes.”
“Lacombe?”
“No—a creature of the name of Crépin——”
I uttered a cry.
“Crépin! It was he that carried thee away?”
“Truly; and who has, for my obduracy, consigned me to prison. Ever since, little Thibaut, ever since—now at Les Carmes; now in the Rue de Sèvres; at last, no later than yesterday, to this ‘extraordinary question’ of La Force.”
“Now thou art a sweet-souled Carinne! Send me something of thine through the evil passage that I may mumble it with my lips. Carinne, listen,”—and I told her the story of my connection with the villain.
“I would wring his neck if they would spare mine,” I said. “But, alas! I fear I am doomed, Carinne.”
She had from me all the details in brief of my captivity. Mon Dieu! but it was ecstasy this dessert to my long feast of neglect. At the end she was silent a space; then she said very low—