“The prisoner,” he said, “acquits his conscience of a matter affecting the State. I must call upon you, M. le Président, to grant for the present a remand.”
Oh, mon Dieu! but the shamelessness of this avarice! I believe the scoundrel would have blushed to be discovered in nothing but an act of mercy.
“The prisoner is remanded to close confinement in the Convent of St Pélagie,” were the words that dismissed me from the court; and I swear Fouquier-Tinville’s large eyes followed me quite lovingly as I was marched away.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE RED CART.
At so early an hour was my trial (in the personal and suffering sense) brought to a conclusion, that mid-day was not yet struck when my guards delivered me over to the authorities at St Pélagie—a one-time communauté de filles in the faubourg of St Victor, and since appropriated ostensibly to the incarceration of debtors. My arrival, by grace of Fortune, was most happily timed; and, indeed, the persistency with which throughout the long period of my difficulties this capricious coureuse amongst goddesses converted for my benefit accident into opportuneness offered some excuse to me for remaining in conceit with myself.
Now I was taken in charge by a single turnkey—the others being occupied with their dinner—and conducted by him to the jailer’s room to undergo that rapiotage, or stripping for concealed properties, the general abuse of which—especially where women were in question—was a scandal even in those days of shameless brutality.
As he pushed me into the little ill-lighted chamber and closed the door hurriedly upon us, I noticed that the man’s hands shook, and that his face was clammy with a leaden perspiration. He made no offer to overhaul me; but, instead, he clutched me by the elbow and looked in a half-scared, half-triumphant manner into my face.
“Pay attention,” he said, in a quick, forced whisper. “Thy arrival accommodates itself to circumstance—most admirably, citizen, it accommodates itself. I, that was to expect, am here alone to receive thee. It is far better so than that I should be driven to visit thee in thy cell.”
“I foresee a call upon my gratitude,” I said, steadily regarding him. “That is at your service, citizen jailer, when you shall condescend to enlighten me as to its direction.”
“I want none of it,” he replied. “It is my own to another that procures thee this favour.”