She snapped her fingers contemptuously.
"Here is the Préfecture."
It was the Préfecture de Police and not Notre Dame that had to do with little Fouchette and her kind. She knew what the Préfecture was, though she now saw it for the first time. And she shivered in her wet rags as the carriage turned into the great court-yard surrounded by the immense stone quadrangle that fronts upon the quai.
A troop of the Garde de Paris was drilling at the upper end of the court. Sentinels with gay uniforms and fixed bayonets solemnly paraded at the three gate-ways.
"Come, petite," said the man, flinging open the carriage doors and lifting the child in his arms to the ground. The dog leaped out after her and looked uneasily up and down.
Half an hour later when Fouchette emerged with her conductor she had undergone a transformation that would have rendered her unrecognizable in Charenton. She had not only been washed and combed and rubbed down, but had been arrayed in a frock of grayish material, a chip hat with flowers in it, and shoes and stockings. She was so excited over the grandeur of her personal appearance that she had completely lost her bearings. It is true the hat was too old for a child of her years, and the coarse new costume was several sizes too large for her bony little frame, and the shoes were very embarrassing, but to Fouchette they seemed the outfit of a "real lady."
She had entered the Préfecture sullenly, desperately, half expecting to be sent to a lonely cell and perhaps loaded with chains,—she had heard tell of such things,—and, instead, had been treated with kindness by a gentle matron, her body washed and clothed, her stomach made glad with rich soup and bread and milk, while Tartar was amply provided for before her own eyes.
Fouchette was still in a daze when she found herself again in the closed carriage, with Tartar at her feet, being whirled away at a pace that seemed to threaten the lives of everybody in the streets. The same man sat beside her, and an extra man had, at the last moment, clambered up by the side of the driver.
This furious speed was continued for a long time, until Fouchette began to wonder more and more where they were going. She could not recognize anything en route, and the man was now serious and taciturn.
All at once she saw that they were approaching the barrier. Things looked differently from a carriage window, and yet there was a familiar air about the surroundings.