While in the prison awaiting trial, Cartouche received many illustrious visitors. The Regent came; the courtesan Emilie and the Mme. le Maréchale de Boufflers followed one after the other to pay the prisoner small attentions. Some one had composed a play, and Quinnato, the famous actor of the time, who filled the principal rôle in it, came to ask him for suggestions about the chief scene.
When Cartouche had been sufficiently amused, he began to think of making his escape. He intended doing this in spite of the very close watch that was being kept over him.
After getting out of his dungeon, and just as he was pushing the last bar which separated him from the street and liberty, he was discovered and caught.
Thinking that the Grande Châtelet was not strong enough for so ingenious a man, he was bound securely in chains and taken to the Conciergerie, in the most formidable corner of the tower of Montgomery.
CHAPTER XIX
The Torture Chamber
IT is only the basest of literature that describes without adequate reason the weird, the horrible. However, many authors find it necessary to dilate upon the most satanic personalities of men, and the worst cruelties imaginable.
Therefore, it is only with the knowledge that the recital of the misfortunes of Théophraste is destined to throw a light on the most obscure problems of psychic surgery that the author of these lines proceeds with this description of the most frightful tortures, moral and physical, that have ever been endured by man.