“Will go on as before. That is, the ‘martinet’ worse than the ‘knout de Russe’; the ‘poucettes’, the ‘crapaudine’ on neck and ankles and wrists; all, all as bad as the ‘Pater Noster’ of the Inquisition, as Mayer said the other day in the face of Charpentier, the Commandant of the penitentiary. How pleasant also to think of the Boulevard de Guillotine! I tell you it is brutal, horrible. Think of what prisoners have to suffer here, whose only crime is that they were of the Commune; that they were just a little madder than other Frenchmen.”
“Pardon me if I say that as brutal things were done by the English in Tasmania.”
“Think of two hundred and sixty strokes of the ‘cat.’”
“You concern yourself too much about these things, I fear.”
“I only think that death would be easier than the life of half of the convicts here.”
“They themselves would prefer it, perhaps.”
“Tell me, who is the convict that has escaped?” she feverishly asked. “Is it a political prisoner?”
“You would not know him. He was one of the Commune who escaped shooting in the Place de la Concorde. Carbourd, I think, was his name.”
“Carbourd, Carbourd,” she repeated, and turned her head away towards the Semaphore.
Her earnestness aroused in Tryon a sudden flame of sympathy which had its origin, as he well knew, in three years of growing love. This love leaped up now determinedly—perhaps unwisely; but what should a blunt soul like Hugh Tryon know regarding the best or worst time to seek a woman’s heart? He came close to her now and said: “If you are so kind in thought for a convict, I dare hope that you would be more kind to me.”