"I leave you to mademoiselle's tender mercies, monsieur," said the
Governor. "Au revoir!"
When he had gone, Hugh said: "You are gay today."
"Indeed, no, I am sad."
"Wherefore sad? Is nickel proving a drug? Or sugar a failure? Don't tell me that your father says sugar is falling." He glanced at the letter, which she unconsciously held in her hand.
She saw his look, smoothed the letter a little nervously between her palms, and put it into her pocket, saying: "No, my father has not said that sugar is falling—but come here, will you?" and she motioned towards the open window. When there, she said slowly, "That is what makes me sad and sorry," and she pointed to the Semaphore upon the Hill of Pains.
"You are too tender-hearted," he remarked. "A convict has escaped; he will be caught perhaps—perhaps not; and things will go on as before."
"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."