“Escaped! Mordieu! When did he escape?”
“In the early hours of this morning or during the night. Here is Capitaine Pierre Cousin himself who has brought the story.”
“Show him in,” said Sartines.
CHAPTER II
THE TWO PRISONERS
SARTINES’ uneasiness about Rochefort had arisen from an intuitive knowledge of that gentleman’s character, and strange misdoubts as to how that character might develop under the double influence of Love and Prison.
As a matter of fact, no sooner had the excitement of his arrival at Vincennes passed off, no sooner had he dined that evening, cracked a bottle of Beaune, joked Bonvallot, and rubbed his hands at the discomfiture of Choiseul, than reaction took place accompanied by indigestion. He flung himself on the bed.
Monsieur de Rochefort was not made for a quiet life. If he could not be hunting or hawking he must be moving—moving on the pavements of Paris, talking, laughing, joking or quarrelling.
Here there was no one to laugh with, joke with, or quarrel with—nothing to walk on, except the floor of his cell. And it was now that he first became aware of a fact which he never knew before: that it was his habit to change about from room to room. He was one of those unfortunates who cannot endure to be long in one place. He never knew this till now.