Poor Betsy shivered at her father's words. Bold though she was in the face of danger by day, darkness always had great terrors for her, and to spend the night underground was a punishment she felt she could hardly bear. Her protests, however, were useless. Her father locked her in the dark cellar and left her there. Betsy's experiences that night were terrible. Rats made the cellar their home, and, as they jumped about in the darkness, they tumbled the bottles of wine about, making a terrible noise. Betsy was so frightened that to defend herself from them she picked up bottle after bottle to hurl against them. At last they were driven away, but there was no sleep for Betsy on the bed that had been prepared for her. At dawn a faint light came through the windows, just enough to show her what havoc she had made. Broken bottles lay about her everywhere and in every direction ran rivulets of wine.
At last she fell into a heavy stupor, and in this condition a slave, who had been sent with her breakfast, found her. Alarmed at the sight of Betsy, apparently half dead, the slave ran to summon Mr. Balcombe. When he hurried to the cellar, Mr. Balcombe was naturally shocked by what he saw. He had not thought of rats, and he was only too thankful that Betsy had escaped serious injury. He not only did not reprove her for the destruction of the claret, but forgave her for her offence against Napoleon.
As to Napoleon, "It was too great a punishment," he said, "for so little an offence." Then he laughed heartily as the lively Betsy, now quite herself again, gave a vivid account of her battle with the rats. "Ah, the rats!" he added; "a big one jumped out of my hat one day, as I was about to put it on. It startled me."
Some time after this adventure in the cellar, Mr. Balcombe again had occasion to punish Betsy and again he thought of the cellar.
"No, not the cellar!" remonstrated Napoleon. But Mr. Balcombe was obdurate. He had decided that Betsy should have a week's imprisonment there, staying by day but released at night that she might sleep in her own room.
So Betsy went daily to her cell. She managed to vary the monotony of her prison life by sitting close to the grating of the open window, and while she sat there, the picture of dejection, Napoleon, approaching the window, daily expressed a half-mocking sympathy with her. For a time Betsy maintained an appearance of dignity and injured innocence, but in the end the Emperor, by mimicking her doleful expression, usually succeeded in making her laugh.
"Sewing!" he exclaimed in surprise, when he visited Betsy on the third day of her imprisonment.
"Yes," responded Betsy; "I am making a dress for myself."
"Ah, they indeed are cruel—"
Like all Betsy's acquaintances, Napoleon knew that she had no strong love for sewing and the ordinary domestic duties. She was at the age when boyish sports were much more fun than the occupations that older people prescribed for girls.