END OF PART ONE
PART II
CHAPTER XIV
DOWN IN THE DEPTHS
With Henrietta condemned to the cruel fate of immurement in a prison for the fallen, the Chevalier trussed up in royal Caen, and his aunt the Countess prostrated by the hag’s recapture of and disappearance with the noblewoman’s long-lost daughter, blind Louise, ’twould seem as if our characters faced indeed blank walls of ruin, misery and despair, from which no power could rescue them.
In those times, the utter vanishing of persons who incurred police disfavor was no uncommon incident. Often no public charge was made; merely the gossiped whisper that So-and-So lay in Bastille or La Salpetriere “at the royal pleasure,” kept the unfortunate faintly in memory till the lapse of years caused him or her to be forgotten. And, sometimes, even, at the prison gate, identity vanished. Did not the celebrated and mysterious Man in the Iron 85 Mask carry his baffling secret through decades of dungeon death-in-life to the prisoner’s dark grave?
Others were silently transported to exile overseas. As England had her Botany Bay, so France had Louisiana. Let us take a glance at La Salpetriere (as Henriette is being dragged there by Count de Linieres’ troopers) to look at the sights and scenes of the famous female prison, and contemplate what the inmates had in store.