“I am innocent!”
Her little sobbing cry of self-justification was received with jibes and winks. Was not such the formula of every prisoner? They pressed her for her story. Looking at these ignoble spirits, the girl could not bear to acquaint them with her pure and holy romance.
As she turned away, a new shock met her gaze.
Faugh! What was this physical weakness, this nausea-like repulsion, but the bodily reaction from the tense spiritual agony she had suffered?
Courage! She must look again. That wild woman––hair down, breath gasping, arms weaving threateningly––was coming at her like a murderess. Momentarily Henriette expected the long arms to seize her, the steel-like hands and wrists to choke her.
She looked yet a third time. The crazy “murderess” had veered her course, but what was that other object nearby? A Niobe weeping for her own and the world’s sorrows! Or this one over here––a shrieking maniac calling on all Hell’s legions for vengeance on fancied enemies! Beyond, gibbering victims of paresis, white-haired 89 idiots, wasted sufferers from senile dementia.
Not a friendly face, not a kind look nor an understanding eye! Crime, passion, foulness, insanity. The sheer horror of her situation mercifully blotted out consciousness. She sank, a crumpled heap to the floor.
“The girl is sick,” said Sister Genevieve, who had entered at this moment and was presently bending over her. “Here, two of you lift her and carry her into the hospital––we shall have the good Doctor from La Force attend her!” Two of the sturdier prisoners bore her away....
Beautiful, pitiful Henriette!
The horrors of the madwomen thou facest in Salpetriere; the obscene shouts and curses of the fallen; the fury of the female criminal; the misery of the poor distracted half-wits, where mad and sane are given the same cell:––these shall be but confused phantasmagoria projected on thy sick brain during this prison time before the awful Storm breaks––the lightning strikes––the thunder crashes, and the sharp female called La Guillotine holds thee in its embrace.