ROSE ARRESTED BY THE PARIS POLICE.
With a shriek of horror Rose made a sudden dart forward, but has not got far before she is seized by the hair with such force as to throw her on the pavement. Picking her up again, the Agents-des-Mœurs call a passing night cab, and, bundling the now fainting woman into it, order the coachman to drive to the police station.
On arriving at the police station Rose was roughly dragged from the cab by the two Agents des Mœurs and thrust into the “Violon”—a filthy cell which was already crowded with a score or two of drunk and disorderly women. The atmosphere which reigned in the place was indescribably horrible and nauseating; and the shrieks, the yells, and the disgusting songs and discordant cries of its occupants were only interrupted from time to time when the door was opened to give admittance to some fresh samples of the feminine scum of the Paris streets. Such was the pandemonium in which the Countess von Waldberg passed the first night after being driven out of her luxuriously appointed home in the Avenue Friedland.
When at length day began to dawn through the iron grating of the solitary window of the cell, she breathed a sigh of relief. The scene around her was one fit to figure in “Dante's Inferno.” Every imaginable type of woman seemed to be assembled within the circumscribed limits of those four grimy walls, from the demi-mondaine in silks and satins who had been run in for creating a disturbance at Mabille, down to the old and tattered ragpicker who had been arrested for drunkenness; from the bourgeoise who had been discovered in the act of betraying her husband, down to the ordinary street-walker, who had been caught abroad without her police livret. Here and there, too, were a shoplifter, a bonne who had assaulted her mistress, and a market woman who, in a moment of fury, had chewed off her antagonist's nose. Dressed in the most motley of costumes, they lay about on the wooden bench which ran round the cell, or were stretched prostrate on the damp and dirty brick floor.
Amid these surroundings Rose presented a truly strange appearance as she stood up in the cold morning light, with her costly white velvet gown all stained with mud, from which the superb lace flounces had been partly torn by the brutal hands of the men who had arrested her. Her beautiful golden hair lay in tangled masses on her bare shoulders, from which the red opera-cloak had fallen as she rose to her feet. She was very pale and there was a hard and stony look in her sunken eyes.
She had had time to reflect on the events of the previous evening, and thoroughly realized the fact that after what had happened Frederick would refuse to acknowledge her as his wife. It would be, therefore, more than useless to appeal to him to substantiate the statements which she had at first made as to her rank and condition; indeed, matters might be only aggravated by such a course, and she determined to maintain the strictest silence concerning her former life. Her heart, however, was filled to overflowing with bitterness against her husband, to whose conduct she attributed her present horrible predicament. Intense hatred had taken the place of any feelings of affection which she might formerly have possessed for him, and she then and there registered a solemn oath that she would never rest until she had wreaked a terrible vengeance for all she had suffered on his account.
At eight o'clock she was brought into court and charged with having been found plying an immoral trade in the public streets, without having previously obtained the required license from the “Prefecture de Police.” For this offense the magistrate, without much questioning, sentenced her to three months' imprisonment at St. Lazarre. Shortly afterward the police-van, which in French bears the euphonic name of “Panier a Salade” (Salad Basket), drew up at the door of the station-house, and Rose, with most of the women who had spent the night in the same cell with her, was bundled into the dismal conveyance. The latter then rattled off through the streets along which she had last driven reclining lazily on the soft cushions of her victoria, to the well-known prison in the Faubourg St. Denis, within the walls of which even an hour's sojourn is sufficient to brand a woman with infamy for the remainder of her days.