“Come now,” he said. “This is nothing but a pleasant ride to a nice place, called the Temple, where there will be plenty of bread and cheese for you, and some nice clean straw for you to sleep on—and early to-morrow morning you will be sent home to your fathers and mothers, and you will each have a penny—or 29 perhaps a whole livre, so don’t be crying, but hold on now—”
Then he whipped up the horse so as to give the children a merry jolt, and the youngsters all began to laugh—still excepting the two co-stars of the troupe.
Mademoiselle Capello confessed to me, years afterward, that she fully expected to be executed, although she did not look for the ignominy of hanging, but rather decapitation—and she firmly resolved to die with the courage of the Capellos and the Kirkpatricks. To heighten this, she kept repeating to herself all the names, titles and dignities in her family, and thanked God that she was not as the other children were, or even the cobbler’s boy. And to render her exit more dignified, she wiped the paint from her lips and cheeks and managed to throw away her blond wig as the cart rolled under the dark and forbidding archway of the Temple, between the two peaked towers that had frowned there for five centuries.
CHAPTER III
THE RESCUE
The prison of the Temple was a huge gloomy building, fronting on two streets. Monsieur, the Grand Prieur de Vendôme, was governor of the prison, and had a whole wing of it fitted up very luxuriously for himself—for the Temple was the very pleasantest quarter of Paris, and the wits, the songs, the plays of the Temple have been celebrated ever since I knew Paris. Mirepoix was the deputy governor—there is always in these places a governor who draws the money and a deputy who does the work. Mirepoix was a great fool—I knew him well.
When the carts rattled under the archway which led into the courtyard on which the great hall of the prison fronted, I had dismissed my coachman and was waiting to see what could be done to screen Mademoiselle Capello. A few minutes after I arrived, old Peter came, breathless and almost speechless. I told him to remain in the courtyard until I should deliver his young mistress into his hands.
The sight of the black archway, the great, silent courtyard dimly lighted with lanterns—for night had fallen by that time—frightened the children. They stopped laughing and some of them began to whimper; the cobbler’s boy had never stopped howling a moment.