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CHAPTER XIII.

THE RED CART.

AT so early an hour was my trial (in the personal and suffering sense) brought to a conclusion, that mid-day was not yet struck when my guards delivered me over to the authorities at St Pélagie -a one-time communauté de filles in the faubourg of St Victor, and since appropriated ostensibly to the incarceration of debtors. My arrival, by grace of Fortune, was most happily timed; and, indeed, the persistency with which throughout the long period of my difficulties this capricious coureuse amongst goddesses converted for my benefit accident into opportuneness offered some excuse to me for remaining in conceit with myself.

Now I was taken in charge by a single turnkey -the others being occupied with their dinner— and conducted by him to the jailer's room to undergo that rapiotage, or stripping for concealed properties, the general abuse of which—especially where women were in question -was a scandal even in those days of shameless brutality.

As he pushed me into the little ill-lighted chamber and closed the door hurriedly upon us, I noticed that the man's hands shook, and that his face was clammy with a leaden perspiration. He made no offer to overhaul me; but, instead, he clutched me by the elbow and looked in a halfscared, half-triumphant manner into my face.

"Pay attention," he said, in a quick, forced whisper. "Thy arrival accommodates itself to circumstance-most admirably, citizen, it accommodates itself. I, that was to expect, am here alone to receive thee. It is far better so than that I should be driven to visit thee in thy cell." "I foresee a call upon my gratitude," I said, steadily regarding him. "That is at your service, citizen jailer, when you shall condescend to enlighten me as to its direction.”

"I want none of it," he replied. "It is my own to another that procures thee this favour." "What other, and what favour?"

“ As to the first-en bon Français, I will not tell thee. For the second-behold it!"

With the words, he whipt out from under his blouse a thin, strong file, a little vessel of oil, and a dab of some blue-coloured mastic in paper-and these he pressed upon me.

"Hide them about thy person-hide them!" he muttered, in a fearful voice; "and take all that I shall say in a breath!"

He glanced over his shoulder at the closed door. He was a blotched and flaccid creature, with the

staring dry hair of the tippler, but with very human eyes. His fingers closed upon my arm as if for support to their trembling.

"Cell thirteen-on the first floor," he said; "that is whither I shall convey thee. Ask no

questions. Hast thou them all tight?—Allez-vous en, mon ami! A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse."

"But

"Ah! thou must needs be talking!

Cement with the putty, then, and rub the filings over the marks."

"I was not born yesterday. It is not that I would know."

"S-st! At nine by the convent clock, be ready to drop silently into the cart that shall pass beneath thy window. Never mind what thou hit'st on. A falling man does not despise a dunghill."

I hesitated, seeking to read this patriot's soul. Was this all a snare to clinch my damnation? Pooh! if I had ever fancied Tinville hunted for the shadow of a pretext, this morning's experience should have disabused me of the fallacy.

"Who commissions thee?" I said.

"One to whom I owe a measure of gratitude." "But not I?"

"From this time-yes."

He pushed at me to go before him.

"At least," I said, "acquaint me if it is the same that sent the letter."

"I know nothing of any letter. San' Dieu! I

begin to regret my complaisance. This fellow will strangle us all with his long tongue."

"But, for thyself, my friend?"

"Oh, nom de Dieu! I have no fear, if thou wilt be discreet—and grateful.”

"And this tool-and the rapiotage!"

"Listen then! The thief that follows a thief finds little by the road. We are under no obligation to search a prisoner remanded from another prison."

Impulsively I wrung the hand of the dear sententious; I looked into his eyes.

"The Goddess of Reason disown thee!” I said. "Thou shalt never be acolyte to a harlot !-And I -if all goes well, I will remember. And what is thy name, good fellow?"

"M. un tel," said he, and added, "Bah! shall not thy ignorance of it be in a measure our safeguard?"

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"True," said I. And take me away, then. I cannot get to work too soon.'

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He opened the door, peeped out, and beckoned

me.

"All is well," he whispered. "The coast is clear."

"1

1 'Nothing would appear to more graphically illustrate the moral influence of the 'Terror' than that common submission to a force that was rather implied than expressed. Now it seems a matter for marvel how a great many thousands of capable men, having nothing to hope from the intolerable tyranny that was massing them in a number of professed slaughter-houses, should not only have attempted no organised retaliation, but should, by unstiffening their necks (in a very

As he drove me with harsh gestures across a yard, a turnkey, standing at a door and twirling a toothpick in his mouth, hailed him strenuously. "What perquisites, then, comrade?"

"Bah!" cried my fellow; "I have not looked. He is a bone of Cabochon's picking."

With what a conflict of emotions I set to worktentatively at first; then, seeing how noiselessly the file ran in its oiled groove, with a concentration of vigour-upon the bars of my window, it is not difficult to imagine. So hard I wrought that for hours I scarce gave heed to my growling hunger or attention to my surroundings. As to the latter, indeed, I was by this time sensibly inured to the conditions of confinement, and found little in my cell when I came to examine it to distinguish it from others I had inhabited. A bench, a pitcher, a flattened mess of straw; here and there about the stone flags marks as if some frantic beast had sought to undermine himself a passage to freedom; here and there, engraved with a nail or the tooth of a comb on the plaster coating of the walls, heroic fashion, be it said) to be the footstools to a few monstrous bullies, have tacitly allowed the righteousness of a system that was destroying them to go by implication. Escapes from durance were, comparatively speaking, (rare; resistance to authority scarcely ever carried beyond the personal and peevish limit. Yet it is a fact that many of the innumerable prisons—of which, from my own observation, I may instance St Pélagie-were quite inadequately guarded, and generally, indeed, open to any visitor who was prepared to 'tip' for the privilege of entry."-Extracted from an unpublished chapter of the Count's Reminiscences.

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