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 half-scared, 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.”