“Madame Beau,” said I, “when you shall be nearing old age--that is to say, when your present years double themselves--it is very certain that your lines will fall in pleasant places.” “And where will they be?” said she. “Where, but round your fine eyes and the dimples of your mouth!” She cried, “_Oh, qu’il est malin!_” and tapped my shoulder archly with a great key she held in her hand. “And what is the favour you design to ask of me?” she said. “Firstly your permission to me to dedicate some verses to you,” said I. “After that, that you will procure me the immediate delivery of this little tube of paper.” “To whom is it addressed?” “To one Crépin, who lives in the Rue de Jouy, St Antoine.” “_Croyez m’en!_” she cried. “Do you not see I have dropped my key?” Then, as I stooped to pick up the instrument which she had let fall on the pavement, “Slip the little paper into the barrel!” she muttered. I did so; and these were the words I had written on it:-- “_I am imprisoned in La Force for any reason or none. It concerns me only in that I am thereby debarred from vindicating upon your body the honour of Mademoiselle de Lâge. If it gives you any shame to hear that towards this victim of your base persecution, I, your one-time comrade, entertain and have long entertained sentiments of the most profound regard, prevail with yourself, I beseech you, to procure the enlargement of a lady whose only crimes--as things are judged nowadays--are her innocence and her beauty._ “_Jean-Louis Thibaut_.” * * * * * * * Of all the degradations to which we in the prison were subjected, none equalled that that was a common condition of our nightly herding. Then--so early as eight o’clock during the darker months--would appear the foul Cabochon--with his satellites and three or four brace of hounds--to drive us like cattle to our sleeping-pens. Bayed into the corridors, from which our cells opened, we must answer to our names bawled out by a crapulous turnkey, who held in his jerking hands, and consulted with his clouded eyes, a list that at his soberest he could only half decipher. He calls a name--probably of one that has already paid the penalty. There is no answer. The ruffian bullies and curses, while the survivors explain the matter to him. He sulkily acquiesces; shouts the tally once more, regardless of the hiatus--of course only to repeat the error. Amidst a storm of menaces we are all ordered out of our rooms, and this again and yet again, perhaps, until the beast satisfies himself or is satisfied that none is skulking, and that nothing is in error but his own drunken vision. Then at last the dogs are withdrawn, the innumerable doors clanged to and barred, and we are left, sealed within a fetid atmosphere, to salve our wounded dignity as we can with the balm of spiritual self-possession.