'If court scandal is dangerous in the open air, monsieur, it is much more dangerous in the Bastille,' replied the man, with a hasty glance around him, as he withdrew. 'It is strange,' said I to him on the sixth or seventh day of my captivity, 'that your face seems familiar to me.' 'Perhaps, monsieur,' said he, smiling, 'those who see our faces here, remember them for ever.' 'What is your name?' I asked. 'Martin Omelette.' 'How? any relation to my maitre d'hôtel, Pierre Omelette?' 'Who keeps the Fleur-de-lis, in the Rue d'Ecosse?' 'Yes.' 'I am his brother, M. Blane, and have had the pleasure of seeing you, and M. le Vicomte Dundrennan, and other gentlemen of the Garde du Corps Ecossais, there often.' 'Alas! times are changed with me now, my friend Martin; I am alike poor and unfortunate.' 'Take courage, monsieur; you have been here only seven days.' 'D--n, only seven!' 'We have had prisoners here for seven-and-forty, and yet they have been released at last--released when their minds had sunk to such apathy, however, that they would as readily have remained.' 'Martin, you torture me!' 'We had one for forty-six years in this very room; see, he has scribbled the walls all over with invocations of St. Fiacre, his patron, and the dates will show you an ordinary lifetime spent within this little place.' 'Martin,' said I, in a voice like a sob, 'I should die of this place in one month.' 'So at first they all say who come here; yet they get used to it--even those who are secret prisoners, and who, without date or name, are handed over per list from chatelain to chatelain. Ma foi! we have one in the lowest vaults who is so old that he has worn out a set of fetters, and is supposed to have been put in when M. de Salvaison was captain of the Bastille.' 'In what time did this worthy flourish?' 'In the days of Henry II.--about 1560.' 'Impossible!' 'Seventy-five years ago, monsieur.' 'It is alike horrible and incredible!' Martin smiled faintly, and whispered,-- 'He is supposed to be a kinsman of Anne du Bourg, whom the Cardinal de Lorraine, a fierce and passionate man, hanged and burned in the Place de la Grève; but only supposed, monsieur, since he never speaks now, and we know not his name.'