Just as I had finished reading, the _gendarmes_ entered my room, and, with the officers of justice, led me away to prison. I walked mechanically. I was conducted to a small building in the centre of a square. This was a _cachot_ with an iron-grated window on each of its four sides, but without glass. There was no bench, or table, or anything but the bare walls and the pavement. The wind blew sharply through. I had not even a great-coat; but I felt no cold or personal inconvenience, for my mind was too much occupied by superior misery. The door closed on me, and I heard the bolts turn. There was not an observation made on either part, and I was left to myself. "Well," said I, "fate has now done its worst, and fortune will be weary at last of tormenting a wretch that she can sink no lower! Death has no terrors for me; and, after death--!" But, even in my misery, I scarcely gave a thought to what might happen in futurity. It might occasionally have obtruded itself on my mind, but was quickly dismissed: I had adopted the atheistical creed of the French Revolution. "Death is eternal sleep, and the sooner I go to sleep the better!" thought I. The only point that pressed itself on my mind was, the dread of a public execution. This my pride revolted at; for pride had again returned, and resumed its empire, even in my _cachot_. As the day dawned, the noise of the carts and country people coming into the square with their produce, roused me from my reverie, for I had not slept. The prison was surrounded by all ages and all classes, to get a sight of the English murderer; and the light and the air were stopped out of each window by human faces pressed against the bars. I was gazed at as a wild beast; and the children, as they sat on their mother's shoulders to look at me, received a moral lesson and a warning at my expense. As a tiger in his cage wearies the eye by incessantly walking and turning, so I paced my den; and if I could have reached one of the impertinent gazers, through the slanting aperture and three-foot wall, I should have throttled him. "All these people," said I, "and thousands more, will witness my last moments on the scaffold!" Stung with this dreadful thought, with rage I searched in my pockets for my penknife, to relieve me at once from my torments and apprehensions; and had I found it, I should certainly have committed suicide. Fortunately I had left it at home, or it would have been buried, in that moment of frenzy, in the carotid artery; for, as well as others, I knew exactly where to find it. The crowd at length began to disperse; the windows were left, except now and then an urchin of a boy showed his ragged head at the _grille_. Worn out with bodily fatigue and mental suffering, I was going to throw myself along upon the cold stones, when I saw the face of my own servant, who advanced in haste to the window of the prison, exclaiming with joy:-- "_Courage, mon cher maitre; Monsieur Talbot n'est pas mort_!"