‘Yes, for thirty-four years in Bicêtre and the Bastille, thrown into the worst dungeons, by the spite of a woman--a harlot, Madame de Pompadour. He wrote his appeals for mercy, and pardon for crimes he had never committed, on rags, in his own blood; then they buried him in holes underground without light, where he spent long years in domesticating rats. Once a memorial addressed to some philanthropist or other--one memorial out of a hundred, was lost by a drunken jailer--a woman picked it up. That woman was a poor mercer, who sat stitching in her shop door. She picked up the fluttering sheet and read it, and resolved to liberate the miserable sufferer.’ Gabrielle bent forward, with her eyes fixed on the speaker. ‘What did she do?’ she asked, eagerly. ‘What did she not do?’ returned Étienne Percenez; ‘she worried every great man to whom she could obtain access with her story of the wrongs of Latude, and his sufferings in prison. She consecrated her life to his. All kinds of misfortune beset her, but she held firmly to her cause. Her husband remonstrated with her--he called her enthusiasm folly, for her business failed, as well it might, when her time was spent in seeking audiences with great Lords and high Churchmen, and when her attention was fixed on something other than caps and gowns. Her father died, then her mother. Slanderous tales were raised about her: it was asserted that she was the mistress of the prisoner, for whose liberation she laboured, and sacrificed all. The police threatened her; but she remained invincible. The story of Latude’s sufferings and of Madame Legros’ self-devotion spread through France, whispered from one to another. In the depths of winter, on foot, far advanced in pregnancy, the brave woman set out for Versailles, resolved to appeal at head-quarters. She found a femme de chambre inclined to take her memorial to the queen, but an abbé passing snatched it from her hand, and tore it up, bidding her not attempt to meddle. Cardinal de Rohan--he, you know, who was concerned in the affair of the necklace--was good-natured, and he endeavoured to move Louis XVI to pardon Latude--pardon him for what? for having in some way caused annoyance to his grandfather’s mistress; in what way?--nobody knows. Three times the king refused to pardon and liberate this man whose life had been wasted in a prison. At last, in 1784, Madame Legros had so worked on public opinion, that the king was forced to release him. You see what woman can do!’ Gabrielle raised her eyes and hands to heaven. ‘May God enable me to do the same for Madame Berthier!’ she cried. ‘There now, Étienne,’ said Robert, with a curl of the lip; ‘you have applied a match to a barrel of gunpowder.’ ‘Ah! if it were to blow down the walls of the Bastille!’ said the pedlar, shaking his brown head.