We all must tread the paths of Fate, And ever shakes the mortal Urn, Whose Lot embarks us, soon or late, On Charon’s Boat, ah! never to return. FRANCIS’S _Horace_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A TALE OF THE MONTH OF FLORÉAL IN THE YEAR II TO MADEMOISELLE JEANNE CANTEL A TALE OF THE MONTH OF FLORÉAL IN THE YEAR II I The turnkey had shut the door of the house of detention upon her who was formerly known as the Comtesse Fanny d’Avernay, whose arrest is described in the gaol register as a step taken “in the interests of public safety,” though her actual crime was that she had given shelter to enemies of the Government. And now she is actually within the venerable edifice in which, once upon a time, the recluses of Port Royal indulged their craving for solitude and community life combined, and out of which it was easy to contrive a prison without making any structural change. Seated on a bench whilst the registrar enters her name, she thinks— “Ah, God, why are these things permitted; and what more do You demand of me?” The turnkey’s aspect is rather surly than evil, and his daughter, who is pretty, looks enchanting in her white cap, with cockade and knot of ribbons in the national colours. By this turnkey Fanny is conducted to a large courtyard, in the middle of which grows a fine acacia. There she will wait till he has prepared a bed and a table for her in a room which already contains five or six prisoners, for the house is crowded. Vainly each day is the overplus of tenants led to the revolutionary tribunal and the guillotine. Each day anew the committees fill up the gaps thus created. In the courtyard Fanny catches sight of a young woman busy cutting a device of initials on the bark of the tree, and at once recognizes Antoinette d’Auriac, a friend of her childhood. “What, you here, Antoinette?” “And you, Fanny? Get them to put your bed by the side of mine. We shall have countless things to tell one another.” “Yes, numbers of things.... And Monsieur d’Auriac, Antoinette?” “My husband? Upon my word, my dear, I had rather forgotten him. It is unfair on my part. To me he has always been irreproachable.... I fancy that at the present moment he is in prison somewhere or other.” “And what were you doing just now, Antoinette?”