Then he went on to show me the fireplace where the bodies of the duke and cardinal had been cut in pieces and burnt; the window out of which the ashes of the two bodies had been scattered to the winds; the oubliettes made by Catherine de Médici, eighty feet deep, with their steel blades as sharp as razors, their cramp-irons as pointed as lances, so numerous and so artistically arranged in spirals that a man who fell from above would be a creature in God's image the moment before falling, but, losing a piece of flesh or some member of his body at each impact, would be nothing but a shapeless, hacked-up mass by the time he reached the bottom, upon which quicklime was thrown the next day in order to consume the remains. And the whole of this castle, the royal palace of the Valois, with its memories of assassination and its marvellous art treasures, was now the barracks of the cuirassiers, who reeled about drinking and singing; who, in their transports of love or patriotism, scraped with the point of their long swords some charming bit of carving by Jean Goujon in order to write on the wood thus planed down, "I love Sophie!" or "Long live Louis-Philippe!"[4] When I left the château I took the mail-coach, and reached Tours that same night. People there could talk of nothing but the arrests of MM. de Peyronnet, of Chantelauze and of Guernon-Ranville; a host of details concerning these arrests were related to me with exultant volubility, which details shall be given in their due time and place. I continued my journey by steamer, and when I arrived at Ponts-de-Cé I landed in order to go to Angers. Here I had a friend named Victor Pavie, an excellent young fellow, warm-hearted and true. What has become of him now? I don't in the least know; I have hardly ever seen him since then. When I arrived at his house I learnt that he was at a sitting of the Assizes. They were trying a poor devil of a Vendean, from Beauprèau, who had silvered Republican sous with quicksilver, and tried to pass them off for thirty-sous pieces. The poor wretch's object in coining false money was to buy food for his starving children. A great interest was felt in the prisoner throughout the whole town; but at that date the penalty for false coining was terribly severe: it was not merely a matter of warning that I bank-notes bore an inscription threatening sentence of death on any who tried to forge them. In spite of the simplicity of his confession, and the tears of his wife and children, and the pleading of his counsel, the accused was sentenced to between twenty and thirty years' penal servitude. I was present when the sentence was passed, and, like everyone else, I received my share of the blow which smote the poor wretch. While I listened to that sentence, which, although severe, was not illegal, the idea came to me that Providence had sent me there on purpose to save the man. I returned to Pavie's house, and, without saying a word to anyone, I