Tenderly he inquired about her misfortune, and she told him the sad tale of the journey and Henriette's kidnapping.... Their talk was broken in upon by the entry of the hag Mere Frochard and her elder son. Alas, poor Louise! In finding a friend thou hast likewise found the bitter bread of the stranger and the slavery of the Frochard clan! The wretched hunchback is himself in thrall. Little dreams he the woe that shall attend ye both, the while Henriette is the victim of far mightier pomps and powers. Though Henriette shall not know thy fate for many a day, though she shall search long and frantically and not meet the beloved until within the shadow of the guillotine, it may give the reader what comfort it will that the blind sister still lives--a lost mite in the vast ocean of Paris! CHAPTER IV THE FETE OF BEL-AIR Henrietta had swooned in the vehicle which was being rapidly driven into open country. Gradually color came back into wan cheeks. The blue orbs and Cupid lips fluttered and half opened; the dazed little brain tried vainly to sense what had happened. Quickly the man La Fleur took out a small phial and poured some few drops of a dark liquid on the girl's tongue. Half consciously swallowing it, she sank back again--this time, into a deeper nirvana. They were coming now to a large estate, the grounds of which were brightly illuminated. Outside the iron palings a crowd of beggars shrieked and gesticulated. Within, all was gayety. La Fleur and his fellows dismounted with their burden. They laid the inanimate form of the Norman girl on a litter and covered it with a white canopy. As this strange pallet awaits the Master's wishes in anteroom, let us take a peep at the celebrated Sunken Gardens. Bel-Air had been beautified in the lovely exedra style for which Petit Trianon is noted. Art blended so cunningly with Nature one might almost mistake marble Venus for live goddess or flesh-and-blood naiads of the lake for carved caryatides. The very musicians seemed children of Pan as they tuned their lyres and fiddles in woodland nook. Before the splashing fountain supported by little naked Loves in marble--flanked by balustrades and bordered by screens of myriad crystalline glass drops--a cool white pavement invited the gay minuet. Beyond, a huge banquet table groaned with delicacies and wines the cost of which would have gone far to rationing the thirty thousand hungry of the nearby City. Indeed, enough was wasted to have fed many. With bizarre and often gross entertainment Marquis de Praille amused his guests who themselves presented a wanton and amorous scene that seemed itself a part of the elaborately staged revels.