“But I am an Englishman, and have done nothing but help a woman in distress.” “That is well, then. It will serve thee, no doubt, before the commissary.” “What commissary?” “We are of the section of the _Croix Blanche_. Forward, citizen!” He was marched off to a volley of execrations. The Cagot was driven, in likewise, amidst pointing bayonets. A party of soldiers then lifted the prostrate woman, surrounded and urged her forward. She went, babbling and dancing. She was the virgin to whom the vision of Méricourt had been vouchsafed. She was the Mother of God herself. The guard chuckled coarse jests over her ravings; the mob surrounded all, going with them and spitting fury at the accursed. Ned resigned himself to the inevitable. Only it distressed him, whenever he thought of it, to picture the lonely figure in his chambers awaiting its reprieve. The moment he was released he must hurry to it and acquit it of its trouble. Once he called over his shoulder to the Cagot, “Thou shalt not lack a new coat, and without a badge, presently. Courage, my friend! Remember that thou art reborn into the year one of liberty and equality, sacred and indivisible.” “Hold thy tongue!” growled a sergeant. “I have spoken,” said the Englishman. Their progress, by way of the Quays, and so round, by the Place de Grève, into the Rue St Antoine, made small stir amongst the few passengers abroad in the bitter weather. They were hurried, traversing a medley of little streets, into one--the Rue Pavée--very gloomy and noisome; and from this they were suddenly wheeled, leaving the crowd stranded without, into the courtyard of a sinister dark building--the Hôtel de la Force. Ned’s heart sickened before the recent associations of the place. Involuntarily he drew back. “Up, then!” cried the sergeant, shouldering him on. “It is sometimes safer to enter than to leave here.” He pulled himself together and mounted a flight of steps leading to a narrow door. The woman passed in before him--passed there and then out of his life. He never saw her again. From that hour, to the day of her death twenty years later, she raved and rotted in a maniac’s cell. She had become, indeed, Mater Tenebrarum. Blood-guilt and vanity had undermined a reason that was already shaken, before the humiliation of that public chastisement came to finally overthrow it. She died in the Salpétrière--in the very prison that had witnessed the triumph of her vengeance. And the spirit of her victim, blown in the moonlit nights against the bars of her cell, might cling to them like a bat, and peer in, and take its evil rapture of the retribution that had consigned her to that one haunted spot out of all the haunted city.