All the people ran out to see him on his way to the house of M. the Secretary of State. They cried out, “It is Cartouche! It is Cartouche!” only half believing it, as they had so often been deceived. While in the prison awaiting trial, Cartouche received many illustrious visitors. The Regent came; the courtesan Emilie and the Mme. le Maréchale de Boufflers followed one after the other to pay the prisoner small attentions. Some one had composed a play, and Quinnato, the famous actor of the time, who filled the principal rôle in it, came to ask him for suggestions about the chief scene. When Cartouche had been sufficiently amused, he began to think of making his escape. He intended doing this in spite of the very close watch that was being kept over him. After getting out of his dungeon, and just as he was pushing the last bar which separated him from the street and liberty, he was discovered and caught. Thinking that the Grande Châtelet was not strong enough for so ingenious a man, he was bound securely in chains and taken to the Conciergerie, in the most formidable corner of the tower of Montgomery. CHAPTER XIX _The Torture Chamber_ |IT is only the basest of literature that describes without adequate reason the weird, the horrible. However, many authors find it necessary to dilate upon the most satanic personalities of men, and the worst cruelties imaginable. Therefore, it is only with the knowledge that the recital of the misfortunes of Théophraste is destined to throw a light on the most obscure problems of psychic surgery that the author of these lines proceeds with this description of the most frightful tortures, moral and physical, that have ever been endured by man. The operation to be performed was a singular one, and full of the gravest of dangers. However, M. Eliphaste was in the habit of performing the most complicated of psychic operations, and the delicacy of his astral scalpel was universally acknowledged. But the difficulty was the delay. Had M. Lecamus brought Théophraste earlier, the danger would have been less, but now M. Eliphaste recognized the gravity of the case, and he said that to kill Cartouche without killing Longuet was to tempt God. It was the gravest responsibility. However, he knew how to lead M. Longuet’s mind quietly and without haste to the subject of his death, and thus he prepared him for death. He made him live his death the moment that he made him die his death. Then, at the psychological moment, he made a certain gesture, the double sign which precipitated in death the spirit of the dead, and brought back to life the living mind. These were the details of the operation to be performed, and the preliminaries, which consisted in making Théophraste live through the last months of Cartouche’s life, having been started, M. Eliphaste began asking Théophraste a series of questions. The latter was lying, groaning, on the bed in the laboratory, which was lighted by the hissing scarlet flames.