IV

The idiot boy somewhere upon the hills of Lake George, always in a world of fog which could not be discovered again, had often come to my mind during my journeys, like a self that I had shed and left behind.  But Bellenger was a cipher.  I forgot him even at the campfire.  Now here was this poor crazy potter on my track with vindictive intelligence, the day I set foot in Paris.  Time was not granted even to set the lodging in order.  He must have crossed the ocean with as good speed as Doctor Chantry and Skenedonk and I. He may have spied upon us from the port, through the barriers, and even to our mansard.  At any rate he had found me in a crowd, and made use of me to my downfall:  and I could have knocked my stupid head on the curb as I was haled away.

One glimpse of Skenedonk I caught while we marched along Rue St. Antoine, the gendarmes protecting me from the crowd.  He thought I was going to the scaffold, where many a strapping fellow had gone in the Paris of his youth, and fought to reach me, laying about him with his loaf of bread.  Skenedonk would certainly trail me, and find a way to be of use, unless he broke into trouble as readily as I had done.

My guards crossed the river in the neighborhood of palaces, and came by many windings to a huge pile rearing its back near a garden place, and there I was turned over to jailers and darkness.  The entrance was unwholesome.  A man at a table opened a tome which might have contained all the names in Paris.  He dipped his quill and wrote by candlelight.

“Political offender or common criminal?” he inquired.

“Political offender,” the officer answered.

“What is he charged with?”

“Trying to assassinate the emperor in his post-chaise.”

“La, la, la!” the recorder grunted.  “Another attempt!  And gunpowder put in the street to blow the emperor up only last week.  Good luck attends him:—­only a few windows broken and some common people killed.  Taken in the act, was this fellow?”

“With the knife in his hand.”

“What name?” the recorder inquired.

I had thought on the answer, and told him merely that my name was Williams.

“Eh, bien, Monsieur Veeleeum.  Take him to the east side among the political offenders,” said the master-jailer to an assistant or turnkey.

“But it’s full,” responded the turnkey.

“Shove him in some place.”

They searched me, and the turnkey lighted another candle.  The meagerness of my output was beneath remark.  When he had led me up a flight of stone steps he paused and inquired,

“Have you any money?”

“No.”

“So much the worse for you.”

“What is the name of this prison?” I asked.

“Ste. Pelagie,” he answered.  “If you have no money, and expect to eat here, you better give me some trinket to sell for you.”