Yes, the step taken by the Misses Lavarande was foolish.  At the point which things had reached now, their going to see M. Galpin was perhaps equivalent to furnishing him the means to crush Jacques.  But whose fault was it, but M. de Chandore’s and M. Folgat’s?  Had they not committed an unpardonable blunder in leaving Sauveterre without any other precaution than to send word through M. Seneschal’s servant, that they would be back for dinner, and that they need not be troubled about them?

Not be troubled?  And that to the Marchioness de Boiscoran and Dionysia, to Jacques’s mother and Jacques’s betrothed.

Certainly, at first, the two wretched women preserved their self-control in a manner, trying to set each other an example of courage and confidence.  But, as hour after hour passed by, their anxiety became intolerable; and gradually, as they confided their apprehensions to each other, their grief broke out openly.  They thought of Jacques being innocent, and yet treated like one of the worst criminals, alone in the depth of his prison, given up to the most horrible inspirations of despair.  What could have been his feelings during the twenty-four hours which had brought him no news from his friends?  Must he not fancy himself despised and abandoned.

“That is an intolerable thought!” exclaimed Dionysia at lat.  “We must get to him at any price.”

“How?” asked the marchioness.

“I do not know; but there must be some way.  There are things which I would not have ventured upon as long as I was alone; but, with you by my side, I can risk any thing.  Let us go to the prison.”

The old lady promptly put a shawl around her shoulders, and said,—­

“I am ready; let us go.”

They had both heard repeatedly that Jacques was kept in close confinement; but neither of them realized fully what that meant.  They had no idea of this atrocious measure, which is, nevertheless, rendered necessary by the peculiar forms of French law-proceedings,—­a measure which, so to say, immures a man alive, and leaves him in his cell alone with the crime with which he is charged, and utterly at the mercy of another man, whose duty it is to extort the truth from him.  The two ladies only saw the want of liberty, a cell with its dismal outfittings, the bars at the window, the bolts at the door, the jailer shaking his bunch of keys at his belt, and the tramp of the solitary sentinel in the long passages.

“They cannot refuse me permission,” said the old lady, “to see my son.”

“They cannot,” repeated Dionysia.  “And, besides, I know the jailer, Blangin:  his wife was formerly in our service.”

When the young girl, therefore, raised the heavy knocker at the prison-door, she was full of cheerful confidence.  Blangin himself came to the door; and, at the sight of the two poor ladies, his broad face displayed the utmost astonishment.

“We come to see M. de Boiscoran,” said Dionysia boldly.