like wall, she dashed back to the balcony
eyrie, imploring Louise with both hands.

"Arrest her!" said de Linieres to the soldiers.

Brawny troopers pulled her back as she would have jumped out of the
window to the flagging below--and her Louise. Vainly the Countess de
Linieres entreated for mercy. They dragged the girl downstairs.

Here again she made a frantic appeal and wild effort to join her blind
charge, who was being hurried away in the vise-like grip of La
Frochard.

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, have pity--let me go to my sister, or I shall
lose her again!"

Deaf to her entreaties, they took her to La Salpetriere, this
loveliest of virgins, to be immured among the foul characters there!

END OF PART ONE

PART II

CHAPTER XIV

DOWN IN THE DEPTHS

With Henrietta condemned to the cruel fate of immurement in a prison
for the fallen, the Chevalier trussed up in royal Caen, and his aunt
the Countess prostrated by the hag's recapture of and disappearance
with the noblewoman's long-lost daughter, blind Louise, 'twould seem
as if our characters faced indeed blank walls of ruin, misery and
despair, from which no power could rescue them.

In those times, the utter vanishing of persons who incurred police
disfavor was no uncommon incident. Often no public charge was made;
merely the gossiped whisper that So-and-So lay in Bastille or La
Salpetriere "at the royal pleasure," kept the unfortunate faintly in
memory till the lapse of years caused him or her to be forgotten. And,
sometimes, even, at the prison gate, identity vanished. Did not the
celebrated and mysterious Man in the Iron Mask carry his baffling
secret through decades of dungeon death-in-life to the prisoner's dark
grave?

Others were silently transported to exile overseas. As England had her
Botany Bay, so France had Louisiana. Let us take a glance at La
Salpetriere (as Henriette is being dragged there by Count de Linieres'
troopers) to look at the sights and scenes of the famous female
prison, and contemplate what the inmates had in store.

There was no interesting toil to relieve their unhappy lot, and no
distinction was made of the insane, the law-breaking criminal, and the
wretched streetwalker or demimondaine. In the courtyard, during the
exercise periods, the only talk was of the terms of imprisonment and
of the chances of Louisiana. In that gray monotony the ministrations
of the charitable Sisters, headed by the saintly Sister Genevie