prison if we would.

It was equally clear that we could not go forward if the inmates
should object. On that narrow perch even Marie was helpless.
The bars of the window were close together. A woman, a child,
could disengage our hands, and then--I turned sick again. I
thought of the cruel stones. I glued my face to the bars, and
pushing aside a corner of the curtain, looked in.

There was only one person in the room--a woman, who was moving
about fully dressed, late as it was. The room was a mere attic,
the counterpart of that we had left. A box-bed with a canopy
roughly nailed over it stood in a corner. A couple of chairs
were by the hearth, and all seemed to speak of poverty and
bareness. Yet the woman whom we saw was richly dressed, though
her silks and velvets were disordered. I saw a jewel gleam in
her hair, and others on her hands. When she turned her face
towards us--a wild, beautiful face, perplexed and tear-stained--I
knew her instantly for a gentlewoman, and when she walked hastily
to the door, and laid her hand upon it, and seemed to listen--
when she shook the latch and dropped her hands in despair and
went back to the hearth, I made another discovery I knew at once,
seeing her there, that we were likely but to change one prison
for another. Was every house in Paris then a dungeon? And did
each roof cover its tragedy?

"Madame!" I said, speaking softly, to attract her attention.
"Madame!"

She started violently, not knowing whence the sound came, and