without the smallest consciousness of where he was, or what had
happened.
'

Page 22

France alone was in his head-France and its horrors, which
nothing-not even English porter and intoxication and sleep -
could drive away.

He looked round the room with amaze at first, and soon after with
consternation. It was so unfurnished, so
miserable, so lighted with only one small bit of a candle, that
it occurred to him he was in a maison de force(17) '- thither
conveyed in his sleep. The stillness of
everything confirmed this dreadful idea. He arose, slipped on his
clothes, and listened at the door. He heard no sound. He was
scarce, yet, I suppose, quite awake, for he took the candle, and
determined to make an attempt to escape.

Down-stairs he crept, neither hearing nor making any noise and he
found himself in a kitchen ' he looked round, and the brightness
of a shelf of pewter plates struck his eye under them were pots
and kettles shining and polished. "Ah! "? cried he to himself,
"je suis en Angleterre."(18) The recollection came all at once
at sight of a cleanliness which, in these articles, he says, is
never met with in France.

He did not escape too soon, for his first cousin, the good Duc de
la Rochefoucault, another of the first