Explore "Adventures of the Comte de la Muette during the Reign of Terror" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Gardel -- one of the most eminent and amusing rascals of my experience -- is inextricably associated with my memories of the prison of the Little Force. He had been runner to the Marquis de Kercy; and that his vanity would by no means deny, though it should procure his conviction ten times over. He was vivacious, and at all expedients as ingenious as he was practical; and, while he was with us, the common-room of La Force was a theatre of varieties.
By a curious irony of circumstance, it fell to Madame, his former châtelaine, to second his extravagances. For he was her fellow-prisoner; and, out of all that motley, kaleidoscopic assemblage, an only representative of the traditions of her past. She indulged him, indeed, as if she would say, "In him, _mes amis_, you see exemplified the gaieties that I was born to patronise and applaud. "