A slight gesture of impatience.

"But----"

"What's it for?"

"Why, it's a church, petite."

"A church! And what's that to me?"

"Well, truly, I don't know, child. Nothing, I suppose."

"Nothing!"

She snapped her fingers contemptuously.

"Here is the Prefecture."

It was the Prefecture de Police and not Notre Dame that had to do with
little Fouchette and her kind. She knew what the Prefecture was,
though she now saw it for the first time. And she shivered in her wet
rags as the carriage turned into the great court-yard surrounded by
the immense stone quadrangle that fronts upon the quai.

A troop of the Garde de Paris was drilling at the upper end of the
court. Sentinels with gay uniforms and fixed bayonets solemnly paraded
at the three gate-ways.

"Come, petite," said the man, flinging open the carriage doors and
lifting the child in his arms to the ground. The dog leaped out after
her and looked uneasily up and down.

Half an hour later when Fouchette emerged with her conductor she had
undergone a transformation that would have rendered her
unrecognizable in Charenton. She had not only been washed and combed
and rubbed down, but had been arrayed in a frock of grayish material,
a chip hat with flowers in it, and shoes and stockings. She was so
excited over the grandeur of her personal appearance that she had
completely lost her bearings. It is true the hat was too old for a
child of her years, and the coarse new costume was several sizes too
large for her bony little frame, and the shoes were very embarrassing,
but to Fouchette they seemed the outfit of a "real lady."

She had entered the Prefecture sullenly, desperately, half expecting
to be sent to a lonely cell and perhaps loaded with chains,--she had
heard tell of such things,--and, instead, had been treated with
kindness by a gentle matron, her body washed and clothed, her stomach
made glad with rich soup and bread and milk, while Tartar was amply
provided for before her own eyes.

Fouchette was still in a daze when she found herself again in the
closed carriage, with Tartar at her feet, being whirled away at a pace
that seemed to threaten the lives of everybody in the streets. The
same man sat beside her, and an extra man had, at the last moment,
clambered up by the side of the driver.

This furious speed was continued for a long time, until Fouchette
began to wonder more and more where they were going. She could not
recognize anything e