— 6 — THE FIRST PRISONER
IN THE BASTILLEMarguerite de Jehan, Madame de Poulaillon, had collapsed as soon as she was arrested and it was impossible to obtain anything from her but expressions of incoherent fear and indignation.
She was a small, fair woman who seemed at once frivolous and gentle, not more than twenty-three years of age, ignorant, elegant and naturally gay; her story, to a man of M. de La Reynie’s experience, was not in the least extraordinary.
The daughter of small shopkeepers and convent-bred, she had been married at eighteen to M. de Poulaillon, a widower, a manufacturer of porcelain, and a man thirty years her senior. The marriage had been unhappy. The young wife was so extravagant that the husband refused to allow her to have a sou in her pocket, even buying her cloth
