They believe me her accomplice, and will punish me with her.

She must have spoken; she must have confessed everything--a woman is so weak! A dungeon! The first he comes to! That's it! A night is soon passed; and tomorrow to the wheel, to the gallows! Oh, my God, my God, have pity on me!" Without listening the least in the world to the lamentations of M.
Bonacieux--lamentations to which, besides, they must have been pretty well accustomed--the two guards took the prisoner each by an arm, and led him away, while the commissary wrote a letter in haste and dispatched it by an officer in waiting.
Bonacieux could not close his eyes; not because his dungeon was so very disagreeable, but because his uneasiness was so great.

He sat all night on his stool, starting at the least noise; and when the first rays of the sun penetrated into his chamber, the dawn itself appeared to him to have taken funereal tints.
All at once he heard his bolts drawn, and made a terrified bound.

He believed they were come to conduct him to the scaffold; so that when he saw merely and simply, instead of the executioner he expected, only his commissary of the preceding evening, attended by his clerk, he was ready to embrace them both.
"Your affair has become more complicated since yesterday evening, my good man, and I advise you to tell the whole truth; for your repentance alone can remove the anger of the cardinal." "Why, I am ready to tell everything," cried Bonacieux, "at least, all that I know.

Interrogate me, I entreat you!" "Where is your wife, in the first place ?" "Why, did not I tell you she had been stolen from me ?" "Yes, but yesterday at five o'clock in the afternoon, thanks to you, she escaped." "My wife escaped!" cried Bonacieux.