Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.
A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern
France then, than at any other time, before or since. Everything in Marseilles,
and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been stared at in
return, until a staring habit had become universal there. Strangers were stared
out of countenance by staring white houses, staring white walls, staring white
streets, staring tracts of arid road, staring hills from which verdure was burnt
away. The only things to be seen not fixedly staring and glaring were the vines
drooping under their load of grapes. These did occasionally wink a little, as
the hot air barely moved their faint leaves.
There was no wind to make a ripple on the foul water within the harbour, or
on the beautiful sea without. The line of demarcation between the two colours,
black and blue, showed the point which the pure sea would not pass; but it lay
as quiet as the abominable pool, with which it never mixed. Boats without
awnings were too hot to touch; ships blistered at their moorings; the stones of
the quays had not cooled, night or day, for months. Hindoos, Russians, Chinese,
Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Genoese, Neapolitans, Venetians,
Greeks, Turks, descendants from all the builders of Babel, come to trade at
Marseilles, sought the shade alike--taking refuge in any hiding-place from a sea
too intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of purple, set with one great
flaming jewel of fire.
The universal stare made the eyes ache. Towards the distant line of Italian
coast, indeed, it was a little relieved by light clouds of mist, slowly rising
from the evaporation of the sea, but it softened nowhere else. Far away the
staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the hill-side, stared from the hollow,
stared from the interminable plain. Far away the dusty vines overhanging wayside
cottages, and the monotonous wayside avenues of parched trees without shade,
drooped beneath the stare of earth and sky. So did the horses with drowsy bells,
in long files of carts, creeping slowly towards the interior; so did their
recumbent drivers, when they were awake, which rarely happened; so did the
exhausted labourers in the fields. Everything that lived or grew, was oppressed
by the glare; except the lizard, passing swiftly over rough stone walls, and the
cicala, chirping his dry hot chirp, like a rattle. The very dust was scorched
brown, and something quivered in the atmosphere as if the air itself were
panting.
Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to keep out
the stare. Grant it but a chink or keyhole, and it shot in like a white-hot
arrow. The churches were the freest from it. To come out of the twilight of
pillars and arches--dreamily dotted with winking lamps, dreamily peopled with
ugly old shadows piously dozing, spitting, and begging--was to plunge into a
fiery river, and swim for life to the nearest strip of shade. So, with people
lounging and lying wherever shade was, with but little hum of tongues or barking
of dogs, with occasional jangling of discordant church bells and rattling of
vicious drums, Marseilles, a fact to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broiling
in the sun one day. In Marseilles that day there was a villainous prison. In one
of its chambers, so repulsive a place that even the obtrusive stare blinked at
it, and left it to such refuse of reflected light as it could find for itself,
were two men. Besides the two men, a notched and disfigured bench, immovable
from the wall, with a draught-board rudely hacked upon it with a knife, a set of
draughts, made of old buttons and soup bones, a set of dominoes, two mats, and
two or three wine bottles. That was all the chamber held, exclusive of rats and
other unseen vermin, in addition to the seen vermin, the two men.
It received such light as it got through a grating of iron bars fashioned
like a pretty large window, by means of which it could be always inspected from
the gloomy staircase on which the grating gave. There was a broad strong ledge
of stone to this grating where the bottom of it was let into the masonry, three
or four feet above the ground. Upon it, one of the two men lolled, half sitting
and half lying, with his knees drawn up, and his feet and shoulders planted
against the opposite sides of the aperture. The bars were wide enough apart to
admit of his thrusting his arm through to the elbow; and so he held on
negligently, for his greater ease.
A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the imprisoned
light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all deteriorated by
confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard, so the iron was rusty,
the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air was faint, the light was dim.
Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the
brightness outside, and would have kept its polluted atmosphere intact in one of
the spice islands of the Indian ocean.
The man who lay on the ledge of the grating was even chilled. He jerked his
great cloak more heavily upon him by an impatient movement of one shoulder, and
growled, 'To the devil with this Brigand of a Sun that never shines in here!'
He was waiting to be fed, looking sideways through the bars that he might see
the further down the stairs, with much of the expression of a wild beast in
similar expectation. But his eyes, too close together, were not so nobly set in
his head as those of the king of beasts are in his, and they were sharp rather
than bright--pointed weapons with little surface to betray them. They had no
depth or change; they glittered, and they opened and shut. So far, and waiving
their use to himself, a clockmaker could have made a better pair. He had a hook
nose, handsome after its kind, but too high between the eyes by probably just as
much as his eyes were too near to one another. For the rest, he was large and
tall in frame, had thin lips, where his thick moustache showed them at all, and
a quantity of dry hair, of no definable colour, in its shaggy state, but shot
with red. The hand with which he held the grating (seamed all over the back with
ugly scratches newly healed), was unusually small and plump; would have been
unusually white but for the prison grime. The other man was lying on the stone
floor, covered with a coarse brown coat.
'Get up, pig!' growled the first. 'Don't sleep when I am hungry.'
'It's all one, master,' said the pig, in a submissive manner, and not without
cheerfulness; 'I can wake when I will, I can sleep when I will. It's all the
same.'
As he said it, he rose, shook himself, scratched himself, tied his brown coat
loosely round his neck by the sleeves (he had previously used it as a coverlet),
and sat down upon the pavement yawning, with his back against the wall opposite
to the grating.
'Say what the hour is,' grumbled the first man.
'The mid-day bells will ring--in forty minutes.' When he made the little
pause, he had looked round the prison-room, as if for certain information.
'You are a clock. How is it that you always know?'
'How can I say? I always know what the hour is, and where I am. I was brought
in here at night, and out of a boat, but I know where I am. See here! Marseilles
harbour;' on his knees on the pavement, mapping it all out with a swarthy
forefinger; 'Toulon (where the galleys are), Spain over there, Algiers over
there. Creeping away to the left here, Nice. Round by the Cornice to Genoa.
Genoa Mole and Harbour. Quarantine Ground. City there; terrace gardens blushing
with the bella donna. Here, Porto Fino. Stand out for Leghorn. Out again for
Civita Vecchia. so away to-- hey! there's no room for Naples;' he had got to the
wall by this time; 'but it's all one; it's in there!'
He remained on his knees, looking up at his fellow-prisoner with a lively
look for a prison. A sunburnt, quick, lithe, little man, though rather thickset.
Earrings in his brown ears, white teeth lighting up his grotesque brown face,
intensely black hair clustering about his brown throat, a ragged red shirt open
at his brown breast. Loose, seaman-like trousers, decent shoes, a long red cap,
a red sash round his waist, and a knife in it.
'Judge if I come back from Naples as I went! See here, my master! Civita
Vecchia, Leghorn, Porto Fino, Genoa, Cornice, Off Nice (which is in there),
Marseilles, you and me. The apartment of the jailer and his keys is where I put
this thumb; and here at my wrist they keep the national razor in its case--the
guillotine locked up.'
The other man spat suddenly on the pavement, and gurgled in his throat.
Some lock below gurgled in its throat immediately afterwards, and then a door
crashed. Slow steps began ascending the stairs; the prattle of a sweet little
voice mingled with the noise they made; and the prison-keeper appeared carrying
his daughter, three or four years old, and a basket.
'How goes the world this forenoon, gentlemen? My little one, you see, going
round with me to have a peep at her father's birds. Fie, then! Look at the
birds, my pretty, look at the birds.'
He looked sharply at the birds himself, as he held the child up at the grate,
especially at the little bird, whose activity he seemed to mistrust. 'I have
brought your bread, Signor John Baptist,' said he (they all spoke in French, but
the little man was an Italian); 'and if I might recommend you not to game--'
'You don't recommend the master!' said John Baptist, showing his teeth as he
smiled.
'Oh! but the master wins,' returned the jailer, with a passing look of no
particular liking at the other man, 'and you lose. It's quite another thing. You
get husky bread and sour drink by it; and he gets sausage of Lyons, veal in
savoury jelly, white bread, strachino cheese, and good wine by it. Look at the
birds, my pretty!'
'Poor birds!' said the child.
The fair little face, touched with divine compassion, as it peeped
shrinkingly through the grate, was like an angel's in the prison. John Baptist
rose and moved towards it, as if it had a good attraction for him. The other
bird remained as before, except for an impatient glance at the basket.
'Stay!' said the jailer, putting his little daughter on the outer ledge of
the grate, 'she shall feed the birds. This big loaf is for Signor John Baptist.
We must break it to get it through into the cage. So, there's a tame bird to
kiss the little hand! This sausage in a vine leaf is for Monsieur Rigaud.
Again--this veal in savoury jelly is for Monsieur Rigaud. Again--these three
white little loaves are for Monsieur Rigaud. Again, this cheese--again, this
wine--again, this tobacco--all for Monsieur Rigaud. Lucky bird!'
The child put all these things between the bars into the soft, Smooth,
well-shaped hand, with evident dread--more than once drawing back her own and
looking at the man with her fair brow roughened into an expression half of
fright and half of anger. Whereas she had put the lump of coarse bread into the
swart, scaled, knotted hands of John Baptist (who had scarcely as much nail on
his eight fingers and two thumbs as would have made out one for Monsieur Rigaud),
with ready confidence; and, when he kissed her hand, had herself passed it
caressingly over his face. Monsieur Rigaud, indifferent to this distinction,
propitiated the father by laughing and nodding at the daughter as often as she
gave him anything; and, so soon as he had all his viands about him in convenient
nooks of the ledge on which he rested, began to eat with an appetite.
When Monsieur Rigaud laughed, a change took place in his face, that was more
remarkable than prepossessing. His moustache went up under his nose, and his
nose came down over his moustache, in a very sinister and cruel manner.
'There!' said the jailer, turning his basket upside down to beat the crumbs
out, 'I have expended all the money I received; here is the note of it, and
that's a thing accomplished. Monsieur Rigaud, as I expected yesterday, the
President will look for the pleasure of your society at an hour after mid-day,
to-day.'
'To try me, eh?' said Rigaud, pausing, knife in hand and morsel in mouth.
'You have said it. To try you.'
'There is no news for me?' asked John Baptist, who had begun, contentedly, to
munch his bread.
The jailer shrugged his shoulders.
'Lady of mine! Am I to lie here all my life, my father?'
'What do I know!' cried the jailer, turning upon him with southern quickness,
and gesticulating with both his hands and all his fingers, as if he were
threatening to tear him to pieces. 'My friend, how is it possible for me to tell
how long you are to lie here? What do I know, John Baptist Cavalletto? Death of
my life! There are prisoners here sometimes, who are not in such a devil of a
hurry to be tried.' He seemed to glance obliquely at Monsieur Rigaud in this
remark; but Monsieur Rigaud had already resumed his meal, though not with quite
so quick an appetite as before.
'Adieu, my birds!' said the keeper of the prison, taking his pretty child in
his arms, and dictating the words with a kiss.
'Adieu, my birds!' the pretty child repeated.
Her innocent face looked back so brightly over his shoulder, as he walked
away with her, singing her the song of the child's game:
'Who passes by this road so late? Compagnon de la Majolaine! Who passes by
this road so late? Always gay!'
that John Baptist felt it a point of honour to reply at the grate, and in
good time and tune, though a little hoarsely:
'Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower, Compagnon de la Majolaine! Of all
the king's knights 'tis the flower, Always gay!'
which accompanied them so far down the few steep stairs, that the
prison-keeper had to stop at last for his little daughter to hear the song out,
and repeat the Refrain while they were yet in sight. Then the child's head
disappeared, and the prison-keeper's head disappeared, but the little voice
prolonged the strain until the door clashed.
Monsieur Rigaud, finding the listening John Baptist in his way before the
echoes had ceased (even the echoes were the weaker for imprisonment, and seemed
to lag), reminded him with a push of his foot that he had better resume his own
darker place. The little man sat down again upon the pavement with the negligent
ease of one who was thoroughly accustomed to pavements; and placing three hunks
of coarse bread before himself, and falling to upon a fourth, began contentedly
to work his way through them as if to clear them off were a sort of game.
Perhaps he glanced at the Lyons sausage, and perhaps he glanced at the veal
in savoury jelly, but they were not there long, to make his mouth water;
Monsieur Rigaud soon dispatched them, in spite of the president and tribunal,
and proceeded to suck his fingers as clean as he could, and to wipe them on his
vine leaves. Then, as he paused in his drink to contemplate his fellow-prisoner,
his moustache went up, and his nose came down.
'How do you find the bread?'
'A little dry, but I have my old sauce here,' returned John Baptist, holding
up his knife. 'How sauce?'
'I can cut my bread so--like a melon. Or so--like an omelette. Or so--like a
fried fish. Or so--like Lyons sausage,' said John Baptist, demonstrating the
various cuts on the bread he held, and soberly chewing what he had in his mouth.
'Here!' cried Monsieur Rigaud. 'You may drink. You may finish this.'
It was no great gift, for there was mighty little wine left; but Signor
Cavalletto, jumping to his feet, received the bottle gratefully, turned it
upside down at his mouth, and smacked his lips.
'Put the bottle by with the rest,' said Rigaud.
The little man obeyed his orders, and stood ready to give him a lighted
match; for he was now rolling his tobacco into cigarettes by the aid of little
squares of paper which had been brought in with it.
'Here! You may have one.'
'A thousand thanks, my master!' John Baptist said in his own language, and
with the quick conciliatory manner of his own countrymen.
Monsieur Rigaud arose, lighted a cigarette, put the rest of his stock into a
breast-pocket, and stretched himself out at full length upon the bench.
Cavalletto sat down on the pavement, holding one of his ankles in each hand, and
smoking peacefully. There seemed to be some uncomfortable attraction of Monsieur
Rigaud's eyes to the immediate neighbourhood of that part of the pavement where
the thumb had been in the plan. They were so drawn in that direction, that the
Italian more than once followed them to and back from the pavement in some
surprise.
'What an infernal hole this is!' said Monsieur Rigaud, breaking a long pause.
'Look at the light of day. Day? the light of yesterday week, the light of six
months ago, the light of six years ago. So slack and dead!'
It came languishing down a square funnel that blinded a window in the
staircase wall, through which the sky was never seen--nor anything else.
'Cavalletto,' said Monsieur Rigaud, suddenly withdrawing his gaze from this
funnel to which they had both involuntarily turned their eyes, 'you know me for
a gentleman?'
'Surely, surely!'
'How long have we been here?' 'I, eleven weeks, to-morrow night at midnight.
You, nine weeks and three days, at five this afternoon.'
'Have I ever done anything here? Ever touched the broom, or spread the mats,
or rolled them up, or found the draughts, or collected the dominoes, or put my
hand to any kind of work?'
'Never!'
'Have you ever thought of looking to me to do any kind of work?'
John Baptist answered with that peculiar back-handed shake of the right
forefinger which is the most expressive negative in the Italian language.
'No! You knew from the first moment when you saw me here, that I was a
gentleman?'
'ALTRO!' returned John Baptist, closing his eyes and giving his head a most
vehement toss. The word being, according to its Genoese emphasis, a
confirmation, a contradiction, an assertion, a denial, a taunt, a compliment, a
joke, and fifty other things, became in the present instance, with a
significance beyond all power of written expression, our familiar English 'I
believe you!'
'Haha! You are right! A gentleman I am! And a gentleman I'll live, and a
gentleman I'll die! It's my intent to be a gentleman. It's my game. Death of my
soul, I play it out wherever I go!'
He changed his posture to a sitting one, crying with a triumphant air:
'Here I am! See me! Shaken out of destiny's dice-box into the company of a
mere smuggler;--shut up with a poor little contraband trader, whose papers are
wrong, and whom the police lay hold of besides, for placing his boat (as a means
of getting beyond the frontier) at the disposition of other little people whose
papers are wrong; and he instinctively recognises my position, even by this
light and in this place. It's well done! By Heaven! I win, however the game
goes.'
Again his moustache went up, and his nose came down.
'What's the hour now?' he asked, with a dry hot pallor upon him, rather
difficult of association with merriment.
'A little half-hour after mid-day.'
'Good! The President will have a gentleman before him soon. Come!
Shall I tell you on what accusation? It must be now, or never, for I shall
not return here. Either I shall go free, or I shall go to be made ready for
shaving. You know where they keep the razor.'
Signor Cavalletto took his cigarette from between his parted lips, and showed
more momentary discomfiture than might have been expected.
'I am a'--Monsieur Rigaud stood up to say it--'I am a cosmopolitan gentleman.
I own no particular country. My father was Swiss-- Canton de Vaud. My mother was
French by blood, English by birth. I myself was born in Belgium. I am a citizen
of the world.'
His theatrical air, as he stood with one arm on his hip within the folds of
his cloak, together with his manner of disregarding his companion and addressing
the opposite wall instead, seemed to intimate that he was rehearsing for the
President, whose examination he was shortly to undergo, rather than troubling
himself merely to enlighten so small a person as John Baptist Cavalletto.
'Call me five-and-thirty years of age. I have seen the world. I have lived
here, and lived there, and lived like a gentleman everywhere. I have been
treated and respected as a gentleman universally. If you try to prejudice me by
making out that I have lived by my wits--how do your lawyers live--your
politicians--your intriguers--your men of the Exchange?'
He kept his small smooth hand in constant requisition, as if it were a
witness to his gentility that had often done him good service before.
'Two years ago I came to Marseilles. I admit that I was poor; I had been ill.
When your lawyers, your politicians, your intriguers, your men of the Exchange
fall ill, and have not scraped money together, they become poor. I put up at the
Cross of Gold,-- kept then by Monsieur Henri Barronneau--sixty-five at least,
and in a failing state of health. I had lived in the house some four months when
Monsieur Henri Barronneau had the misfortune to die;-- at any rate, not a rare
misfortune, that. It happens without any aid of mine, pretty often.'
John Baptist having smoked his cigarette down to his fingers' ends, Monsieur
Rigaud had the magnanimity to throw him another. He lighted the second at the
ashes of the first, and smoked on, looking sideways at his companion, who,
preoccupied with his own case, hardly looked at him.
'Monsieur Barronneau left a widow. She was two-and-twenty. She had gained a
reputation for beauty, and (which is often another thing) was beautiful. I
continued to live at the Cross of Gold. I married Madame Barronneau. It is not
for me to say whether there was any great disparity in such a match. Here I
stand, with the contamination of a jail upon me; but it is possible that you may
think me better suited to her than her former husband was.'
He had a certain air of being a handsome man--which he was not; and a certain
air of being a well-bred man--which he was not. It was mere swagger and
challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes
for proof, half over the world.
'Be it as it may, Madame Barronneau approved of me. That is not to prejudice
me, I hope?'
His eye happening to light upon John Baptist with this inquiry, that little
man briskly shook his head in the negative, and repeated in an argumentative
tone under his breath, altro, altro, altro, altro--an infinite number of times.
' Now came the difficulties of our position. I am proud. I say nothing in
defence of pride, but I am proud. It is also my character to govern. I can't
submit; I must govern. Unfortunately, the property of Madame Rigaud was settled
upon herself. Such was the insane act of her late husband. More unfortunately
still, she had relations. When a wife's relations interpose against a husband
who is a gentleman, who is proud, and who must govern, the consequences are
inimical to peace. There was yet another source of difference between us. Madame
Rigaud was unfortunately a little vulgar. I sought to improve her manners and
ameliorate her general tone; she (supported in this likewise by her relations)
resented my endeavours. Quarrels began to arise between us; and, propagated and
exaggerated by the slanders of the relations of Madame Rigaud, to become
notorious to the neighbours. It has been said that I treated Madame Rigaud with
cruelty. I may have been seen to slap her face--nothing more. I have a light
hand; and if I have been seen apparently to correct Madame Rigaud in that
manner, I have done it almost playfully.'
If the playfulness of Monsieur Rigaud were at all expressed by his smile at
this point, the relations of Madame Rigaud might have said that they would have
much preferred his correcting that unfortunate woman seriously.
'I am sensitive and brave. I do not advance it as a merit to be sensitive and
brave, but it is my character. If the male relations of Madame Rigaud had put
themselves forward openly, I should have known how to deal with them. They knew
that, and their machinations were conducted in secret; consequently, Madame
Rigaud and I were brought into frequent and unfortunate collision. Even when I
wanted any little sum of money for my personal expenses, I could not obtain it
without collision--and I, too, a man whose character it is to govern! One night,
Madame Rigaud and myself were walking amicably--I may say like lovers--on a
height overhanging the sea. An evil star occasioned Madame Rigaud to advert to
her relations; I reasoned with her on that subject, and remonstrated on the want
of duty and devotion manifested in her allowing herself to be influenced by
their jealous animosity towards her husband. Madame Rigaud retorted; I retorted;
Madame Rigaud grew warm; I grew warm, and provoked her. I admit it. Frankness is
a part of my character. At length, Madame Rigaud, in an access of fury that I
must ever deplore, threw herself upon me with screams of passion (no doubt those
that were overheard at some distance), tore my clothes, tore my hair, lacerated
my hands, trampled and trod the dust, and finally leaped over, dashing herself
to death upon the rocks below. Such is the train of incidents which malice has
perverted into my endeavouring to force from Madame Rigaud a relinquishment of
her rights; and, on her persistence in a refusal to make the concession I
required, struggling with her--assassinating her!'
He stepped aside to the ledge where the vine leaves yet lay strewn about,
collected two or three, and stood wiping his hands upon them, with his back to
the light.
'Well,' he demanded after a silence, 'have you nothing to say to all that?'
'It's ugly,' returned the little man, who had risen, and was brightening his
knife upon his shoe, as he leaned an arm against the wall.
'What do you mean?' John Baptist polished his knife in silence.
'Do you mean that I have not represented the case correctly?'
'Al-tro!' returned John Baptist. The word was an apology now, and stood for
'Oh, by no means!'
'What then?'
'Presidents and tribunals are so prejudiced.'
'Well,' cried the other, uneasily flinging the end of his cloak over his
shoulder with an oath, 'let them do their worst!'
'Truly I think they will,' murmured John Baptist to himself, as he bent his
head to put his knife in his sash.
Nothing more was said on either side, though they both began walking to and
fro, and necessarily crossed at every turn. Monsieur Rigaud sometimes stopped,
as if he were going to put his case in a new light, or make some irate
remonstrance; but Signor Cavalletto continuing to go slowly to and fro at a
grotesque kind of jog-trot pace with his eyes turned downward, nothing came of
these inclinings.
By-and-by the noise of the key in the lock arrested them both. The sound of
voices succeeded, and the tread of feet. The door clashed, the voices and the
feet came on, and the prison-keeper slowly ascended the stairs, followed by a
guard of soldiers.
'Now, Monsieur Rigaud,' said he, pausing for a moment at the grate, with his
keys in his hands, 'have the goodness to come out.'
'I am to depart in state, I see?' 'Why, unless you did,' returned the jailer,
'you might depart in so many pieces that it would be difficult to get you
together again. There's a crowd, Monsieur Rigaud, and it doesn't love you.'
He passed on out of sight, and unlocked and unbarred a low door in the corner
of the chamber. 'Now,' said he, as he opened it and appeared within, 'come out.'
There is no sort of whiteness in all the hues under the sun at all like the
whiteness of Monsieur Rigaud's face as it was then. Neither is there any
expression of the human countenance at all like that expression in every little
line of which the frightened heart is seen to beat. Both are conventionally
compared with death; but the difference is the whole deep gulf between the
struggle done, and the fight at its most desperate extremity.
He lighted another of his paper cigars at his companion's; put it tightly
between his teeth; covered his head with a soft slouched hat; threw the end of
his cloak over his shoulder again; and walked out into the side gallery on which
the door opened, without taking any further notice of Signor Cavalletto. As to
that little man himself, his whole attention had become absorbed in getting near
the door and looking out at it. Precisely as a beast might approach the opened
gate of his den and eye the freedom beyond, he passed those few moments in
watching and peering, until the door was closed upon him.
There was an officer in command of the soldiers; a stout, serviceable,
profoundly calm man, with his drawn sword in his hand, smoking a cigar. He very
briefly directed the placing of Monsieur Rigaud in the midst of the party, put
himself with consummate indifference at their head, gave the word 'march!' and
so they all went jingling down the staircase. The door clashed--the key
turned--and a ray of unusual light, and a breath of unusual air, seemed to have
passed through the jail, vanishing in a tiny wreath of smoke from the cigar.
Still, in his captivity, like a lower animal--like some impatient ape, or
roused bear of the smaller species--the prisoner, now left solitary, had jumped
upon the ledge, to lose no glimpse of this departure. As he yet stood clasping
the grate with both hands, an uproar broke upon his hearing; yells, shrieks,
oaths, threats, execrations, all comprehended in it, though (as in a storm)
nothing but a raging swell of sound distinctly heard.
Excited into a still greater resemblance to a caged wild animal by his
anxiety to know more, the prisoner leaped nimbly down, ran round the chamber,
leaped nimbly up again, clasped the grate and tried to shake it, leaped down and
ran, leaped up and listened, and never rested until the noise, becoming more and
more distant, had died away. How many better prisoners have worn their noble
hearts out so; no man thinking of it; not even the beloved of their souls
realising it; great kings and governors, who had made them captive, careering in
the sunlight jauntily, and men cheering them on. Even the said great personages
dying in bed, making exemplary ends and sounding speeches; and polite history,
more servile than their instruments, embalming them!
At last, John Baptist, now able to choose his own spot within the compass of
those walls for the exercise of his faculty of going to sleep when he would, lay
down upon the bench, with his face turned over on his crossed arms, and
slumbered. In his submission, in his lightness, in his good humour, in his
short-lived passion, in his easy contentment with hard bread and hard stones, in
his ready sleep, in his fits and starts, altogether a true son of the land that
gave him birth.
The wide stare stared itself out for one while; the Sun went down in a red,
green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the fire-flies
mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate the goodness of a
better order of beings; the long dusty roads and the interminable plains were in
repose--and so deep a hush was on the sea, that it scarcely whispered of the
time when it shall give up its dead.
|