by Neil Munro
CHAPTER XXIV
PHILOSOPHY IN A FELON'S CELL
It seemed for a while as if we were fated to lie forgotten in Bicetretill the crack of doom; not that we were many days there when all wasdone, but that in our natural hourly expectation at first of beingcalled forth for trial the hours passed so sluggishly that Timeseemed finally to sleep, and a week, to our fancy--to mine at allevents--seemed a month at the most modest computation.
I should have lost my reason but for the company of the priest, who, forconsiderations best known to others and to me monstrously inadequate,was permitted all the time to share my cell. In his singular societythere was a recreation that kept me from too feverishly brooding on mywrongs, and his character every day presented fresh features of interestand admiration. He had become quite cheerful again, and as content inthe confine of his cell as he had been when the glass coach was joltingover the early stages of what had been intended for a gay processionround the courts of Europe. Once more he affected the Roman manner thatwas due to his devotion to Shakespeare and L'Estrange's Seneca, and"Clarissa Harlowe," a knowledge of which, next to the Scriptures, hecounted the first essentials for a polite education. I protest he grewfatter every day, and for ease his corpulence was at last saved therestraint of buttons, which was an indolent indulgence so much tohis liking that of itself it would have reconciled him to spend theremainder of his time in prison.
"_Tiens!_ Paul," he would say, "here's an old fool has blundered throughthe greater part of his life without guessing till now how easy a thingcontent is to come by. Why, 'tis no more than a loose waistcoat and achemise unbuttoned at the neck. I dared not be happy thus in Dixmunde,where the folks were plaguily particular that their priest should bepoint-devise, as if mortal man had time to tend his soul and keep aconstant eye on the lace of his fall."
And he would stretch himself--a very mountain of sloth--in his chair.
With me 'twas different. Even in a gaol I felt sure a day begun untidilywas a day ill-done by. If I had no engagements with the fastidiousfashionable world I had engagements with myself; moreover, I shared myfather's sentiment, that a good day's darg of work with any thinking init was never done in a pair of slippers down at the heel. Thus I wasas peijink (as we say) in Bicetre as I would have been at large in thegenteel world.
"Not," he would admit, "but that I love to see thee in a decent habit,and so constant plucking at thy hose, for I have been young myself, andhad some right foppish follies, too. But now, my good man Dandiprat, my_petit-maitre_, I am old--oh, so old!--and know so much of wisdom, andhave seen such a confusion of matters, that I count comfort the greatestof blessings. The devil fly away with buttons and laces! say I, thathave been parish priest of Dixmunde--and happily have not killed a mannor harmed a flea, though like enough to get killed myself."
The weather was genial, yet he sat constantly hugging the fire, and Iat the window, which happily gave a prospect of the yard between ourbuilding and that of Galbanon. I would be looking out there, andperhaps pining for freedom, while he went prating on upon the scurviestphilosophy surely ever man gave air to.
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"Behold, my scrivener, how little man wants for happiness! My constantfear in Dixmunde was that I would become so useless for all but eatingand sleeping, when I was old, that no one would guarantee me either;poverty took that place at my table the skull took among the Romans--thethought on't kept me in a perpetual apprehension. _Nom de chien!_ andthis was what I feared--this, a hard lodging, coarse viands, and sourwine! What was the fellow's name?--Demetrius, upon the taking of Megara,asked Monsieur Un-tel the Philosopher what he had lost. 'Nothing atall,' said he, 'for I have all that I could call my own about me,' andyet 'twas no more than the skin he stood in. A cell in Bicetre wouldhave been paradise to such a gallant fellow. Oh, Paul, I fear thoumay'st be ungrateful--I would be looking out there, and perhaps piningfor freedom," he went prating on, "to this good Buhot, who has given ussuch a fine lodging, and saved us the care of providing for ourselves."
"'Tis all very well, father," I said, leaning on the sill of the window,and looking at a gang of prisoners being removed from one part ofGalbanon to another--"'tis all very well, but I mind a priest thatthought jaunting round the country in a chariot the pinnacle of bliss.And that was no further gone than a fortnight ago."
"Bah!" said he, and stretched his fat fingers to the fire; "he thatcannot live happily anywhere will live happily nowhere at all. Whatavails travel, if Care waits like a hostler to unyoke the horses atevery stage? I tell thee, my boy, I never know what a fine fellowis Father Hamilton till I have him by himself at a fireside; 'tis byfiresides all the wisest notions come to one."
"I wish there came a better dinner than to-day's," said I, for we hadagreed an hour ago that smoked soup was not very palatable.
"La! la! la! there goes Sir Gourmet!" cried his reverence. "Have Iinfected this poor Scot that ate naught but oats ere he saw France, withmine own fever for fine feeding from which, praise _le bon Dieu!_ I haverecovered? 'Tis a brutal entertainment, and unworthy of man, to placehis felicity in the service of his senses. I maintain that even smokedsoup is pleasant enough on the palate of a man with an easy conscience,and a mind purged of vulgar cares."
"And you can be happy here, Father Hamilton?"
I asked, astonished at such sentiments from a man before so ill toplease.
He heaved like a mountain in travail, and brought forth a peal oflaughter out of all keeping with our melancholy situation. "Happy!" saidhe, "I have never been happy for twenty years till Buhot clapped clawupon my wrist. Thou may'st have seen a sort of mask of happiness, afalse face of jollity in Dunkerque parlours, and heard a well-simulatedlaughter now and then as we drank by wayside inns, but may I be calledcoxcomb if the miserable wretch who playacted then was half so light ofheart as this that sits here at ease, and has only one regret--that heshould have dragged Andrew Greig's nephew into trouble with him. Whatman can be perfectly happy that runs the risk of disappointment--whichis the case of every man that fears or hopes for anything? Here am I,too old for the flame of love or the ardour of ambition; all that knewme and understood me best and liked me most are dead long since. I havea state palace prepared for me free; a domestic in livery to serve mymeals; parishioners do not vex me with their trifling little hackneyedsins, and my conclusion seems like to come some morning after an omeletand a glass of wine."
I could not withhold a shudder.
"But to die that way, Father!" I said.
"_C'est egal!_" said he, and crossed himself. "We must all die somehow,and I had ever a dread of a stone. Come, come, M. Croque-mort, enoughof thy confounded dolours! I'll be hanged if thou did'st not stealthese shoes, and art after all but an impersonator of a Greig. The lustyspirit thou call'st thine uncle would have used his teeth ere now tognaw his way through the walls of Bicetre, and here thou must stop toconverse cursedly on death to the fatted ox that smells the blood of theabattoir--oh lad, give's thy snuff-box, sawdust again!"
Thus by the hour went on the poor wretch, resigned most obviously towhatever was in store for him, not so much from a native courage, Ifear, as from a plethora of flesh that smothered every instinct ofself-preservation. As for me I kept up hope for three days that Buhotwould surely come to test my constancy again, and when that seemedunlikely, when day after day brought the same routine, the same cellwith Hamilton, the same brief exercise in the yard, the same vulgarstruggle at the _gamelle_ in the _salle d'epreuve_--I could havewelcomed Galbanon itself as a change, even if it meant all thehorror that had been associated with it by Buhot and my friend thesous-officer.
Galbanon! I hope it has long been levelled with the dust, and even thenI know the ghosts of those there tortured in their lives will habitatethe same in whirling eddies, for a constant cry for generations hasgone up to heaven from that foul spot. It must have been a devilishingenuity, an invention of all the impish courts below, that placed meat a window where Galbanon faced me every hour of the day or night, itshorror al
l revealed. I have seen in the pool of Earn in autumn weather,when the river was in spate, dead leaves and broken branches borne downdizzily upon the water to toss madly in the linn at the foot of thefall; no less helpless, no less seared by sin and sorrow, or broken bythe storms of circumstance, were the wretches that came in droves toGalbanon. The stream of crime or tyranny bore them down (some from veryhigh places), cast them into this boiling pool, and there they eddied ina circle of degraded tasks from which it seemed the fate of many of themnever to escape, though their luckier fellows went in twos or threesevery other day in a cart to their doom appointed.
Be sure it was not pleasant each day for me to hear the hiss of the lashand the moans of the bastinadoed wretch, to see the blood spurt, andwitness the anguish of the men who dragged enormous bilboes on theirgalled ankles.
At last I felt I could stand it no longer, and one day intimated toFather Hamilton that I was determined on an escape.
"Good lad!" he cried, his eye brightening. "The most sensible thing thouhast said in twenty-four hours. 'Twill be a recreation for myself tohelp," and he buttoned his waistcoat.
"We can surely devise some means of breaking out if----"
"We!" he repeated, shaking his head. "No, no, Paul, thou hast too riskya task before thee to burden thyself with behemoth. Shalt escape bythyself and a blessing with thee, but as for Father Hamilton he knowswhen he is well-off, and he shall not stir a step out of Buhot'scharming and commodious inn until the bill is presented."
In vain I protested that I should not dream of leaving him there whileI took flight; he would listen to none of my reasoning, and for that dayat least I abandoned the project.
Next day Buhot helped me to a different conclusion, for I was summonedbefore him.
"Well, Monsieur," he said, "is it that we have here a more discerningyoung gentleman than I had the honour to meet last time?"
"Just the very same, M. Buhot," said I bluntly. He chewed the stump ofhis pen and shrugged his shoulders.
"Come, come, M. Greig," he went on, "this is a _betise_ of the mostridiculous. We have given you every opportunity of convincing yourselfwhether this Hamilton is a good man or a bad one, whether he is the toolof others or himself a genius of mischief."
"The tool of others, certainly, that much I am prepared to tell you, butthat you know already. And certainly no genius of mischief himself; man!he has not got the energy to kick a dog."
"And--and--" said Buhot softly, fancying he had me in the key ofrevelation.
"And that's all, M. Buhot," said I, with a carriage he could notmistake.
He shrugged his shoulders again, wrote something in a book on the deskbefore him with great deliberation and then asked me how I liked myquarters in Bicetre.
"Tolerably well," I said. "I've been in better, but I might be in waur."
He laughed a little at the Scotticism that seemed to recallsomething--perhaps a pleasantry of my uncle's--to him, and then saidhe, "I'm sorry they cannot be yours very much longer, M. Greig. Wecalculated that a week or two of this priest's company would have beenenough to inspire a distaste and secure his confession, but apparentlywe were mistaken. You shall be taken to other quarters on Saturday."
"I hope, M. Buhot," said I, "they are to be no worse than those I occupynow."
His face reddened a little at this--I felt always there was some vein ofspecial kindness to me in this man's nature--and he said hesitatingly,"Well, the truth is, 'tis Galbanon."
"Before a trial?" I asked, incredulous.
"The trial will come in good time," he said, rising to conclude theparley, and he turned his back on me as I was conducted out of theroom and back to the cell, where Father Hamilton waited with unwontedagitation for my tidings.
"Well, lad," he cried, whenever we were alone, "what stirs? I warrantthey have not a jot of evidence against thee," but in a second he sawfrom my face the news was not so happy, and his own face fell.
"We are to be separated on Saturday," I told him.
Tears came to his eyes at that--a most feeling old rogue!
"And where is't for thee, Paul?" he asked.
"Where is't for yourself ought to be of more importance to you, FatherHamilton."
"No, no," he cried, "it matters little about me, but surely for you itcannot be Galbanon?"
"Indeed, and it is no less."
"Then, Paul," he said firmly, "we must break out, and that without lossof time."
"Is it in the plural this time?" I asked him.
He affected an indifference, but at the last consented to share thewhole of the enterprise.