Tom Burke Of "Ours" Volume I Part 53

"I tell you, boy," broke in the elder, in a slow and measured tone, "I have made more stalwart limbs than thine bend, and stronger joints crack, for less than thou hast ventured to tell us; but sorrow and suffering are hard masters, and I can bear more now than I was wont to do. Let us have no more words."

As he spoke, he leaned his head upon his hand, and turned towards the wall; the other, too, sat down in a comer of the cell, and was silent.

And thus we remained for hours long.

The dreary stillness, made more depressing by the presence of the two prisoners, whose deep-drawn breathings were the only sounds they uttered, had something unspeakably sad and melancholy in it, and more than once I felt sorry for the few words I had spoken, which separated those whose misfortunes should have made them brothers.

A confused and distant hum, swelling and falling at intervals, now filled the air, and gradually I could distinguish the shouts of people at a distance. This increased as it came nearer; and then I heard the tramping noise of many feet, and of a great mult.i.tude of people pa.s.sing in the street below, and suddenly a wild cheer broke forth, "Vive le Consul!" "Vive Bonaparte!" followed the next instant by the clanking sound of a cavalry escort, while the cry grew louder and louder, and the vivas drowned all other sounds.

"You hear them, Guillaume, you hear them," said the sailor to the other prisoner; "That shout is our death-cry. Bonaparte comes not here to-day but to see his judges do his bidding."

"What care I?" said the other, fiercely. "The guillotine or the sabre, the axe or the bayonet,--it is all one. We knew what must come of it."

The door opened as he spoke, and a greffier of the tribunal appeared with four gendarmes.

"Come, Messieurs," said he, "the court is waiting for you."

"And how go matters without, sir?" said the elder, in an easy tone.

"Badly for the prisoners," said the greffier, shaking his head.

"Monsieur Moreau, the general's brother, has done much injury; he has insulted the Consul."

"Bravely done!" cried the younger man, with enthusiasm. "It is well he should hear truth one day, though the tongue that uttered it should be cold the next."

"Move on, sir!" said the greffier, sternly. "Not you," added he, as I pressed forward after the rest; "your time has not come."

"Would that it had!" said I, as the door closed upon me, and I was left in total solitude.

The day was over, and the evening already late, when a turnkey appeared, and desired me to follow him. A moody indifference to everything had settled on me, and I never spoke as I walked behind him down corridor after corridor; and across a court, into a large, ma.s.sive-looking building, whose grated windows and strongly-barred doors reminded me of the Temple.

"Here is your cell," said he, roughly, as he unlocked a low door near the entrance.

"It is gloomy enough," said I, with a sad smile.

"And yet many have shed tears to leave it before now," rejoined he, with a savage twinkle of his small eyes.

I was glad when the hoa.r.s.e crash of the closed door told me I was alone; and I threw myself upon my bed and buried my face in my hands.

There is a state which is not sleep, and yet is akin to it, into which grief can bring us,--a half-dreary stupor, where only sorrows are felt; and even they come dulled and blunted, as if time and years had softened down their sting. But no ray of hope shines there,--a dreary waste, without a star. The cold, dark sea, boundless and bleak, is not more saddening than life then seems before us; there is neither path to follow nor goal to reach, and an apathy worse than death creeps over all our faculties. And yet, when we awake we wish for this again. Into this state I sank, and when morning came felt sorry that the light should shine into my narrow cell, and rouse me from my stupor. When the turnkey entered to bring me breakfast, I turned towards the wall, and trembled lest he should speak to me; and it was with a strange thrill I heard the door close as he went out. The abandonment of one's sorrow--that daily, hourly indulgence in grief which the uncheered solitude of a prison begets--soon brings the mind to the narrow range of one or two topics.

With the death of hope, all fancy and imagination perish, the springs of all speculation are dried up, and every faculty bent towards one point; the reason, like a limb unexercised, wastes and pines, and becomes paralyzed.

Now and then the thought would flash across me, "What if this were madness?"--and I shuddered not at the thought. Such had my prison made me.

Four days and nights pa.s.sed over thus,--a long, monotonous dream, in which I counted not the time,--and I lay upon my straw bed watching the expiring light of the candle with that strange interest one attaches to everything within the limits of a prison-cell. The flame waned and flickered: now lighting up for a second the cold gray walls, scratched with many a prisoner's name; now subsiding, it threw strange and fitful shapes upon them,--figures that seemed to move and to beckon to one another,--goblin outlines, wild and fanciful. Then came a bright flash as the wick fell, and all was dark.

"If the dead do but sleep!" was the first thought that crossed my mind as the gloom of total night wrapped every object about me, and a stillness most appalling prevailed. Suddenly I heard the sounds of a heavy bolt withdrawn and a door opening; then a low, rushing noise, like wind blowing through a narrow corridor; and at last the marching sounds of feet, and the accents of men speaking together: nearer and nearer they came, and at length halted at the door of my cell. A cold, faint feeling, the sickness of the heart, crept over me; the hour, the sounds, reminded me of what so often I had heard men speak of in the Temple, and the dread of a.s.sa.s.sination made me tremble from head to foot. The light streamed from beneath the door, and reached to my bed; and I calculated the number of steps it would take before they approached me. The key grated in the lock and the door opened slowly, and three men stood at the entrance. I sprang up wildly to my feet; a sudden impulse of self-defence seized me; and with a wild shout for them to come on, I rushed forward. My foot, however, caught the angle of the iron bedstead, and I fell headlong and senseless to the ground.

Some interval elapsed; and when next I felt consciousness, I was lying full length on my bed, the cell lit up by two candles on the table, beside which sat two men, their heads bent eagerly over a ma.s.s of papers before them. One was an old and venerable-looking man, his white hair and long queue so bespeaking him; he wore a loose cloth cloak that covered his entire figure, but I could see that a bra.s.s scabbard of a sword projected beneath it; on the chair beside him, too, there lay a foraging-cap. The other, much younger, though still not in youth, was a thin, pale, careworn man; his forehead was high and strongly marked; and there was an intensity and determination in his brow and about the angles of his mouth most striking; he was dressed in black, with deep ruffles at his wrist.

"It is quite clear. General," said he, in a low and measured voice, where each word fell with perfect distinctness--"it is quite clear that they can press a conviction here if they will. The allegations are so contrived as rather to indicate complicity than actually establish it.

The defence in such cases has to combat shadows, not overturn facts; and, believe me, a procureur-gnral, aided by a police, is a dexterous enemy."

"I have no doubt of it," said the general, rapidly; "but what are the weak points? where is he most a.s.sailable?"

"Everywhere," said the other. "To begin: the secret information of the outbreak between Lord Whitworth and the Consul; the frequent meetings with the Marquis de Beauvais; the false report to the Chef de Police; the concealment of this abbe--By the bye, I am not quite clear about that part of the case; why have not the prosecution brought this Abb, forward? It is plain they have his evidence, and can produce him if they will; and I see no other name in the act of accusation than our old acquaintance, Mehe de la Touche--"

"The villain!" cried the general, with a stamp of indignation, while a convulsive spasm seemed to shake every fibre of his frame.

"Mehe de la Touche!" said I to myself; "I have heard that name before."

And like a lightning flash it crossed my mind that such was the name of the man Marie de Meudon charged me with knowing.

"But still," said the general, "what can they make of all these? That of indiscretion, folly, breach of discipline, if you will; but--"

"Wait a little," said the other, quietly. "Then comes the night of the chteau, in which he is found among the _Chouan_ party in their very den, taking part in the defence."

"No, no! Lamoricire, who commanded the cuira.s.siers, can establish the fact beyond question, that Burke took no part in the affray, and delivered his sword at once when called on."

"At least they found him there, and on his person the brevet of colonel, signed by Monsieur himself."

"Of that I can give no explanation," replied the general; "but I am in possession of such information as can account for his presence at the chteau, and establish his innocence on that point."

"Indeed!" cried the advocate, for such he was; "with that much may be done."

"Unhappily, however," rejoined the general, "if such a disclosure is not necessary to save his life, I cannot venture to give it; the ruin of another must follow the explanation."

"Without it he is lost," said the advocate, solemnly.

"And would not accept of life with it," said I, boldly, as I started up in my bed, and looked fixedly at them.

The general sprang back, astonished and speechless; but the advocate, with more command over his emotions, cast his eyes upon the paper before him, and quickly asked,--

"And the commission; how do you account for that?"

"It was offered to and refused by me. He who made the proposal forgot it on my table, and I was about to restore it when I was made prisoner."

"What condition was attached to your acceptance of it?"

"Some vague, indistinct proposals were made to me to join a conspiracy of which I was neither told the object nor intentions. Indeed, I stopped any disclosure by rejecting the bribe."

"Who made these same proposals?"

"I shall not tell his name."

"No matter," said the advocate, carelessly; "it was the Marquis de Beauvais;" And then, as if affecting to write, I saw his sharp eyes glance over towards me, while a smile of gratified cunning twitched his lip. "You will have no objection to say how first you became acquainted with him?"

The dexterity of this query, by replying to which I at once established his preceding a.s.sumption, completely escaped me, and I gave an account of my first meeting with De Beauvais, without ever dreaming of the inferences it led to.

"An unhappy rencontre," said the advocate, as if musing; "better have finished the intimacy, as you first intended, at the Bois de Boulogne."