"Eight months elapsed in an alternate succession of fear and expectation, before I was again summoned to appear in the hall; and the result of what then passed was, that no satisfactory corroborations of the story I had related having been procured by those employed for that purpose by the lieutenant, the tale I had told was deemed either to have been framed by myself for my own preservation, or an invention delivered to me by the state of Venice when commissioned by it into France, and which I had been commanded to recount in case of my being apprehended, as an excuse for my ambiguous conduct; and that the space of two days only would be allowed me to consider whether I preferred, by confessing my real character, to throw myself on the mercy of my judges, or, by persisting in my deceit, to provoke them to draw from me the truth by torture.
"In answer to this decree, I could only repeat, in the most solemn terms, my innocence of the fact of which they accused me.
"They undoubtedly heard my declarations without interruption, but I could clearly perceive that their opinions were decided, and that either they were not, or would not be, moved by my vows and asseverations.
"On entering my prison I threw myself on my mattress, and amidst the sorrows that seemed to await me, the only idea which induced me to look forward with a degree of calmness and resignation to the fate with which I was threatened, was, that the unjust punishment I was about to suffer, might be accepted by him who alone could read my heart, in expiation of the innocent blood I had shed.
"At length, the day big to me with terror and agony arrived; at an early hour I was once more led into the hall, and the lieutenant again inquired, 'Whether my stubbornness had relaxed, and I was willing to confess my crime?'
"I reiterated my vows and asseverations of innocence; but they and my prayers for mercy were heard with equal indifference, and I was dragged into that earthly hell, where demons, in the shape of men, riot in acts of wanton cruelty.
"Innumerable instruments of torture, of which I knew not the use, but feared too soon to learn it of each I beheld, were suspended against the walls, and scattered on the floor. At one end was an immense fire, which, notwithstanding its size, two men, whose savage countenances were by no means the least terrific features of this soul-harrowing scene, were feeding with every provocative of fierceness.
"Again it was recommended to me to confess ere it was too late, and again I could only repeat, however incredulous were my hearers, that I had nothing to confess.
"I was then placed in a chair, and a circle of about three inches in diameter on the top of my head shaved bare of its hair.
"The soles of my feet and my breast were afterwards bared, and being fastened in the chair, it was drawn near to the fire, to the fierceness of which the naked parts of my body were exposed, whilst large drops of the coldest water were made to fall singly on the crown of my head.
"In a few minutes the pangs produced by the contrast of feelings I was undergoing, became so intense that I shrieked violently. The lieutenant approached me, and asked, 'if I was willing to end my punishment by confession?'
"Had I at the moment been able to have conceived any other means of freeing myself from the sufferings I was enduring, I should without hesitation have adopted it; but I was well aware, that if, to liberate myself at the present moment, I uttered a false confession, I could not afterwards retract it, and that I should in the end probably only suffer the more severely for having allowed their false accusation to be a just one; I therefore only continued to declare my innocence, and in the most moving terms to supplicate for mercy.
"In a quarter of an hour's time the torture inflicted on me became agonising, past all endurance, and I besought my tormentors to give me death: my hands and feet were bound; I had bit my tongue, till the blood streamed from my mouth upon my breast; and my eyes, which the pain I was undergoing had widely extended, from being exposed to the fierceness of the fire, were far from forming the least part of my sufferings.
"Every moment was now so forcibly diminishing the powers of nature, that the physician, who had been brought to announce to my tormentors when I had undergone what my frame could endure, commanded me to be gradually removed from the fire, and the water to cease dropping. I had been drawn back only a few feet, when, exhausted by the agony I had endured, the little strength I had remaining fled from me, and I fainted whilst yet bound in the chair of torture."
CHAPTER XVI
Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,
Which show like grief itself but are not so;
For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects;
Like perspectives, which, rightly gaz'd upon,
Shew nothing but confusion; ey'd awry,
Distinguish form.
-KING RICHARD II
"On recovering, I found myself lying on my mattress: a blanket had been added to my quilt; and the physician, on my again opening my eyes, administered to me a cup of wine, the first variation of my daily food of bread and water that had passed my lips since my entrance into the Bastile.
"For several days the physician continued to visit me; and having youth and strength on my side, in a month's time I began to recover the use of my bodily and mental faculties, both of which had been much injured by what I had undergone. The greatest cause of remembrance that remained to me of what was past, was the weakness of my eyes when they met the light.
"Near six months passed ere I was again led out to the platform for air, and I even then found my limbs very inadequate to the task of supporting me more than a few minutes at a time.
"Day rolled on after day, and month after month, but still I received no information whether what I had undergone was deemed a sufficient confirmation of my innocence, or not; and as I was still retained a prisoner, I kept looking forward with increasing apprehension to a trial more severe than the one I had already passed through.
"I must here mention a circumstance which, however trivial it may appear to you, dwells on my mind, and seems to claim my attention.
"Nearly a year had elapsed since my undergoing the torture, when one morning a small part of the window having been left open to air my prison, a red-breast flew into the apartment, and perching on the table, began to peck the bread which had just been brought me as half my day's provision. I approached a few steps towards it, that I might the better observe it; for in my present situation, any object which engaged my attention, afforded me a moment of unexpected happiness. I perceived that it saw me, and I stopped; lest I should drive it away; but the food seemed to be a greater attraction than my presence was a cause of fear, and, to my satisfaction, it went on pecking the bread.
"Its plumage was rough, and raised against the cold, and it bore every mark of having suffered from the inclemency of the season, which was that of a severe frost; a deep snow had some time covered the ground, and the eagerness with which it preyed on its newly-found prize, showed that the weather had proved to it, whose feeble claws were unable to turn up the depth of snow, a season of famine.
"I pitied it for what it had suffered, and participated in its present apparently great satisfaction;—'Yet, poor foolish wanderer!' I cried, 'thy native timidity, when the call of nature is satisfied, will again drive thee to the piercing cold and hunger from which thou hast now found protection!—Thou art not wise enough to insure it to thyself, and mayest perhaps perish for want of that which thou shouldst never lack by living here, could I but teach thee to know my good will towards thee!'—In the energy of what I felt, I drew nearer to the table; and the bird, having either finished its meal, or being terrified by my approach, flew two or three times round the room, in search of the spot by which it had entered, and having found it, vanished in a moment from my sight.
"'Thou art gone!' I exclaimed, 'never to return hither!'—There was a charm in the last words I had uttered, that seemed to render even the biting air and keen famine to which the little animal would be exposed, an enviable situation when compared
with my own.—'Many are the hardships thou wilt endure,' I cried; 'but thou hast a balm for all thy sufferings,—thou enjoyest liberty,—the choicest gift and richest blessing heaven pours on its created beings; deprived of it, all other ills in life are light.—Knowing what I have learnt from experience of the bitterness of its loss, I would not be the wretch to inflict it, e'en on the little bird I have just beheld, no! though my own enlargement were the price of its captivity!'
"On the following morning, to my great delight and surprise, the little bird again flew into my prison; I threw it some crumbs; it picked them, hopped about the floor, flew upon the table, fluttered about the room, and again left me.
"Every morning I was now visited by the red-breast; I had nothing else to occupy my attention; and I found a great source of amusement in waiting the arrival of my feathered visitor: I never failed to feed him plenteously, and used every endeavour to divest him of his natural timidity, and dispose him to receive my caresses; and I even flattered myself that he began to view me without fear, as he sometimes remained several hours in my prison; but, alas! when spring began to exhale her inviting sweets, my little companion, wearing too much the complexion of the world he inhabited, forgot his fosterer in the hour of adversity, nor returned to sooth his solitary moments. Spring, summer, and autumn passed, and I began to think that some accident had befallen him, or that he had entirely forgotten the spot where he had been so hospitably received, and gave him up as lost.—On the part of my persecutors also, a strict silence as to my doom had been observed towards me, and I began to fear I was a prisoner for life.
"Winter was now again advancing, when, as I was one morning reclining on my hard bed in mournful meditation, a fluttering in the room called my eyes to the part where I had heard it, and I beheld on the table my long-lamented bird!
"I felt the glow of unexpected pleasure mount into my cheeks; and I immediately rose and crumbled for him a piece of bread: he chirped in thankfulness for my gift, and I even imagined he seemed as pleased as myself at the renewal of our acquaintance.
"During the winter he continued to visit me, as he had done the former one; and having made for him a perch, which I contrived, by means of a crooked nail, to form out of a long splinter which I had shaved from my table, and which I fastened up in one corner of my prison, by supporting it in a small niche I made in either wall, he often remained with me during the night, as well as the day, and sometimes for four or five days successively; and the pleasure which, shut out as I was from all intercourse with my own species, I enjoyed in the unrestrained visits of this little bird, was indescribably great.
"With the spring he again deserted me, and with the winter he again returned to my prison; and thus, till the seventh year after his first visiting me, did he continue to be my companion during the winter season.
"It was one day, about the middle of the seventh winter, that he happened to stand sleeping on his perch, with his head folded in the feathers of his wing, when the jailer entering with my breakfast, and observing him, darted across the prison, and, ere I could stop his cruel arm, seized my unconscious favourite, and wrung his neck.
"Need I blush to own that the tears burst into my eyes?
"I would have remonstrated with the unfeeling wretch on his barbarity, had I not immediately considered that what I could now say would be of no avail, but to gain me the derision of him who had deprived me of my only source of solace and amusement; and I contented myself with requesting him to give me the dead body.
"Without answering me, he aimed to throw it out of the window; but, missing his cast, it fell back into the room; I sprang forward to seize it, but he had snatched it up, and his second aim being more successful, it was gone for ever ere I reached the spot; I followed it with my eyes, and when it disappeared, I still stood gazing on the window.
"The ruthless jailer left the prison in the silence in which he had entered it.
"I immediately placed the stool under the window, and sprang upon it, hoping I might find the body rested on the outward frame of the window: but the hope was vain.
"I descended from the stool, and standing with my arms folded in the middle of my prison, reflection again led me to draw a comparison between the present situation of myself and that of my lamented bird; and the only inference I could draw, from a long train of thought, I expressed in a short exclamation, which I insensibly uttered aloud,—'Thou, little bird, art still the happier.'
CHAPTER XVII
Seldom, when
The steeled jailer is the friend of men.
-MEASURE FOR MEASURE
"Another year passed in solitude like the former ones; and the space of time I had now been imprisoned, in all ten years since my first being brought to the Bastile, began to reconcile me from habit, to that state which seemed to be marked out as the condition of my remaining life.
"No change had taken place in the treatment shown me, but that milk and thin wine were sometimes brought me instead of water with my bread, and that I was not now so frequently led out for air upon the platform as I had formerly been; being now seldom conducted thither above once in eight or nine days.
"About this time a man whom I had never before seen, brought me my morning and evening portion of provision, instead of the jailer who had been accustomed to attend me; he appeared to be about twenty-five years of age, tall, and strongly built, but of a benign aspect, that seemed ill to suit the office in which he served.
"As he visited me for several successive days, and the mildness of his countenance encouraged me to address him, I inquired whether he who had formerly attended me was dead.
"'Oh no!' he answered, and immediately left me, as fearing to say more; whilst his features plainly showed that it was not from want of inclination on his part, that our conversation had been so short.
"I often endeavoured to tempt him into farther conference, but he could never be prevailed by me to utter more than one sentence at a visit. One day, however, when I asked if he knew whether I was a prisoner for life, he cast his eye to the door, as if to be assured no one was watching him, and then putting his face close to mine, he said hastily, and in a low voice, 'Pray don't question me again, but rely on my being your friend,' and again departed as precipitately as he had done on former occasions.
"The first ray of hope, in the course of ten tedious and painful years, now burst upon my afflicted heart, and every nerve was strained to form a conjecture how this youth could be interested in my welfare.
"Five months passed, and this youth still visited me; nor did I once behold him who had before attended me; but still I perceived, from the conduct of my newly-declared friend, that no fit opportunity for conference was given us, for he always hastened from my prison as quickly as possible, seldom however forgetting to cast at me a look of sympathy, which served to keep alive the feeble spark of hope he had lighted in my breast.
"One evening about this time, when he brought in my supper, he said, in the same mysterious way he had always spoken to me in, but apparently with greater signs of fear than he had ever before shown of being overheard, 'Don't go to sleep to-night.' I obeyed his injunctions, and awaited with the greatest impatience the hour that should disclose to me his meaning.
"The clock had just struck two, when a person in an under voice at the grating of my window, which I immediately knew to be that of my new friend, said 'Monsieur, monsieur!'
"I felt for my stool, and placing it under the window, mounted upon it, and our faces then nearly meeting, he said, 'If I should contrive your escape from this place, and this kingdom, will you let me be your servant?'
"'Say rather my friend,' I replied.
"'Only say you won't let me starve, monsieur.'
"'No, by heaven!' I returned, forgetful how destitute I myself was of the means of subsistence.
"'Enough said,' he resumed; 'then don't refuse to drink any thing that is offered you; and leave the rest to me.'
"'Drink!' I repeated, but the young man was gone.
"I remained some minutes at the window, but he did not return, neither did I hear the faintest sound. I then left my station, and throwing myself on my mattress, I began to ruminate on the words which I had just had addressed to me; and the only idea I could suffer myself to connect with the last sentence the young man had uttered, was that I was intended to be poisoned.
"At an early hour in the morning, I heard my prison door unlocked, and a friar entered; he commanded me to kneel by him; and having prayed that I might bear with fortitude the sentence he was about to announce to me, he told me that I was condemned to die on that day.
"A few hours before, I should have thought death the greatest happiness that could have befallen me; but now, with the faint hope of enlargement which my new friend had given me, prepared as I was to receive this sentence, and even tempted to believe that by his means I should escape it, I felt an indescribable shock on its being first announced to me.
"I am inclined to think that the emotions which this intelligence produced in me, were to me of essential service, for I am well convinced, that the sudden change my countenance underwent was so great, as to have baffled the suspicion of the priest, had he entertained any, of what had passed between me and the young jailer.
The Complete Northanger Horrid Novel Collection (9 Books of Gothic Romance and Horror) Page 269
