Chapter XI: Pyramus and Thisbe

I was taking exercise one forenoon in the yard of the prison. It was the last black “Prairial” of the “Terror”--the month, like the girl La Lune, once dedicate to Mary--and its blue eyes curiously scrutinised, as Cleopatra’s of old, the processes amongst us slaves of that poison that is called despair.

As for myself, I yet a little consorted with Hope--the fond clinging mistress I had dreaded to find banished with the rest of the dear creatures whose company had long now been denied us;--for five months had passed since my incarceration, and I was still, it seemed, forgotten.

I trod the flags--fifty paces hither and thither. Going one way, I had always before my eyes the frowzy stone rampart and barred windows of the prison. Going the other, an execrable statue of M. Rousseau--surmounting an altar to Liberty, the very cement of which was marbled with the blood of the massacres--closed my perspective. To my either hand was a lofty wall--the first giving upon the jailers’ quarters; the second dividing the men’s yard from that in which the women were permitted to walk; and a foul open sewer, tunnelled through the latter about its middle, traversed the entire area, and offered the only means by which the sexes could now communicate with each other.

“M. Thibaut,” said a voice at my ear; and a gentleman, detaching himself from the aimless and loitering crowd of prisoners, adapted his pace to mine and went with me to and fro.

I knew this oddity--M. the Admiral de St Prest--though he had no recognition of me. That, however, was small wonder. By this time I was worse than a _sans-culotte_, by so much as that my bareness was suggested rather than revealed. My face was sunk away from my eyes, like soft limestone from a couple of ammonites; my ribs were loose hoops on a decayed cask; laughter rattled in my stomach like a pea in a whistle. Besides, I had come, I think, to be a little jealous of my title to neglect, for I had made that my grievance against Fate.

Nevertheless, M. de St Prest and I had been slightly acquainted once upon a time, and it had grieved me to see this red month marked by the advent in La Force of the dubious old fop.

He had been a macaroni of Louis XV.’s Court, and the ancient _rôle_ he had never learnt to forego. The poor puppies of circumstance--the fops of a more recent date, to whom the particular cut of a lapel would figure as the standard of reason--bayed him in the prison as they would have bayed him in the streets. To them, with their high top-boots _à l’Anglaise_, poor St Prest’s spotted breeches and knee-ribbons were a source of profound amusement. To them, affecting the huskiness of speech of certain rude islanders (my very good friends), his mincing falsetto was a perpetual incitement to laughter. Swaggering with their cudgels that they called “constitutions,” they would strike from under him the elaborate tasselled staff on which he leaned; tossing their matted manes, they would profess to find something exquisitely exhilarating in the complicated _toupet_ that embraced and belittled his lean physiognomy. I held them all poor apes; yet, I confess, it was a ridiculous and pathetic sight, this posturing of an old wrecked man in the tatters of a bygone generation; and it gave me shame to see him lift his plate of a hat to me with a little stick, as the fashion was in his younger days.

“M. Thibaut,” he said, falling into step with me, “these young bloods” (he signified with his cane a group that had been baiting him)--“they worry me, monsieur. _Mort de ma vie!_ what manners! what a presence! It shall need a butcher’s steel to bring their wits to an edge.”

“Oh, monsieur,” said I--“have you not the self-confidence to despise personalities? The fool hath but a narrow world of conventions, and everything outside it is to him abnormal. His head is a drumstick to produce hollow sounds within a blank little area. For my part, I never hear one holding the great up to ridicule without thinking, There is wasted a good stone-cutter of epitaphs.”

“_Eh bien_, monsieur! but I have been accustomed to leave the study of philosophy to my lackeys.”

He spoke in a lofty manner, waving his hand at me; and he took snuff from a battered wooden box, and flipped his fingers to his thumb afterwards as if he were scattering largesse of fragrance.

“So, you have a royal contempt of personalities?” he said, with a little amused tolerance.

“Why,” said I--“I am not to be put out of conceit with myself because an ass brays at me.”

“Or out of countenance, monsieur?”

“Oh, M. de St Prest! That would be to lose my head on small provocation. Besides, one must admit the point of view. M. Malseigne there surveys the world over the edge of a great stock; you, monsieur, regard it with your chin propped upon a fine fichu. No doubt Sanson thinks a wooden cravat _comme il faut_; and I--_fichtre!_ I cry in my character of patriot, ‘There is nothing like the collar of a carmagnole to keep one’s neck in place!’ Truly, M. l’Amiral, I for one am not touchy about my appearance.”

His old eyes blinked out a diluted irony.

“And that is very natural,” he said; “but then, _mort de ma vie!_ you are a philosopher--like him there.”

He pointed to the statue of Rousseau. The libellous block wrought in him, it seemed, a mood of piping retrospection.

“I saw the rascal once,” he said--“a mean, common little man, in a round wig. He was without air or presence. It was at the theatre. The piece was one of M. de Sauvigny’s, and he sat in the author’s box, a _loge grillée_. That was a concession to his diffidence; but his diffidence had been too much consulted, it seemed. He would have the grate opened, and then the house recognised and applauded him, and finally forgot him for the _Persiffleur_. He was very angry at that, I believe. We heard it lost the author his friendship. He accused him of having made a show of him, and--_Mort de ma vie!_ that is to be a philosopher.”

He ogled and bowed to a stout kindly-looking woman who, coming from the jailers’ quarters, passed us at the moment. It was Madame Beau, the keeper of La Force--the only one there in authority whose sense of humanity had not gone by the board. A ruffianly warder, leading a great wolf-hound, preceded her. She nodded to us brightly and stopped--

“Ah, M. Thibaut! but soon we shall call you the father of La Force.”

“As you are its mother, madame.”

“Poor children. But, after all, if one considers it as a club----”

“True; where one may feast like Belshazzar. Yet, I find, one may have a surfeit of putrid herrings, even though one is to die on the morrow.”

Madame shrugged her shoulders.

“Ah, bah! the stuff is supplied by contract. I am not to blame, my little fellows. Yet some of you manage better.” (She pointed to the retreating hound.) “_Voilà le délinquent!_ He was caught red-handed--discussing the bribe of a sheep’s trotter; and his sentence is five hours in a cell.”

She nodded again and jingled her keys.

“But, yes,” she said, “consider it as a club----” and off she went across the yard.

“A club? Oh, _mon Dieu_!” murmured St Prest.

“Well,” said I, “I am inclined to fall in with the idea. What livelier places of sojourn are there, in these days of gravity and decorum, than the prisons?”

He pursed his lips and wagged his old head like a mandarin.

“At least,” he said, leeringly, “she is a fine figure of a woman. She dates, like myself, from the era of the _Bien-aimé_, when women knew how to walk and to hold themselves; and to reveal themselves, too. _Oh, je m’entends bien!_ I have been entertained in the _Parc aux cerfs_, M. Thibaut.”

I could certainly believe it. This effete old carpet-admiral? Had he ever smelt salt water? I could understand, perhaps, that he had crossed in the packet to the land of fogs. But now he was to exhibit himself to me in a more honourable aspect--to confess the man under the powder and the rubbish.

We stood close by where the wall was pierced by the running sewer. The whole yard was alive with laughter and babble; and now and again one would leave a friend or party of triflers and, kneeling down over the infected sink, would call some name through the opening. Then, summoned to the other side, Lucille, poor _ange déchu_, would exchange a few earnest pitiful words with husband or brother or lover, and her tears, perhaps, would fall into the gushing drain and sanctify its abomination to him. Was not that for love to justify itself in the eyes of the most unnatural misogynist?

Now there came up to the trap a pale little fellow--the merest child. It was little Foucaud, the son of Madame Kolly. This poor lad must be held a man (God save him!) when misfortune overtook his family; but the scoundrels had the grace to consign his younger brother to the company of his mother on the woman’s side. And here, through this sink opening, the two babes would converse in their sad little trebles two or three times a-day.

“How now, my man?” said St Prest; for the boy stood wistfully watching us, his hands picking together and his throat swelling. Then all at once he was weeping.

The old fop gently patted the heaving shoulders.

“Oh, monsieur,” said the youngster, in a hoarse little voice, “the cold of the stones is in my throat and on my chest.”

“What then, child! That is not to be guillotined.”

“But I cannot cry out so that he shall hear me; and if we do not talk I know nothing.”

In a paroxysm of agitation he threw himself down by the sewer.

“Lolo, Lolo!” he tried to call; but his voice would not obey his will.

And then M. de St Prest did a thing, the self-sacrificing quality of which shall be known in full, perhaps, only to the angels. He took the lad under the arms and, lifting him away, himself knelt down in all his nicety by the sink and put his mouth to the opening.

“The little Foucaud,” he piped, “desires to see his brother!”

Presently he looked up.

“He is here, child.”

“Oh, monsieur! will you explain that I cannot speak, and ask him how is _maman_?”

The message was given. I heard the poor little voice answer through the wall: “_Maman_ sends her love to you. She has not wept so much the last night, and she has been sleeping a little. It is Lolo, who loves you well, that tells you this.”

I assisted St Prest to rise.

“I will ask the honour,” I said, “of dusting M. l’Amiral’s coat for him.”

* * * * * * *

That same afternoon, as I was again, during the hour of exercise, standing near the sewer, of a sudden I heard a most heartrending voice calling from the other side of the wall.

“Messieurs! messieurs!” it cried. “Will no one send to me my darling?”

I dropped upon my knees (I give all honour to M. de St Prest), and, with a shudder of nausea, lowered my face to the opening.

“Who speaks?” I said. “I am at madame’s service.”

The voice caught in a sob.

“_Je vous rends grâce_--whoever you are, I thank you from my heart. It is my little Foucaud, my dearest, that must come to his _maman_, and quickly.”

I answered that I would summon him, and I rose to my feet. I had no difficulty in finding the boy. He came, white-faced and wondering, and knelt down.

“_Maman, maman_--canst thou hear me? My throat is a little hoarse, _maman_.”

“Oh, my baby, my little son! Thou wilt be sweet and tender with Lolo in the happy days that are coming. And thou wilt never forget _maman_--say it, say it, lest her heart should break.”

God of mercy! Who was I to stand and listen to these pitiful confidences! I drew aside, watchful only of the boy lest his grief and terror should drive him mad. In a moment a white hand, laden with a dark thick coil of hair, was thrust through the opening. It was all the unhappy woman could leave her darling to remember her by. No glimpse of her face--no touch of her lips on his. From the dark into the dark she must go, and his very memory of her should be associated with the most dreadful period of his life. When they came for her in another instant, I heard the agony of her soul find vent in a single cry: “My lambs, alone amongst the wolves!”

Kind Madame Beau was there beside me.

“Lift him up,” she whispered. “He will be motherless in an hour.”

As I stooped to take the sobbing and hysterical child in my arms, I heard a voice speak low on the other side of the wall--

“It is only an interruption, madame.”

Gardel’s words--but the speaker!

I stumbled with my burden--recovered myself, and consigned the boy to the good soul that awaited him. Then hurriedly I leaned down again, and hurriedly cried, “Carinne! Carinne!”

* * * * * * *

There was no answer. Probably the speaker had retreated when the wretched Madame Kolly was withdrawn from the wall. I called again. I dwelt over the noxious gutter in excitement and anguish until I was convinced it was useless to remain. Was it this, then? that out of all the voices of France one voice could set my heart vibrating like a glass vessel that responds only to the striking of its single sympathetic note? I had thought to depose this idol of an hour from its shrine; I had cried shame upon myself for ever submitting my independence to the tyranny of a woman, and here a half-dozen words from her addressed to a stranger had reinfected me with the fever of desire.

I got out a scrap of paper and wrote thereon, “_Jacob to Rachel. Jean-Louis is still in the service of Mademoiselle de Lâge._”

I found a fragment of stick, notched the paper into the end of it, and gingerly passed my billet through the hole in the wall. On the instant a great voice uttered a malediction behind me, and I was jerked roughly down upon the flags. My end of the stick dropped into the gutter and wedged itself in slime. I looked up. Above me were Cabochon and a yellow-faced rascal. This last wore a sword by his side and on his head a high-crowned hat stuffed with plumes. I had seen him before--Maillard, l’Abbaye Maillard, a hound with a keen enough scent for blood to make himself a lusty living. He and his colleague Héron would often come to La Force to count their victims before following them to the scaffold.

“Plots--plots!” he muttered, shaking his head tolerantly, as if he were rebuking a child. “See to it, Citizen Cabochon.”

The jailer fetched back the stick. The paper, however, was gone from the end of it.

“It will be in the sewer,” said Maillard, quietly.

Cabochon had no scruples. He groped with his fingers.

“It is not here,” he said after a time, eyeing me and very malignant.

“Well,” said the other, “who is this fellow?”

“_Mordi_, Citizen President; he is a forgotten jackass that eats his head off in the revolutionary stable.”

“_Vraiment?_ Then, it follows, his head must fall into the revolutionary manger.”

He nodded pleasantly twice or thrice; then turned and, beckoning Cabochon to walk by him, strode away.

I sat in particular cogitation against the wall. For the present, it seemed, I enjoyed a distinction that was not attractive to my fellow-prisoners; and I was left religiously to myself.

“Now,” said I aloud, “I have grown such a beard that at last the national barber must take me in hand.”

“M. Jean-Louis,” said a voice the other side of the trap, “will you keep me kneeling here for ever?”

I started and flung myself face downwards with a cry of joy. My heart swelled in a moment so that it drove the tears up to my eyes.

“Carinne!” I cried, choking and half-sobbing; “is it thou indeed?”

“Creep through the little hole,” she said, “and thou shalt see.”

I laughed and I cried in a single breath.

“Say what thou wilt, _ma fillette_. Yes, I will call thee as I choose. Didst thou hear but now? I think it is a dying man that speaks to thee. Carinne, say after all you keep a place in your heart for the little odd Thibaut.”

“Insidious! thou wouldst seek to devour the whole, like a little worm in a gall.”

“To hear your voice again! We are always shadows to one another now. As a shadow I swear that I love you dearly. Oh, _ma mie, ma mie_, I love you so dearly. And why were you cruel to leave me for that small gust of temper I soon repented of? Carinne! My God! she is gone away!”

“I am here, little Thibaut.”

“There is a sound in your voice. Oh, this savage unyielding wall! I will kiss it a foot above the trap. Will you do the same on the other side?”

“Monsieur forgets himself, I think.”

“He is light-headed with joy. But he never forgets Mademoiselle de Lâge--not though she punished him grievously for an indifferent offence in the forests of Chalus.”

“Jean-Louis, listen well to this: I was abducted.”

“My God! by whom?”

“By a vile citizen Representative journeying to Paris.”

“By a----”

“I had emerged from the trees after you left me, and was sitting very passionate by the road, when he passed with his escort and discovered me.”

I kneeled voiceless as if I were stunned.

“What would you!” said Carinne. “There was no Thibaut at hand to throw him to the pigs. He forced me to go with him, and----”

I vented a groan that quite rumbled in the gutter; and at that her voice came through the hole a little changed--

“Monsieur has a delicate faith in what he professes to love.”

I beat my hands on the wall. I cried upon Heaven in my agony to let me reach through this inexorable veil of stone.

“You talked once of the wicked licence of the times. How could I know, oh, _ma mie_! And now all my heart is melting with love and rapture.”

“But I had a knife, Jean-Louis. Well, but he was courteous to me; and at that I told him who I was--no jill-flirt, but an unhappy waif of fortune. Now, _mon Dieu_!--it turned out that this was the very man that had come _en mission_ to Pierrettes.”

“Lacombe?”

“No--a creature of the name of Crépin----”

I uttered a cry.

“Crépin! It was he that carried thee away?”

“Truly; and who has, for my obduracy, consigned me to prison. Ever since, little Thibaut, ever since--now at Les Carmes; now in the Rue de Sèvres; at last, no later than yesterday, to this ‘extraordinary question’ of La Force.”

“Now thou art a sweet-souled Carinne! Send me something of thine through the evil passage that I may mumble it with my lips. Carinne, listen,”--and I told her the story of my connection with the villain.

“I would wring his neck if they would spare mine,” I said. “But, alas! I fear I am doomed, Carinne.”

She had from me all the details in brief of my captivity. _Mon Dieu!_ but it was ecstasy this dessert to my long feast of neglect. At the end she was silent a space; then she said very low--

“He communicates with me; but I never answer. Now I will do so, and perhaps thou shalt not die.”

“Carinne.”

“Hush, thou small citizen! The time is up; we must talk no longer.”

I breathed all my heart out in a sigh of farewell. I thought she had already gone, when suddenly she spoke again--

“Jean-Louis, Jean-Louis, do you hear?”

“Yes.”

“I would have thee just the height for thine eyes to look into mine.”

“Carinne? And what should they read there?”

Again there was a pause, again I thought she had gone; and then once more her voice came to me--

“Little Thibaut, I _did_ kiss the wall a foot above the trap.”

* * * * * * *

“Madame Beau,” said I, “when you shall be nearing old age--that is to say, when your present years double themselves--it is very certain that your lines will fall in pleasant places.”

“And where will they be?” said she.

“Where, but round your fine eyes and the dimples of your mouth!”

She cried, “_Oh, qu’il est malin!_” and tapped my shoulder archly with a great key she held in her hand.

“And what is the favour you design to ask of me?” she said.

“Firstly your permission to me to dedicate some verses to you,” said I. “After that, that you will procure me the immediate delivery of this little tube of paper.”

“To whom is it addressed?”

“To one Crépin, who lives in the Rue de Jouy, St Antoine.”

“_Croyez m’en!_” she cried. “Do you not see I have dropped my key?”

Then, as I stooped to pick up the instrument which she had let fall on the pavement, “Slip the little paper into the barrel!” she muttered.

I did so; and these were the words I had written on it:--

“_I am imprisoned in La Force for any reason or none. It concerns me only in that I am thereby debarred from vindicating upon your body the honour of Mademoiselle de Lâge. If it gives you any shame to hear that towards this victim of your base persecution, I, your one-time comrade, entertain and have long entertained sentiments of the most profound regard, prevail with yourself, I beseech you, to procure the enlargement of a lady whose only crimes--as things are judged nowadays--are her innocence and her beauty._

“_Jean-Louis Thibaut_.”

* * * * * * *

Of all the degradations to which we in the prison were subjected, none equalled that that was a common condition of our nightly herding. Then--so early as eight o’clock during the darker months--would appear the foul Cabochon--with his satellites and three or four brace of hounds--to drive us like cattle to our sleeping-pens. Bayed into the corridors, from which our cells opened, we must answer to our names bawled out by a crapulous turnkey, who held in his jerking hands, and consulted with his clouded eyes, a list that at his soberest he could only half decipher. He calls a name--probably of one that has already paid the penalty. There is no answer. The ruffian bullies and curses, while the survivors explain the matter to him. He sulkily acquiesces; shouts the tally once more, regardless of the hiatus--of course only to repeat the error. Amidst a storm of menaces we are all ordered out of our rooms, and this again and yet again, perhaps, until the beast satisfies himself or is satisfied that none is skulking, and that nothing is in error but his own drunken vision. Then at last the dogs are withdrawn, the innumerable doors clanged to and barred, and we are left, sealed within a fetid atmosphere, to salve our wounded dignity as we can with the balm of spiritual self-possession.

But now, on this particular evening, conscious of something in my breast that overcrowed the passionless voice of philosophy, I felt myself uplifted and translated--an essence impressionable to no influence that was meaner than divine.

“And who knows,” I said to myself, as we were summoned from the yard, “but that Quatremains-Quatrepattes might have pronounced Carinne to be the bright star in my horoscope?”

“Not so fast, citizen,” growled Cabochon, who stood, list in hand, at the door.

“Rest content,” said I; “I am never in a hurry.”

“_Par exemple!_ you grow a little rusty, perhaps, for a notable actor. It is well, then, that you have an engagement at last.”

“To perform? And where, M. Cabochon?”

“In the Palais de Justice. That is a theatre with a fine box, citizen; and the verdict of those that sit in it is generally favourable--to the public.”