Chapter XXXI: 'number 32.'

Perceiving that I was becoming very dull and miserable, Martin Omelette brought me an old book, which he said had been left by my predecessor. It was a manuscript, and was entitled _La Vie de Monseigneur St. Fiacre_.

'St. Fiacre again!' said I.

'Yes, monsieur,' said he, 'and I hope it may serve to amuse you as much as it amused and consoled the poor chevalier, who for six-and-forty years----'

'Leave me, in the devil's name!' I groaned.

'Yes, monsieur,' said Martin, bowing, for he never forgot his politeness, and withdrew.

Mechanically I turned over the leaves and read. The first line interested me, and I read on. It was the quaint monkish story of an ancient saint, and as this exalted personage, whose name is now 'familiar as a household word' to the Parisians, was a countryman of my own, I found some amusement, if I did not discover consolation, in the volume with which honest Martin had favoured me. The history was copiously interspersed by prayers, pious invocations, and occasional bursts of wild enthusiasm, for the admiration of the writer--an old canon of Notre Dame--were at times uncontrollable when writing of the '_Glorieux ami de Dieu, Monseigneur St. Fiacre._'

'The 30th of August is the anniversary of St. Fiacre,' began the volume, 'son of Ewen IV., king of Scotland, who began his reign in the year of our Redemption 605--a king who was educated, as the Black Book of Paisley saith, piously and carefully, under St. Culme, the abbot of Iona, by whom he was reared in all manner of human learning, and in the love of God in works of piety; yet he swerved from the precepts of his peaceful master, by being grievously addicted to war, as the king of Strathclyde and the half-savage Saxons then inhabiting the land now called England found to their cost, in many a battle fought and lost between the Tyne and Humber.'

Then the old legendary proceeded to tell us how Fiacre, the son of Ewen and his queen Frivola of Ross, was born in Dunstaffnage, and educated by Conan, Bishop of the Western Isles; and how he proved a brave, valiant, and virtuous prince: till once, when hunting on the wild shores of the Bay of Nigg, a strange adventure befel him.

Near a fountain, at which his horse was drinking, he saw a maiden of more than mortal beauty, with snow-white skin and golden hair--the spirit of the water. This was on the 30th of August, the festival of St. Rose of Lima. Of this spirit-woman he became deeply enamoured, and was wont to meet her again and again in the mirk hour, between midnight and morning, until he who sought to give her a human soul was in danger of losing his own, for the spirit was a fiend, who sought the youth's destruction; but Saint Fergus, the Bishop and Confessor, whose cell was hewn in the old craig of Inverugie, and whose right arm is now preserved in the cathedral of Aberdeen, besought the Prince to abandon the fountain, which he blessed and purified, by saying a solemn mass on the spot, after which the spirit appeared no more; but that fountain is still named St. Fiacre's Well, and is famous among the northern peasantry for the miraculous cures accomplished by its waters.

After this, full of gratitude to Heaven for his narrow escape from perdition, Fiacre became a preacher, and renouncing his sword and buckle, his high estate and place, he quitted secretly, in the night, his royal home, among the dark mountains of Lorn, and became a teacher and preacher of the gospels. Visiting France when Clotaire II., son of the infamous and lewd queen Bredegonda, was king, he proceeded throughout all the land, leading the wild Franks to God, and working marvellous miracles by the way. At Toppaia, in Florence, he delivered a certain rich man of a devil which possessed him, but which immediately possessed his wife, who thereupon became frantic, and hanged herself upon an orange-tree. In memory of this riddance--whether of the wife, or the devil, or both, the chronicler doth not say--the rich man founded a chapel in honour of St. Fiacre, and the Dukes of Florence have since endowed and adorned it nobly.

The legendary then proceeded to state how St. Fiacre was assailed from time to time by the beautiful spirit of the fountain, which appeared to him, ever and anon, from the waters and wayside wells near which he passed, for he lived in forests and lonely places, subsisting on roots and herbs; and thus he resisted more temptations than ever did honest St. Anthony of old: and now, when his father, king Ewen, died in Lorn, in 622, as Camerarius and Bishop Leslie tell us, St. Fiacre was visited by a train of chiefs and priests from Scotland, summoning him to the throne; but he answered, that 'for the inheritance of an eternal crown, he had renounced all earthly claims,' and, turning away, continued the task at which they found him--covering the roof of his hut with turf. So his brother Ferquhard was chosen, in his place, King of Scotland, a prince who fell into the Pelagian heresy, and fought with his nobles, who threw him into a prison, where he perished miserably by casting himself upon his own sword.

Meanwhile, St. Fiacre lived in peace at his solitary cell, in a deep forest at Brieul, in Brie, where a place had been assigned him by St. Fars, Bishop of Meaux. There, with his own hands, the pious prince cleared the ground of its old primeval oaks and sharp briars, and there he built a chapel to the Virgin, where he gave to prayer the hours that were not spent in the cultivation of his little garden, the proceeds of which he gave to the poor. There he died on the 30th of August, the feast of St. Rose, in the year 670, and there he was buried.

Thereafter, for ages, his shrine was visited by crowds of pilgrims from all parts of France; till the 30th of August, eight centuries after, when a spring of pure water suddenly burst up from the chapel floor, and the monks of Meaux, recalling the legend of the spirit of the fountain which had tormented the saint of old, translated his relics to their cathedral in 1562; and the name of _Fiacre_ was first given to hackney-coaches in Paris, because these vehicles were greatly used by sick and infirm pilgrims who visited the shrine of the Scottish saint, for which they usually set out from the hotel of Maître Nicholas Sauvage, which bore the sign of St. Fiacre, and stood in the Rue St. Martin, opposite to the Rue de Montmorenci, where it swung in the wind until 1645.

My hapless predecessor had probably, nay I have no doubt must have been one of those who adhered to the ancient faith, otherwise he could not have drawn much comfort from this old monkish story. I yawned over it wearily, and in all the prayers to, and pious invocations of, St. Fiacre, trusted less than to the virtues of a rope ladder, a sharp dagger, and a brace of loaded pistols.

An occasional leaf of the _Mercure Française_, which I received wrapped round bread, butter, or fruit, acquainted me with the progress of events in the great world without, and thus I Learned that war was still waged against Charles IV. of Lorraine, that his daughter Marie Louise was still lurking undiscovered in Paris, in spite of rewards offered for her capture; and I learned, too, that my noble comrades of the Guard--how I longed to be with them!--were still under Hepburn, who, on the 19th of December, with a train of cannon, and six regiments of infantry, three of which were Scots--viz., his own, Ramsay's, and Lesly's--and with seven squadrons of horse, had boldly crossed the Rhine, repulsed the Imperialists, and captured Mannheim, thus securing the passage of the whole French army, under the Duke de la Force; that after this he had relieved the Swedish garrison in Heidelburg, and again destroyed the proud Imperialists before that magnificent electoral fortress. Then from another stray leaf I learned how, by one brilliant charge, the cuirassiers of the Garde du Corps Ecossais, led by the Marquis de Gordon and Sir John Hepburn, had completely swept the Germans from the valley of the Neckar.

My brave comrades! who among them were now alive, and who were slain? In fancy they all came before me, that brilliant line of horsemen--old Patrick Gordon with gray locks, and eagle eye; the fiery Sir Quentin Home; Viscount Dundrennan, so handsome and gay; Tushielaw, and Raynold Cheyne of Dundargle; the brilliant Chevalier Livingstone d'Angoulême, and other Scottish hearts, all charging holster to holster, and bridle to bridle!

These achievements made my breast swell with agony, and pant with impatience.

The Marquis d'Aytona was so repeatedly baffled by Hepburn's flying column, that the Emperor of Germany, reflecting on his lack of skill, put his finger on a part of the map, saying,

'You ought to have anticipated him, by crossing the Rhine there.'

'True,' replied the Marquis; 'but your imperial finger is not a pontoon bridge, and Hepburn, with all his devilish Scots, are not here to cut it off.'

When the last tidings left the army of Lorraine, (as I learned from the envelope of my butter for breakfast,) Hepburn with his regiment of Scots, eight thousand strong, the Cardinal Duke de Lavalette, and Bernard Duke of Saxe Weimar, were besieging the strong town of Elsace-Zaberne, which was expected daily to capitulate; and in the assault of which Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Hanna of Kirkdale, and other gallant Scots, had left their bodies in the breach. I learned, too, how the government of Louis XIII. watched with growing interest the expected war between England and Scotland, for France yet held--or pretended to hold--to her ancient alliance with the latter. As a proof of this, in 1626, during the quarrel which brought Marshal Bassompierre to England, when the British merchant ships were suddenly seized in all the ports of France, those of Scotland, on hoisting St. Andrew's Cross above the Union flag, were at once released by the French admirals, and stood out to sea.

These scraps of the French Mercury, which told of politics, war, and battle, and of all the busy life that was still revolving round my silent and solitary prison, were to me a far greater source of interest than the musty miracles of Monseigneur St. Fiacre.

Poor Martin Omelette had now become rather friendly to me, and this served to lighten the tedium of my confinement, but when I hinted at a bribe, and strove to tempt him about winking at an escape, he was wont to smile, shrug his shoulders, and say,

'You are brave, M. Blane; but wealth and bravery, like a long sword and a long purse, seldom go together. You cannot offer me aught that would compensate for the loss of my head, by the executioner's sword, in the Place de la Grève--no--no!'

So months wore slowly, heavily, and miserably away. They seemed a long, long unmarked lapse of time, for nothing broke the monotony to me. I had ceased to reckon days and weeks; but I knew that the spring of 1635 was passing into summer, and I began to fear my poor heart would burst in its throbbings after freedom and my home!

All I thought, and all I endured, in those long days and dreary nights, are known only to God and to myself. I had ceased to have a name, or existence.

I was simply NUMBER THIRTY-TWO in the accursed Bastille!