Transcribed 1898 William Heinemann edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk




ST. IVES
BEING
THE ADVENTURES OF A FRENCH PRISONER IN ENGLAND




CHAPTER I--A TALE OF A LION RAMPANT



It was in the month of May 1813 that I was so unlucky as to fall at
last into the hands of the enemy.  My knowledge of the English
language had marked me out for a certain employment.  Though I
cannot conceive a soldier refusing to incur the risk, yet to be
hanged for a spy is a disgusting business; and I was relieved to be
held a prisoner of war.  Into the Castle of Edinburgh, standing in
the midst of that city on the summit of an extraordinary rock, I
was cast with several hundred fellow-sufferers, all privates like
myself, and the more part of them, by an accident, very ignorant,
plain fellows.  My English, which had brought me into that scrape,
now helped me very materially to bear it.  I had a thousand
advantages.  I was often called to play the part of an interpreter,
whether of orders or complaints, and thus brought in relations,
sometimes of mirth, sometimes almost of friendship, with the
officers in charge.  A young lieutenant singled me out to be his
adversary at chess, a game in which I was extremely proficient, and
would reward me for my gambits with excellent cigars.  The major of
the battalion took lessons of French from me while at breakfast,
and was sometimes so obliging as to have me join him at the meal.
Chevenix was his name.  He was stiff as a drum-major and selfish as
an Englishman, but a fairly conscientious pupil and a fairly
upright man.  Little did I suppose that his ramrod body and frozen
face would, in the end, step in between me and all my dearest
wishes; that upon this precise, regular, icy soldier-man my
fortunes should so nearly shipwreck!  I never liked, but yet I
trusted him; and though it may seem but a trifle, I found his
snuff-box with the bean in it come very welcome.

For it is strange how grown men and seasoned soldiers can go back
in life; so that after but a little while in prison, which is after
all the next thing to being in the nursery, they grow absorbed in
the most pitiful, childish interests, and a sugar biscuit or a
pinch of snuff become things to follow after and scheme for!

We made but a poor show of prisoners.  The officers had been all
offered their parole, and had taken it.  They lived mostly in
suburbs of the city, lodging with modest families, and enjoyed
their freedom and supported the almost continual evil tidings of
the Emperor as best they might.  It chanced I was the only
gentleman among the privates who remained.  A great part were
ignorant Italians, of a regiment that had suffered heavily in
Catalonia.  The rest were mere diggers of the soil, treaders of
grapes or hewers of wood, who had been suddenly and violently
preferred to the glorious state of soldiers.  We had but the one
interest in common:  each of us who had any skill with his fingers
passed the hours of his captivity in the making of little toys and
articles of Paris; and the prison was daily visited at certain
hours by a concourse of people of the country, come to exult over
our distress, or--it is more tolerant to suppose--their own
vicarious triumph.  Some moved among us with a decency of shame or
sympathy.  Others were the most offensive personages in the world,
gaped at us as if we had been baboons, sought to evangelise us to
their rustic, northern religion, as though we had been savages, or
tortured us with intelligence of disasters to the arms of France.
Good, bad, and indifferent, there was one alleviation to the
annoyance of these visitors; for it was the practice of almost all
to purchase some specimen of our rude handiwork.  This led, amongst
the prisoners, to a strong spirit of competition.  Some were neat
of hand, and (the genius of the French being always distinguished)
could place upon sale little miracles of dexterity and taste.  Some
had a more engaging appearance; fine features were found to do as
well as fine merchandise, and an air of youth in particular (as it
appealed to the sentiment of pity in our visitors) to be a source
of profit.  Others again enjoyed some acquaintance with the
language, and were able to recommend the more agreeably to
purchasers such trifles as they had to sell.  To the first of these
advantages I could lay no claim, for my fingers were all thumbs.
Some at least of the others I possessed; and finding much
entertainment in our commerce, I did not suffer my advantages to
rust.  I have never despised the social arts, in which it is a
national boast that every Frenchman should excel.  For the approach
of particular sorts of visitors, I had a particular manner of
address, and even of appearance, which I could readily assume and
change on the occasion rising.  I never lost an opportunity to
flatter either the person of my visitor, if it should be a lady,
or, if it should be a man, the greatness of his country in war.
And in case my compliments should miss their aim, I was always
ready to cover my retreat with some agreeable pleasantry, which
would often earn me the name of an 'oddity' or a 'droll fellow.'
In this way, although I was so left-handed a toy-maker, I made out
to be rather a successful merchant; and found means to procure many
little delicacies and alleviations, such as children or prisoners
desire.

I am scarcely drawing the portrait of a very melancholy man.  It is
not indeed my character; and I had, in a comparison with my
comrades, many reasons for content.  In the first place, I had no
family:  I was an orphan and a bachelor; neither wife nor child
awaited me in France.  In the second, I had never wholly forgot the
emotions with which I first found myself a prisoner; and although a
military prison be not altogether a garden of delights, it is still
preferable to a gallows.  In the third, I am almost ashamed to say
it, but I found a certain pleasure in our place of residence:
being an obsolete and really mediaeval fortress, high placed and
commanding extraordinary prospects, not only over sea, mountain,
and champaign but actually over the thoroughfares of a capital
city, which we could see blackened by day with the moving crowd of
the inhabitants, and at night shining with lamps.  And lastly,
although I was not insensible to the restraints of prison or the
scantiness of our rations, I remembered I had sometimes eaten quite
as ill in Spain, and had to mount guard and march perhaps a dozen
leagues into the bargain.  The first of my troubles, indeed, was
the costume we were obliged to wear.  There is a horrible practice
in England to trick out in ridiculous uniforms, and as it were to
brand in mass, not only convicts but military prisoners, and even
the children in charity schools.  I think some malignant genius had
found his masterpiece of irony in the dress which we were condemned
to wear:  jacket, waistcoat, and trousers of a sulphur or mustard
yellow, and a shirt or blue-and-white striped cotton.  It was
conspicuous, it was cheap, it pointed us out to laughter--we, who
were old soldiers, used to arms, and some of us showing noble
scars,--like a set of lugubrious zanies at a fair.  The old name of
that rock on which our prison stood was (I have heard since then)
the Painted Hill.  Well, now it was all painted a bright yellow
with our costumes; and the dress of the soldiers who guarded us
being of course the essential British red rag, we made up together
the elements of a lively picture of hell.  I have again and again
looked round upon my fellow-prisoners, and felt my anger rise, and
choked upon tears, to behold them thus parodied.  The more part, as
I have said, were peasants, somewhat bettered perhaps by the drill-
sergeant, but for all that ungainly, loutish fellows, with no more
than a mere barrack-room smartness of address:  indeed, you could
have seen our army nowhere more discreditably represented than in
this Castle of Edinburgh.  And I used to see myself in fancy, and
blush.  It seemed that my more elegant carriage would but point the
insult of the travesty.  And I remembered the days when I wore the
coarse but honourable coat of a soldier; and remembered further
back how many of the noble, the fair, and the gracious had taken a
delight to tend my childhood. . . .  But I must not recall these
tender and sorrowful memories twice; their place is further on, and
I am now upon another business.  The perfidy of the Britannic
Government stood nowhere more openly confessed than in one
particular of our discipline:  that we were shaved twice in the
week.  To a man who has loved all his life to be fresh shaven, can
a more irritating indignity be devised?  Monday and Thursday were
the days.  Take the Thursday, and conceive the picture I must
present by Sunday evening!  And Saturday, which was almost as bad,
was the great day for visitors.

Those who came to our market were of all qualities, men and women,
the lean and the stout, the plain and the fairly pretty.  Sure, if
people at all understood the power of beauty, there would be no
prayers addressed except to Venus; and the mere privilege of
beholding a comely woman is worth paying for.  Our visitors, upon
the whole, were not much to boast of; and yet, sitting in a corner
and very much ashamed of myself and my absurd appearance, I have
again and again tasted the finest, the rarest, and the most
ethereal pleasures in a glance of an eye that I should never see
again--and never wanted to.  The flower of the hedgerow and the
star in heaven satisfy and delight us:  how much more the look of
that exquisite being who was created to bear and rear, to madden
and rejoice, mankind!

There was one young lady in particular, about eighteen or nineteen,
tall, of a gallant carriage, and with a profusion of hair in which
the sun found threads of gold.  As soon as she came in the
courtyard (and she was a rather frequent visitor) it seemed I was
aware of it.  She had an air of angelic candour, yet of a high
spirit; she stepped like a Diana, every movement was noble and
free.  One day there was a strong east wind; the banner was
straining at the flagstaff; below us the smoke of the city chimneys
blew hither and thither in a thousand crazy variations; and away
out on the Forth we could see the ships lying down to it and
scudding.  I was thinking what a vile day it was, when she
appeared.  Her hair blew in the wind with changes of colour; her
garments moulded her with the accuracy of sculpture; the ends of
her shawl fluttered about her ear and were caught in again with an
inimitable deftness.  You have seen a pool on a gusty day, how it
suddenly sparkles and flashes like a thing alive?  So this lady's
face had become animated and coloured; and as I saw her standing,
somewhat inclined, her lips parted, a divine trouble in her eyes, I
could have clapped my hands in applause, and was ready to acclaim
her a genuine daughter of the winds.  What put it in my head, I
know not:  perhaps because it was a Thursday and I was new from the
razor; but I determined to engage her attention no later than that
day.  She was approaching that part of the court in which I sat
with my merchandise, when I observed her handkerchief to escape
from her hands and fall to the ground; the next moment the wind had
taken it up and carried it within my reach.  I was on foot at once:
I had forgot my mustard-coloured clothes, I had forgot the private
soldier and his salute.  Bowing deeply, I offered her the slip of
cambric.

'Madam,' said I, 'your handkerchief.  The wind brought it me.'

I met her eyes fully.

'I thank you, sir,' said she.

'The wind brought it me,' I repeated.  'May I not take it for an
omen?  You have an English proverb, "It's an ill wind that blows
nobody good."'

'Well,' she said, with a smile, '"One good turn deserves another."
I will see what you have.'

She followed me to where my wares were spread out under lee of a
piece of cannon.

'Alas, mademoiselle!' said I, 'I am no very perfect craftsman.
This is supposed to be a house, and you see the chimneys are awry.
You may call this a box if you are very indulgent; but see where my
tool slipped!  Yes, I am afraid you may go from one to another, and
find a flaw in everything.  Failures for Sale should be on my
signboard.  I do not keep a shop; I keep a Humorous Museum.'  I
cast a smiling glance about my display, and then at her, and
instantly became grave.  'Strange, is it not,' I added, 'that a
grown man and a soldier should be engaged upon such trash, and a
sad heart produce anything so funny to look at?'

An unpleasant voice summoned her at this moment by the name of
Flora, and she made a hasty purchase and rejoined her party.

A few days after she came again.  But I must first tell you how she
came to be so frequent.  Her aunt was one of those terrible British
old maids, of which the world has heard much; and having nothing
whatever to do, and a word or two of French, she had taken what she
called an INTEREST IN THE FRENCH PRISONERS.  A big, bustling, bold
old lady, she flounced about our market-place with insufferable
airs of patronage and condescension.  She bought, indeed, with
liberality, but her manner of studying us through a quizzing-glass,
and playing cicerone to her followers, acquitted us of any
gratitude.  She had a tail behind her of heavy, obsequious old
gentlemen, or dull, giggling misses, to whom she appeared to be an
oracle.  'This one can really carve prettily:  is he not a quiz
with his big whiskers?' she would say.  'And this one,' indicating
myself with her gold eye-glass, 'is, I assure you, quite an
oddity.'  The oddity, you may be certain, ground his teeth.  She
had a way of standing in our midst, nodding around, and addressing
us in what she imagined to be French:  'Bienne, hommes! ca va
bienne?'  I took the freedom to reply in the same lingo:  Bienne,
femme! ca va couci-couci tout d'meme, la bourgeoise!'  And at that,
when we had all laughed with a little more heartiness than was
entirely civil, 'I told you he was quite an oddity!' says she in
triumph.  Needless to say, these passages were before I had
remarked the niece.

The aunt came on the day in question with a following rather more
than usually large, which she manoeuvred to and fro about the
market and lectured to at rather more than usual length, and with
rather less than her accustomed tact.  I kept my eyes down, but
they were ever fixed in the same direction, quite in vain.  The
aunt came and went, and pulled us out, and showed us off, like
caged monkeys; but the niece kept herself on the outskirts of the
crowd and on the opposite side of the courtyard, and departed at
last as she had come, without a sign.  Closely as I had watched
her, I could not say her eyes had ever rested on me for an instant;
and my heart was overwhelmed with bitterness and blackness.  I tore
out her detested image; I felt I was done with her for ever; I
laughed at myself savagely, because I had thought to please; when I
lay down at night sleep forsook me, and I lay, and rolled, and
gloated on her charms, and cursed her insensibility, for half the
night.  How trivial I thought her! and how trivial her sex!  A man
might be an angel or an Apollo, and a mustard-coloured coat would
wholly blind them to his merits.  I was a prisoner, a slave, a
contemned and despicable being, the butt of her sniggering
countrymen.  I would take the lesson:  no proud daughter of my foes
should have the chance to mock at me again; none in the future
should have the chance to think I had looked at her with
admiration.  You cannot imagine any one of a more resolute and
independent spirit, or whose bosom was more wholly mailed with
patriotic arrogance, than I.  Before I dropped asleep, I had
remembered all the infamies of Britain, and debited them in an
overwhelming column to Flora.

The next day, as I sat in my place, I became conscious there was
some one standing near; and behold, it was herself!  I kept my
seat, at first in the confusion of my mind, later on from policy;
and she stood, and leaned a little over me, as in pity.  She was
very still and timid; her voice was low.  Did I suffer in my
captivity? she asked me.  Had I to complain of any hardship?

'Mademoiselle, I have not learned to complain,' said I.  'I am a
soldier of Napoleon.'

She sighed.  'At least you must regret La France,' said she, and
coloured a little as she pronounced the words, which she did with a
pretty strangeness of accent.

'What am I to say?' I replied.  'If you were carried from this
country, for which you seem so wholly suited, where the very rains
and winds seem to become you like ornaments, would you regret, do
you think?  We must surely all regret! the son to his mother, the
man to his country; these are native feelings.'

'You have a mother?' she asked.

'In heaven, mademoiselle,' I answered.  'She, and my father also,
went by the same road to heaven as so many others of the fair and
brave:  they followed their queen upon the scaffold.  So, you see,
I am not so much to be pitied in my prison,' I continued:  'there
are none to wait for me; I am alone in the world.  'Tis a different
case, for instance, with yon poor fellow in the cloth cap.  His bed
is next to mine, and in the night I hear him sobbing to himself.
He has a tender character, full of tender and pretty sentiments;
and in the dark at night, and sometimes by day when he can get me
apart with him, he laments a mother and a sweetheart.  Do you know
what made him take me for a confidant?'

She parted her lips with a look, but did not speak.  The look
burned all through me with a sudden vital heat.

'Because I had once seen, in marching by, the belfry of his
village!' I continued.  'The circumstance is quaint enough.  It
seems to bind up into one the whole bundle of those human instincts
that make life beautiful, and people and places dear--and from
which it would seem I am cut off!'

I rested my chin on my knee and looked before me on the ground.  I
had been talking until then to hold her; but I was now not sorry
she should go:  an impression is a thing so delicate to produce and
so easy to overthrow!  Presently she seemed to make an effort.

'I will take this toy,' she said, laid a five-and-sixpenny piece in
my hand, and was gone ere I could thank her.

I retired to a place apart near the ramparts and behind a gun.  The
beauty, the expression of her eyes, the tear that had trembled
there, the compassion in her voice, and a kind of wild elegance
that consecrated the freedom of her movements, all combined to
enslave my imagination and inflame my heart.  What had she said?
Nothing to signify; but her eyes had met mine, and the fire they
had kindled burned inextinguishably in my veins.  I loved her; and
I did not fear to hope.  Twice I had spoken with her; and in both
interviews I had been well inspired, I had engaged her sympathies,
I had found words that she must remember, that would ring in her
ears at night upon her bed.  What mattered if I were half shaved
and my clothes a caricature?  I was still a man, and I had drawn my
image on her memory.  I was still a man, and, as I trembled to
realise, she was still a woman.  Many waters cannot quench love;
and love, which is the law of the world, was on my side.  I closed
my eyes, and she sprang up on the background of the darkness, more
beautiful than in life.  'Ah!' thought I, 'and you too, my dear,
you too must carry away with you a picture, that you are still to
behold again and still to embellish.  In the darkness of night, in
the streets by day, still you are to have my voice and face,
whispering, making love for me, encroaching on your shy heart.  Shy
as your heart is, IT is lodged there--_I_ am lodged there; let the
hours do their office--let time continue to draw me ever in more
lively, ever in more insidious colours.'  And then I had a vision
of myself, and burst out laughing.

A likely thing, indeed, that a beggar-man, a private soldier, a
prisoner in a yellow travesty, was to awake the interest of this
fair girl!  I would not despair; but I saw the game must be played
fine and close.  It must be my policy to hold myself before her,
always in a pathetic or pleasing attitude; never to alarm or
startle her; to keep my own secret locked in my bosom like a story
of disgrace, and let hers (if she could be induced to have one)
grow at its own rate; to move just so fast, and not by a hair's-
breadth any faster, than the inclination of her heart.  I was the
man, and yet I was passive, tied by the foot in prison.  I could
not go to her; I must cast a spell upon her at each visit, so that
she should return to me; and this was a matter of nice management.
I had done it the last time--it seemed impossible she should not
come again after our interview; and for the next I had speedily
ripened a fresh plan.  A prisoner, if he has one great disability
for a lover, has yet one considerable advantage:  there is nothing
to distract him, and he can spend all his hours ripening his love
and preparing its manifestations.  I had been then some days upon a
piece of carving,--no less than the emblem of Scotland, the Lion
Rampant.  This I proceeded to finish with what skill I was
possessed of; and when at last I could do no more to it (and, you
may be sure, was already regretting I had done so much), added on
the base the following dedication. -


A LA BELLE FLORA
LE PRISONNIER RECONNAISSANT
A. D. ST.  Y. D. K.


I put my heart into the carving of these letters.  What was done
with so much ardour, it seemed scarce possible that any should
behold with indifference; and the initials would at least suggest
to her my noble birth.  I thought it better to suggest:  I felt
that mystery was my stock-in-trade; the contrast between my rank
and manners, between my speech and my clothing, and the fact that
she could only think of me by a combination of letters, must all
tend to increase her interest and engage her heart.

This done, there was nothing left for me but to wait and to hope.
And there is nothing further from my character:  in love and in
war, I am all for the forward movement; and these days of waiting
made my purgatory.  It is a fact that I loved her a great deal
better at the end of them, for love comes, like bread, from a
perpetual rehandling.  And besides, I was fallen into a panic of
fear.  How, if she came no more, how was I to continue to endure my
empty days? how was I to fall back and find my interest in the
major's lessons, the lieutenant's chess, in a twopenny sale in the
market, or a halfpenny addition to the prison fare?

Days went by, and weeks; I had not the courage to calculate, and
to-day I have not the courage to remember; but at last she was
there.  At last I saw her approach me in the company of a boy about
her own age, and whom I divined at once to be her brother.

I rose and bowed in silence.

'This is my brother, Mr. Ronald Gilchrist,' said she.  'I have told
him of your sufferings.  He is so sorry for you!'

'It is more than I have the right to ask,' I replied; 'but among
gentlefolk these generous sentiments are natural.  If your brother
and I were to meet in the field, we should meet like tigers; but
when he sees me here disarmed and helpless, he forgets his
animosity.'  (At which, as I had ventured to expect, this beardless
champion coloured to the ears for pleasure.)  'Ah, my dear young
lady,' I continued, 'there are many of your countrymen languishing
in my country, even as I do here.  I can but hope there is found
some French lady to convey to each of them the priceless
consolation of her sympathy.  You have given me alms; and more than
alms--hope; and while you were absent I was not forgetful.  Suffer
me to be able to tell myself that I have at least tried to make a
return; and for the prisoner's sake deign to accept this trifle.'

So saying, I offered her my lion, which she took, looked at in some
embarrassment, and then, catching sight of the dedication, broke
out with a cry.

'Why, how did you know my name?' she exclaimed.

'When names are so appropriate, they should be easily guessed,'
said I, bowing.  'But indeed, there was no magic in the matter.  A
lady called you by name on the day I found your handkerchief, and I
was quick to remark and cherish it.'

'It is very, very beautiful,' said she, 'and I shall be always
proud of the inscription.--Come, Ronald, we must be going.'  She
bowed to me as a lady bows to her equal, and passed on (I could
have sworn) with a heightened colour.

I was overjoyed:  my innocent ruse had succeeded; she had taken my
gift without a hint of payment, and she would scarce sleep in peace
till she had made it up to me.  No greenhorn in matters of the
heart, I was besides aware that I had now a resident ambassador at
the court of my lady.  The lion might be ill chiselled; it was
mine.  My hands had made and held it; my knife--or, to speak more
by the mark, my rusty nail--had traced those letters; and simple as
the words were, they would keep repeating to her that I was
grateful and that I found her fair.  The boy had looked like a
gawky, and blushed at a compliment; I could see besides that he
regarded me with considerable suspicion; yet he made so manly a
figure of a lad, that I could not withhold from him my sympathy.
And as for the impulse that had made her bring and introduce him, I
could not sufficiently admire it.  It seemed to me finer than wit,
and more tender than a caress.  It said (plain as language), 'I do
not and I cannot know you.  Here is my brother--you can know him;
this is the way to me--follow it.'



CHAPTER II--A TALE OF A PAIR OF SCISSORS



I was still plunged in these thoughts when the bell was rung that
discharged our visitors into the street.  Our little market was no
sooner closed than we were summoned to the distribution, and
received our rations, which we were then allowed to eat according
to fancy in any part of our quarters.

I have said the conduct of some of our visitors was unbearably
offensive; it was possibly more so than they dreamed--as the sight-
seers at a menagerie may offend in a thousand ways, and quite
without meaning it, the noble and unfortunate animals behind the
bars; and there is no doubt but some of my compatriots were
susceptible beyond reason.  Some of these old whiskerandos,
originally peasants, trained since boyhood in victorious armies,
and accustomed to move among subject and trembling populations,
could ill brook their change of circumstance.  There was one man of
the name of Goguelat, a brute of the first water, who had enjoyed
no touch of civilisation beyond the military discipline, and had
risen by an extreme heroism of bravery to a grade for which he was
otherwise unfitted--that of marechal des logis in the 22nd of the
line.  In so far as a brute can be a good soldier, he was a good
soldier; the Cross was on his breast, and gallantly earned; but in
all things outside his line of duty the man was no other than a
brawling, bruising ignorant pillar of low pothouses.  As a
gentleman by birth, and a scholar by taste and education, I was the
type of all that he least understood and most detested; and the
mere view of our visitors would leave him daily in a transport of
annoyance, which he would make haste to wreak on the nearest
victim, and too often on myself.

It was so now.  Our rations were scarce served out, and I had just
withdrawn into a corner of the yard, when I perceived him drawing
near.  He wore an air of hateful mirth; a set of young fools, among
whom he passed for a wit, followed him with looks of expectation;
and I saw I was about to be the object of some of his insufferable
pleasantries.  He took a place beside me, spread out his rations,
drank to me derisively from his measure of prison beer, and began.
What he said it would be impossible to print; but his admirers, who
believed their wit to have surpassed himself, actually rolled among
the gravel.  For my part, I thought at first I should have died.  I
had not dreamed the wretch was so observant; but hate sharpens the
ears, and he had counted our interviews and actually knew Flora by
her name.  Gradually my coolness returned to me, accompanied by a
volume of living anger that surprised myself.

'Are you nearly done?' I asked.  'Because if you are, I am about to
say a word or two myself.'

'Oh, fair play!' said he.  'Turn about!  The Marquis of Carabas to
the tribune.'

'Very well,' said I.  'I have to inform you that I am a gentleman.
You do not know what that means, hey?  Well, I will tell you.  It
is a comical sort of animal; springs from another strange set of
creatures they call ancestors; and, in common with toads and other
vermin, has a thing that he calls feelings.  The lion is a
gentleman; he will not touch carrion.  I am a gentleman, and I
cannot bear to soil my fingers with such a lump of dirt.  Sit
still, Philippe Goguelat! sit still and do not say a word, or I
shall know you are a coward; the eyes of our guards are upon us.
Here is your health!' said I, and pledged him in the prison beer.
'You have chosen to speak in a certain way of a young child,' I
continued, 'who might be your daughter, and who was giving alms to
me and some others of us mendicants.  If the Emperor'--saluting--
'if my Emperor could hear you, he would pluck off the Cross from
your gross body.  I cannot do that; I cannot take away what His
Majesty has given; but one thing I promise you--I promise you,
Goguelat, you shall be dead to-night.'

I had borne so much from him in the past, I believe he thought
there was no end to my forbearance, and he was at first amazed.
But I have the pleasure to think that some of my expressions had
pierced through his thick hide; and besides, the brute was truly a
hero of valour, and loved fighting for itself.  Whatever the cause,
at least, he had soon pulled himself together, and took the thing
(to do him justice) handsomely.

'And I promise you, by the devil's horns, that you shall have the
chance!' said he, and pledged me again; and again I did him
scrupulous honour.

The news of this defiance spread from prisoner to prisoner with the
speed of wings; every face was seen to be illuminated like those of
the spectators at a horse-race; and indeed you must first have
tasted the active life of a soldier, and then mouldered for a while
in the tedium of a jail, in order to understand, perhaps even to
excuse, the delight of our companions.  Goguelat and I slept in the
same squad, which greatly simplified the business; and a committee
of honour was accordingly formed of our shed-mates.  They chose for
president a sergeant-major in the 4th Dragoons, a greybeard of the
army, an excellent military subject, and a good man.  He took the
most serious view of his functions, visited us both, and reported
our replies to the committee.  Mine was of a decent firmness.  I
told him the young lady of whom Goguelat had spoken had on several
occasions given me alms.  I reminded him that, if we were now
reduced to hold out our hands and sell pill-boxes for charity, it
was something very new for soldiers of the Empire.  We had all seen
bandits standing at a corner of a wood truckling for copper
halfpence, and after their benefactors were gone spitting out
injuries and curses.  'But,' said I, 'I trust that none of us will
fall so low.  As a Frenchman and a soldier, I owe that young child
gratitude, and am bound to protect her character, and to support
that of the army.  You are my elder and my superior:  tell me if I
am not right.'

He was a quiet-mannered old fellow, and patted me with three
fingers on the back.  'C'est bien, mon enfant,' says he, and
returned to his committee.

Goguelat was no more accommodating than myself.  'I do not like
apologies nor those that make them,' was his only answer.  And
there remained nothing but to arrange the details of the meeting.
So far as regards place and time we had no choice; we must settle
the dispute at night, in the dark, after a round had passed by, and
in the open middle of the shed under which we slept.  The question
of arms was more obscure.  We had a good many tools, indeed, which
we employed in the manufacture of our toys; but they were none of
them suited for a single combat between civilised men, and, being
nondescript, it was found extremely hard to equalise the chances of
the combatants.  At length a pair of scissors was unscrewed; and a
couple of tough wands being found in a corner of the courtyard, one
blade of the scissors was lashed solidly to each with resined
twine--the twine coming I know not whence, but the resin from the
green pillars of the shed, which still sweated from the axe.  It
was a strange thing to feel in one's hand this weapon, which was no
heavier than a riding-rod, and which it was difficult to suppose
would prove more dangerous.  A general oath was administered and
taken, that no one should interfere in the duel nor (suppose it to
result seriously) betray the name of the survivor.  And with that,
all being then ready, we composed ourselves to await the moment.

The evening fell cloudy; not a star was to be seen when the first
round of the night passed through our shed and wound off along the
ramparts; and as we took our places, we could still hear, over the
murmurs of the surrounding city, the sentries challenging its
further passage.  Leclos, the sergeant-major, set us in our
stations, engaged our wands, and left us.  To avoid blood-stained
clothing, my adversary and I had stripped to the shoes; and the
chill of the night enveloped our bodies like a wet sheet.  The man
was better at fencing than myself; he was vastly taller than I,
being of a stature almost gigantic, and proportionately strong.  In
the inky blackness of the shed, it was impossible to see his eyes;
and from the suppleness of the wands, I did not like to trust to a
parade.  I made up my mind accordingly to profit, if I might, by my
defect; and as soon as the signal should be given, to throw myself
down and lunge at the same moment.  It was to play my life upon one
card:  should I not mortally wound him, no defence would be left
me; what was yet more appalling, I thus ran the risk of bringing my
own face against his scissor with the double force of our assaults,
and my face and eyes are not that part of me that I would the most
readily expose.

'Allez!' said the sergeant-major.

Both lunged in the same moment with an equal fury, and but for my
manoeuvre both had certainly been spitted.  As it was, he did no
more than strike my shoulder, while my scissor plunged below the
girdle into a mortal part; and that great bulk of a man, falling
from his whole height, knocked me immediately senseless.

When I came to myself I was laid in my own sleeping-place, and
could make out in the darkness the outline of perhaps a dozen heads
crowded around me.  I sat up.  'What is it?' I exclaimed.

'Hush!' said the sergeant-major.  'Blessed be God, all is well.'  I
felt him clasp my hand, and there were tears in his voice.  ''Tis
but a scratch, my child; here is papa, who is taking good care of
you.  Your shoulder is bound up; we have dressed you in your
clothes again, and it will all be well.'

At this I began to remember.  'And Goguelat?' I gasped.

'He cannot bear to be moved; he has his bellyful; 'tis a bad
business,' said the sergeant-major.

The idea of having killed a man with such an instrument as half a
pair of scissors seemed to turn my stomach.  I am sure I might have
killed a dozen with a firelock, a sabre, a bayonet, or any accepted
weapon, and been visited by no such sickness of remorse.  And to
this feeling every unusual circumstance of our rencounter, the
darkness in which we had fought, our nakedness, even the resin on
the twine, appeared to contribute.  I ran to my fallen adversary,
kneeled by him, and could only sob his name.

He bade me compose myself.  'You have given me the key of the
fields, comrade,' said he.  'Sans rancune!'

At this my horror redoubled.  Here had we two expatriated Frenchmen
engaged in an ill-regulated combat like the battles of beasts.
Here was he, who had been all his life so great a ruffian, dying in
a foreign land of this ignoble injury, and meeting death with
something of the spirit of a Bayard.  I insisted that the guards
should be summoned and a doctor brought.  'It may still be possible
to save him,' I cried.

The sergeant-major reminded me of our engagement.  'If you had been
wounded,' said he, 'you must have lain there till the patrol came
by and found you.  It happens to be Goguelat--and so must he!
Come, child, time to go to by-by.'  And as I still resisted,
'Champdivers!' he said, 'this is weakness.  You pain me.'

'Ay, off to your beds with you!' said Goguelat, and named us in a
company with one of his jovial gross epithets.

Accordingly the squad lay down in the dark and simulated, what they
certainly were far from experiencing, sleep.  It was not yet late.
The city, from far below, and all around us, sent up a sound of
wheels and feet and lively voices.  Yet awhile, and the curtain of
the cloud was rent across, and in the space of sky between the
eaves of the shed and the irregular outline of the ramparts a
multitude of stars appeared.  Meantime, in the midst of us lay
Goguelat, and could not always withhold himself from groaning.

We heard the round far off; heard it draw slowly nearer.  Last of
all, it turned the corner and moved into our field of vision:  two
file of men and a corporal with a lantern, which he swung to and
fro, so as to cast its light in the recesses of the yards and
sheds.

'Hullo!' cried the corporal, pausing as he came by Goguelat.

He stooped with his lantern.  All our hearts were flying.

'What devil's work is this?' he cried, and with a startling voice
summoned the guard.

We were all afoot upon the instant; more lanterns and soldiers
crowded in front of the shed; an officer elbowed his way in.  In
the midst was the big naked body, soiled with blood.  Some one had
covered him with his blanket; but as he lay there in agony, he had
partly thrown it off.

'This is murder!' cried the officer.  'You wild beasts, you will
hear of this to-morrow.'

As Goguelat was raised and laid upon a stretcher, he cried to us a
cheerful and blasphemous farewell.



CHAPTER III--MAJOR CHEVENIX COMES INTO THE STORY, AND GOGUELAT GOES
OUT



There was never any talk of a recovery, and no time was lost in
getting the man's deposition.  He gave but the one account of it:
that he had committed suicide because he was sick of seeing so many
Englishmen.  The doctor vowed it was impossible, the nature and
direction of the wound forbidding it.  Goguelat replied that he was
more ingenious than the other thought for, and had propped up the
weapon in the ground and fallen on the point--'just like
Nebuchadnezzar,' he added, winking to the assistants.  The doctor,
who was a little, spruce, ruddy man of an impatient temper, pished
and pshawed and swore over his patient.  'Nothing to be made of
him!' he cried.  'A perfect heathen.  If we could only find the
weapon!'  But the weapon had ceased to exist.  A little resined
twine was perhaps blowing about in the castle gutters; some bits of
broken stick may have trailed in corners; and behold, in the
pleasant air of the morning, a dandy prisoner trimming his nails
with a pair of scissors!

Finding the wounded man so firm, you may be sure the authorities
did not leave the rest of us in peace.  No stone was left unturned.
We were had in again and again to be examined, now singly, now in
twos and threes.  We were threatened with all sorts of impossible
severities and tempted with all manner of improbable rewards.  I
suppose I was five times interrogated, and came off from each with
flying colours.  I am like old Souvaroff, I cannot understand a
soldier being taken aback by any question; he should answer, as he
marches on the fire, with an instant briskness and gaiety.  I may
have been short of bread, gold or grace; I was never yet found
wanting in an answer.  My comrades, if they were not all so ready,
were none of them less staunch; and I may say here at once that the
inquiry came to nothing at the time, and the death of Goguelat
remained a mystery of the prison.  Such were the veterans of
France!  And yet I should be disingenuous if I did not own this was
a case apart; in ordinary circumstances, some one might have
stumbled or been intimidated into an admission; and what bound us
together with a closeness beyond that of mere comrades was a secret
to which we were all committed and a design in which all were
equally engaged.  No need to inquire as to its nature:  there is
only one desire, and only one kind of design, that blooms in
prisons.  And the fact that our tunnel was near done supported and
inspired us.

I came off in public, as I have said, with flying colours; the
sittings of the court of inquiry died away like a tune that no one
listens to; and yet I was unmasked--I, whom my very adversary
defended, as good as confessed, as good as told the nature of the
quarrel, and by so doing prepared for myself in the future a most
anxious, disagreeable adventure.  It was the third morning after
the duel, and Goguelat was still in life, when the time came round
for me to give Major Chevenix a lesson.  I was fond of this
occupation; not that he paid me much--no more, indeed, than
eighteenpence a month, the customary figure, being a miser in the
grain; but because I liked his breakfasts and (to some extent)
himself.  At least, he was a man of education; and of the others
with whom I had any opportunity of speech, those that would not
have held a book upsidedown would have torn the pages out for pipe-
lights.  For I must repeat again that our body of prisoners was
exceptional:  there was in Edinburgh Castle none of that
educational busyness that distinguished some of the other prisons,
so that men entered them unable to read, and left them fit for high
employments.  Chevenix was handsome, and surprisingly young to be a
major:  six feet in his stockings, well set up, with regular
features and very clear grey eyes.  It was impossible to pick a
fault in him, and yet the sum-total was displeasing.  Perhaps he
was too clean; he seemed to bear about with him the smell of soap.
Cleanliness is good, but I cannot bear a man's nails to seem
japanned.  And certainly he was too self-possessed and cold.  There
was none of the fire of youth, none of the swiftness of the
soldier, in this young officer.  His kindness was cold, and cruel
cold; his deliberation exasperating.  And perhaps it was from this
character, which is very much the opposite of my own, that even in
these days, when he was of service to me, I approached him with
suspicion and reserve.

I looked over his exercise in the usual form, and marked six
faults.

'H'm.  Six,' says he, looking at the paper.  'Very annoying!  I can
never get it right.'

'Oh, but you make excellent progress!' I said.  I would not
discourage him, you understand, but he was congenitally unable to
learn French.  Some fire, I think, is needful, and he had quenched
his fire in soapsuds.

He put the exercise down, leaned his chin upon his hand, and looked
at me with clear, severe eyes.

'I think we must have a little talk,' said he.

'I am entirely at your disposition,' I replied; but I quaked, for I
knew what subject to expect.

'You have been some time giving me these lessons,' he went on, 'and
I am tempted to think rather well of you.  I believe you are a
gentleman.'

'I have that honour, sir,' said I.

'You have seen me for the same period.  I do not know how I strike
you; but perhaps you will be prepared to believe that I also am a
man of honour,' said he.

'I require no assurances; the thing is manifest,' and I bowed.

'Very well, then,' said he.  'What about this Goguelat?'

'You heard me yesterday before the court,' I began.  'I was
awakened only--'

'Oh yes; I "heard you yesterday before the court," no doubt,' he
interrupted, 'and I remember perfectly that you were "awakened
only."  I could repeat the most of it by rote, indeed.  But do you
suppose that I believed you for a moment?'

'Neither would you believe me if I were to repeat it here,' said I.

'I may be wrong--we shall soon see,' says he; 'but my impression is
that you will not "repeat it here."  My impression is that you have
come into this room, and that you will tell me something before you
go out.'

I shrugged my shoulders.

'Let me explain,' he continued.  'Your evidence, of course, is
nonsense.  I put it by, and the court put it by.'

'My compliments and thanks!' said I.

'You MUST know--that's the short and the long,' he proceeded.  'All
of you in shed B are bound to know.  And I want to ask you where is
the common-sense of keeping up this farce, and maintaining this
cock-and-bull story between friends.  Come, come, my good fellow,
own yourself beaten, and laugh at it yourself.'

'Well, I hear you, go ahead,' said I.  'You put your heart in it.'

He crossed his legs slowly.  'I can very well understand,' he
began, 'that precautions have had to be taken.  I dare say an oath
was administered.  I can comprehend that perfectly.'  (He was
watching me all the time with his cold, bright eyes.)  'And I can
comprehend that, about an affair of honour, you would be very
particular to keep it.'

'About an affair of honour?' I repeated, like a man quite puzzled.

'It was not an affair of honour, then?' he asked.

'What was not?  I do not follow,' said I.

He gave no sign of impatience; simply sat awhile silent, and began
again in the same placid and good-natured voice:  'The court and I
were at one in setting aside your evidence.  It could not deceive a
child.  But there was a difference between myself and the other
officers, because _I_ KNEW MY MAN and they did not.  They saw in
you a common soldier, and I knew you for a gentleman.  To them your
evidence was a leash of lies, which they yawned to hear you
telling.  Now, I was asking myself, how far will a gentleman go?
Not surely so far as to help hush a murder up?  So that--when I
heard you tell how you knew nothing of the matter, and were only
awakened by the corporal, and all the rest of it--I translated your
statements into something else.  Now, Champdivers,' he cried,
springing up lively and coming towards me with animation, 'I am
going to tell you what that was, and you are going to help me to
see justice done:  how, I don't know, for of course you are under
oath--but somehow.  Mark what I'm going to say.'

At that moment he laid a heavy, hard grip upon my shoulder; and
whether he said anything more or came to a full stop at once, I am
sure I could not tell you to this day.  For, as the devil would
have it, the shoulder he laid hold of was the one Goguelat had
pinked.  The wound was but a scratch; it was healing with the first
intention; but in the clutch of Major Chevenix it gave me agony.
My head swam; the sweat poured off my face; I must have grown
deadly pale.

He removed his hand as suddenly as he had laid it there.  'What is
wrong with you?' said he.

'It is nothing,' said I.  'A qualm.  It has gone by.'

'Are you sure?' said he.  'You are as white as a sheet.'

'Oh no, I assure you!  Nothing whatever.  I am my own man again,' I
said, though I could scarce command my tongue.

'Well, shall I go on again?' says he.  'Can you follow me?'

'Oh, by all means!' said I, and mopped my streaming face upon my
sleeve, for you may be sure in those days I had no handkerchief.

'If you are sure you can follow me.  That was a very sudden and
sharp seizure,' he said doubtfully.  'But if you are sure, all
right, and here goes.  An affair of honour among you fellows would,
naturally, be a little difficult to carry out, perhaps it would be
impossible to have it wholly regular.  And yet a duel might be very
irregular in form, and, under the peculiar circumstances of the
case, loyal enough in effect.  Do you take me?  Now, as a gentleman
and a soldier.'

His hand rose again at the words and hovered over me.  I could bear
no more, and winced away from him.  'No,' I cried,  'not that.  Do
not put your hand upon my shoulder.  I cannot bear it.  It is
rheumatism,' I made haste to add.  'My shoulder is inflamed and
very painful.'

He returned to his chair and deliberately lighted a cigar.

'I am sorry about your shoulder,' he said at last.  'Let me send
for the doctor.'

'Not in the least,' said I.  'It is a trifle.  I am quite used to
it.  It does not trouble me in the smallest.  At any rate, I don't
believe in doctors.'

'All right,' said he, and sat and smoked a good while in a silence
which I would have given anything to break.  'Well,' he began
presently, 'I believe there is nothing left for me to learn.  I
presume I may say that I know all.'

'About what?' said I boldly.

'About Goguelat,' said he.

'I beg your pardon.  I cannot conceive,' said I.

'Oh,' says the major, 'the man fell in a duel, and by your hand!  I
am not an infant.'

'By no means,' said I.  'But you seem to me to be a good deal of a
theorist.'

'Shall we test it?' he asked.  'The doctor is close by.  If there
is not an open wound on your shoulder, I am wrong.  If there is--'
He waved his hand.  'But I advise you to think twice.  There is a
deuce of a nasty drawback to the experiment--that what might have
remained private between us two becomes public property.'

'Oh, well!' said I, with a laugh, 'anything rather than a doctor!
I cannot bear the breed.'

His last words had a good deal relieved me, but I was still far
from comfortable.

Major Chevenix smoked awhile, looking now at his cigar ash, now at
me.  'I'm a soldier myself,' he says presently, 'and I've been out
in my time and hit my man.  I don't want to run any one into a
corner for an affair that was at all necessary or correct.  At the
same time, I want to know that much, and I'll take your word of
honour for it.  Otherwise, I shall be very sorry, but the doctor
must be called in.'