There was an officer in command of the soldiers; a stout, serviceable,
profoundly calm man, with his drawn sword in his hand, smoking a cigar.
He very briefly directed the placing of Monsieur Rigaud in the midst of
the party, put himself with consummate indifference at their head, gave
the word 'march!' and so they all went jingling down the staircase. The
door clashed--the key turned--and a ray of unusual light, and a breath
of unusual air, seemed to have passed through the jail, vanishing in a
tiny wreath of smoke from the cigar.
Still, in his captivity, like a lower animal--like some impatient ape,
or roused bear of the smaller species--the prisoner, now left solitary,
had jumped upon the ledge, to lose no glimpse of this departure. As he
yet stood clasping the grate with both hands, an uproar broke upon his
hearing; yells, shrieks, oaths, threats, execrations, all comprehended
in it, though (as in a storm) nothing but a raging swell of sound
distinctly heard.
Excited into a still greater resemblance to a caged wild animal by his
anxiety to know more, the prisoner leaped nimbly down, ran round the
chamber, leaped nimbly up again, clasped the grate and tried to shake
it, leaped down and ran, leaped up and listened, and never rested until
the noise, becoming more and more distant, had died away. How many
better prisoners have worn their noble hearts out so; no man thinking
of it; not even the beloved of their souls realising it; great kings
and governors, who had made them captive, careering in the sunlight
jauntily, and men cheering them on. Even the said great personages dying
in bed, making exemplary ends and sounding speeches; and polite history,
more servile than their instruments, embalming them!
At last, John Baptist, now able to choose his own spot within the
compass of those walls for the exercise of his faculty of going to sleep
when he would, lay down upon the bench, with his face turned over on his
crossed arms, and slumbered. In his submission, in his lightness, in his
good humour, in his short-lived passion, in his easy contentment with
hard bread and hard stones, in his ready sleep, in his fits and starts,
altogether a true son of the land that gave him birth.
The wide stare stared itself out for one while; the Sun went down in
a red, green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the
fire-flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate
the goodness of a better order of beings; the long dusty roads and the
interminable plains were in repose--and so deep a hush was on the sea,
that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its dead.