CHAPTER XXII
OF A NIGHT JOURNEY AND BLACK BICETRE AT THE END OF IT
'Twas a long journey to the prison of Bicetre, which is two miles to thesouth of the city of Paris, a great building that had once (they say)been a palace, but now in the time of my experience was little betterthan a vestibule of hell. I was driven to it through a black loud nightof rain, a plunging troop of horse on either hand the coach as if I werea traveller of state, and Buhot in front of me as silent as the priesthad been the day we left Dunkerque, though wakeful, and the tip ofhis scabbard leaning on my boot to make sure that in the darkness nomovement of mine should go unobserved.
The trees swung and roared in the wind; the glass lozens of the carriagepattered to the pelting showers; sometimes we lurched horribly in theruts of the highway, and were released but after monstrous effortson the part of the cavaliers. Once, as we came close upon a loop of abrawling river, I wished with all fervency that we might fall in, andso end for ever this pitiful coil of trials whereto fate had obviouslycondemned poor Paul Greig. To die among strangers (as is widelyknown) is counted the saddest of deaths by our country people, and so,nowadays, it would seem to myself, but there and then it appeared anenviable conclusion to the Spoiled Horn that had blundered from folly tofolly. To die there and then would be to leave no more than a regret andan everlasting wonder in the folks at home; to die otherwise, as seemedmy weird, upon a block or gallows, would be to foul the name of myfamily for generations, and I realised in my own person the agony of myfather when he got the news, and I bowed my shoulders in the coach belowthe shame that he would feel as in solemn blacks he walked through theSabbath kirkyard in summers to come in Mearns, with the knowledge thatthough neighbours looked not at him but with kindness, their inmostthoughts were on the crimson chapter of his son.
Well, we came at the long last to Bicetre, and I was bade alight in theflare of torches. A strange, a memorable scene; it will never leave me.Often I remit me there in dreams. When I came out of the conveyance thelights dazzled me, and Buhot put his hands upon my shoulders and turnedme without a word in the direction he wished me to take. It was througha vast and frowning doorway that led into a courtyard so great thatthe windows on the other side seemed to be the distance of a field. Thewindows were innumerable, and though the hour was late they were lit instretching corridors. Fires flamed in corners of the yard--great leapingfires round which warders (as I guessed them) gathered to dry themselvesor get warmth against the chill of the early April morning. Theirscabbards or their muskets glittered now and then in the light of theflames; their voices--restrained by the presence of Buhot--soundeddeep and dreadful to me that knew not the sum of his iniquity yet couldshudder at the sense of what portended.
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It were vain for me to try and give expression to my feeling as I wentpast these fires across the stony yard, and entered between a guard ortwo at the other side. At the root of my horror was the sentiment thatall was foreign, that I was no more to these midnight monsters roundtheir torturing flames than a creature of the wood, less, perhaps, forwere they not at sworn war with my countrymen, and had not I a shareat least of the repute of regicide? And when, still led by the silentofficer, I entered the building itself and walked through an unendingcorridor broken at intervals by black doors and little barred borrowedlights, and heard sometimes a moan within, or a shriek far off inanother part of the building, I experienced something of that longswound that is insanity. Then I was doomed for the rest of my brief daysto be among these unhappy wretches--the victims of the law or politicalvengeance, the _forcat_ who had thieved, or poisoned, perjured himself,or taken human blood!
At last we came to a door, where Buhot stopped me and spoke, for thefirst time, almost, since we had left Versailles. He put his hand out tocheck a warder who was going to open the cell for my entrance.
"I am not a hard man, M. Greig," said he, in a stumbling English, "andthough this is far beyond my duties, and, indeed, contrary to the same,I would give you another chance. We shall have, look you, our friend thepriest in any case, and to get the others is but a matter of time. 'Tisa good citizen helps the law always; you must have that respect for thelaw that you should feel bound to circumvent those who would go counterto it with your cognisance."
"My good man," I said, as quietly as I could, and yet internally withfeelings like to break me, "I have already said my say. If the tow wasround my thrapple I would say no more than that I am innocent of anyplot against a man by whose family mine have lost, and that I myself,for all my loyalty to my country, would do much to serve as a privateindividual."
"Consider," he pleaded. "After all, this Hamilton may be a madman withnothing at all to tell that will help us."
"But the bargain is to be that I must pry and I must listen," said I,"and be the tale-pyat whose work may lead to this poor old buffoon's andmany another's slaughtering. Not I, M. Buhot, and thank ye kindly! It'sno' work for one of the Greigs of Hazel Den."
"I fear you do not consider all," he said patiently--so patiently indeedthat I wondered at him. "I will show you to what you are condemned evenbefore your trial, before you make up your mind irrevocably to refusethis very reasonable request of ours," and he made a gesture that causedthe warder to open the door so that I could see within.
There was no light of its own in the cell, but it borrowed wanly alittle of the radiance of the corridor, and I could see that it was bareto the penury of a mausoleum, with a stone floor, a wooden palliasse,and no window other than a barred hole above the door. There was noteven a stool to sit on. But I did not quail.
"I have been in more comfortable quarters, M. Buhot," I said, "but innone that I could occupy with a better conscience." Assuming with that asort of bravado, I stepped in before he asked me.
"Very good," he cried; "but I cannot make you my felicitations on yourdecision, M. Greig," and without more ado he had the door shut on me.
I sat on the woollen palliasse for a while, with my head on my hands,surrendered all to melancholy; and then, though the thing may seembeyond belief, I stretched myself and slept till morning. It was not themost refreshing of sleep, but still 'twas wonderful that I should sleepat all in such circumstances, and I take it that a moorland life hadbeen a proper preparation for just such trials.
When I wakened in the morning the prison seemed full of eerie noises--ofdistant shrieks as in a bedlam, and commanding voices, and of ringingmetals, the clank of fetters, or the thud of musket-butts upon thestones. A great beating of feet was in the yard, as if soldiers weremanoeuvring, and it mastered me to guess what all this might mean, untila warder opened my door and ordered me out for an airing.
I mind always of a parrot at a window.
This window was one that looked into the yard from some official'sdwelling in that dreadful place, and the bird occupied a great cage thatwas suspended from a nail outside.
The bird, high above the rabble of rogues in livery, seemed to have adevilish joy in the spectacle of the misery tramping round and roundbeneath, for it clung upon the bars and thrust out its head to whistle,as if in irony, or taunt us with a foul song. There was one air ithad, expressed so clearly that I picked up air and words with littledifficulty, and the latter ran something like this:
Ah! ah! Pierrot, Pierrot! Fais ta toilette, Voila le barbier! oh! oh! Et sa charrette--
all in the most lugubrious key.
And who were we that heard that reference to the axe? We were the scum,the _sordes_, the rot of France. There was, doubtless, no crime beforethe law of the land, no outrage against God and man, that had not hereits representative. We were not men, but beasts, cut off from everypleasant--every clean and decent association, the visions of sinalways behind the peering eyes, the dreams of vice and crime for everfermenting in the low brows. I felt 'twas the forests we should befrequenting--the forests of old, the club our weapon, the cave ourhabitation; no song ours, nor poem, no children to infect with fondness,no women to smile at in the light
of evening lamps. The forest--thecave--the animal! What were we but children of the outer dark, condemnedfrom the start of time, our faces ground hard against the flints, ourfeet bogged in hag and mire?
There must have been several hundreds of the convicts in the yard, andyet I was told later that it was not a fourth of the misery that Bicetreheld, and that scores were leaving weekly for the _bagnes_--the hulks atToulon and at Brest--while others took their places.
Every man wore a uniform--a coarse brown jacket, vast wide breeches ofthe same hue, a high sugar-loaf cap and wooden shoes--all except someprivileged, whereof I was one--and we were divided into gangs, each gangwith its warders--tall grenadiers with their muskets ready.
Round and round and across and across we marched in the greatquadrangle, every man treading the rogues' measure with leg-wearyreluctance, many cursing their warders under breath, most scowling, allhopeless and all lost.
'Twas the exercise of the day.
As we slouched through that mad ceremony in the mud of the yard, withrain still drizzling on us, the parrot in its cage had a voice loudand shrill above the commands of the grenadiers and officers; sangits taunting song, or whistled like a street boy, a beast so free, socareless and remote, that I had a fancy it had the only soul in theplace.
As I say, we were divided into gangs, each gang taking its own courseback and forward in the yard as its commander ordered. The gang I waswith marched a little apart from the rest. We were none of us in thisgang in the ugly livery of the prison, but in our own clothing, and wewere, it appeared, allowed that privilege because we were yet to try. Iknew no reason for the distinction at the time, nor did I prize it verymuch, for looking all about the yard--at the officers, the grenadiers,and other functionaries of the prison, I failed to see a single faceI knew. What could I conclude but that Buhot was gone and that I wasdoomed to be forgotten here?
It would have been a comfort even to have got a glimpse of FatherHamilton, the man whose machinations were the cause of my imprisonment,but Father Hamilton, if he had been taken here as Buhot had suggested,was not, at all events, in view.
After the morning's exercise we that were the privileged were taken towhat was called the _salle depreuve_, and with three or four to each_gamelle_ or mess-tub, ate a scurvy meal of a thin soup and black breadand onions. To a man who had been living for a month at heck and manger,as we say, this might naturally seem unpalatable fare, but truth totell I ate it with a relish that had been all the greater had it beenpermitted me to speak to any of my fellow sufferers. But speech wasstrictly interdict and so our meal was supped in silence.
When it was over I was to be fated for the pleasantest of surprises!
There came to me a sous-officer of the grenadiers.
In French he asked if I was Monsieur Greig. I said as best I could inthe same tongue that I was that unhappy person at his service. Then,said he, "Come with me." He led me into a hall about a hundred feet longthat had beds or mattresses for about three hundred people. The room wasempty, as those who occupied it were, he said, at Mass. Its open windowsin front looked into another courtyard from that in which we had beenexercising, while the windows at the rear looked into a garden wherealready lilac was in bloom and daffodillies endowed the soil of a fewmounds with the colour of the gold. On the other side of the court firstnamed there was a huge building. "Galbanon," said my guide, pointing toit, and then made me understand that the same was worse by far thanthe Bastille, and at the moment full of Marquises, Counts, Jesuits, andother clergymen, many of them in irons for abusing or writing againstthe Marchioness de Pompadour.
I listened respectfully and waited Monsieur's explanation. It wasmanifest I had not been brought into this hall for the good of myeducation, and naturally I concluded the name of Galbanon, that I hadheard already from Buhot, with its villainous reputation, was meant toterrify me into a submission to what had been proposed. The moment aftera hearty meal--even of _soup maigre_--was not, however, the happiest oftimes to work upon a Greig's feelings of fear or apprehension, and so Iwaited, very dour within upon my resolution though outwardly in the mostcomplacent spirit.
The hall was empty when we entered as I have said, but we had not beenmany minutes in it when the tramp of men returning to it might be heard,and this hurried my friend the officer to his real business.
He whipped a letter from his pocket and put it in my hand with a sign tocompel secrecy on my part. It may be readily believed I was quick enoughto conceal the missive. He had no cause to complain of the face I turnedupon another officer who came up to us, for 'twas a visage of clownishvacuity.
The duty of the second officer, it appeared, was to take me to a newcell that had been in preparation for me, and when I got there itwas with satisfaction I discovered it more than tolerable, with asufficiency of air and space, a good light from the quadrangle, a fewbooks, paper, and a writing standish.
When the door had been shut upon me, I turned to open my letter andfound there was in fact a couple of them--a few lines from her ladyshipin Dunkerque expressing her continued interest in my welfare andadventures, and another from the Swiss through whom the first had come.He was still--said the honest Bernard--at my service, having eludedthe vigilance of Buhot, who doubtless thought a lackey scarce worth hishunting, and he was still in a position to post my letters, thanks tothe goodwill of the sous-officer who was a relative. Furthermore, hewas in hopes that Miss Walkinshaw, who was on terms of intimacy with thegreat world and something of an _intriguante_, would speedily take stepsto secure my freedom. "Be tranquil, dear Monsieur!" concluded the bravefellow, and I was so exceedingly comforted and inspired by these mattersthat I straightway sat down to the continuation of my journal for MissWalkinshaw's behoof. I had scarce dipped the pen, when my celldoor opened and gave entrance to the man who was the cause of myincarceration.
The door shut and locked behind him; it was Father Hamilton!
It was indeed Father Hamilton, by all appearance none the worse in bodyfor his violent escapade, so weighty with the most fatal possibilitiesfor himself, for he advanced to me almost gaily, his hand extended andhis face red and smiling.
"Scotland! to my heart!" cries he in the French, and throws his armsabout me before I could resist, and kisses me on the cheeks after theamusing fashion of his nation. "La! la! la! Paul," he cried, "I'd havewanted three breakfasts sooner than miss this meeting with my goodsecretary lad that is the lovablest rogue never dipped a pen in hismaster's service. Might have been dead for all I knew, and run throughby a brutal rapier, victim of mine own innocence. But here's my Paul,_pardieu!_ I would as soon have my _croque-mort_ now as that jolly doghis uncle, that never waked till midnight or slept till the dull,uninteresting noon in the years when we went roving. What! Paul! PaulGreig! my _croque-mort!_ my Don Dolorous!--oh, Lord, my child, I am themost miserable of wretches!"
And there he let me go, and threw himself upon a chair, and gave hisvast body to a convulsion of arid sobs. The man was in hysterics,compounding smiles and sobs a score to the minute, but at the end 'twasthe natural man won the bout, else he had taken a stroke. I stood byhim in perplexity of opinions whether to laugh or storm, whether to givemyself to the righteous horror a good man ought to feel in the presenceof a murtherer, or shrug my shoulders tolerantly at the imbecile.
"There!" said he, recovering his natural manner, "I have made a mortalenemy of Andrew Greig's nephew. Yes, yes, master, glower at Misery,fat Misery--and the devil take it!--old Misery, without a penny in 'tspocket, and its next trip upon wheels a trip to the block to nuzzle atthe dirty end in damp sawdust a nose that has appreciated the bouquetof the rarest wines. Paul, my boy, has't a pinch of snuff? A brutalbird out there sings a stave of the _Chanson de la Veuve_ so like theconfounded thing that I heard my own foolish old head drop into thebasket, and there! I swear to you the smell of the sawdust is in mynostrils now."
I handed him my box; 'twas a mull my Uncle Andy gave me before he died,made of the horn of a young bullock, with a blazon of the house
on thesilver lid. He took it eagerly and drenched himself with the contents.
"Oh, la! la!" he cried; "I give thanks. My head was like yeast. I wishit were Christmas last, and a man called Hamilton was back in Dixmundeparish. But there! that is enough, I have made my bed and I must lieon't, with a blight on all militant jesuitry! When last I had this boxin my fingers they were as steady as Mont St. Michel, now look--they aretrembling like aspen, _n'est-ce pas?_ And all that's different is that Ihave eaten one or two better dinners and cracked a few pipkins of betterwine, and--and--well-nigh killed a police officer. Did'st ever hear ofone Hamilton, M. Greig? 'Twas a cheery old fellow in Dixmunde whose namewas the same as mine, and had a garden and bee-hives, and I am on therack for my sins."
He might be on the rack--and, indeed, I daresay the man was in a passionof feelings so that he knew not what he was havering about, but whatimpressed me most of all about him was that he seemed to have somemomentary gleams of satisfaction in his situation.
"I have every ground of complaint against you, sir," I said.
"What!" he interrupted. "Would'st plague an old man with complaints whenM. de Paris is tapping him on the shoulder to come away and smell thesawdust of his own coffin? Oh, 'tis not in this wise thy uncle had done,but no matter!"
"I have no wish, Father Hamilton, to revile you for what you havebrought me," I hastened to tell him. "That is far from my thoughts,though now that you put me in mind of it, there is some ground for myblaming you if blaming was in my intention. But I shall blame you forthis, that you are a priest of the Church and a Frenchman, and yet diddraw a murderous hand upon a prince of your own country."
This took him somewhat aback. He helped himself to another voluminouspinch of my snuff to give him time for a rejoinder and then--"Regicide,M. Greig, is sometimes to be defended when----"
"Regicide!" I cried, losing all patience, "give us the plain Englishof it, Father Hamilton, and call it murder. To call it by a Latin namemakes it none the more respectable a crime against the courts of heavenwhere the curse of Babel has an end. But for an accident, or the cunningof others, you had a corpse upon your conscience this day, and your namehad been abhorred throughout the whole of Europe."
He put his shoulders up till his dew-laps fell in massive folds.
"'Fore God!" said he, "here's a treatise in black letter from AndrewGreig's nephew. It comes indifferently well, I assure thee, fromAndrew's nephew. Those who live in glass houses, _cher ami_,--those wholive in glass houses----"
He tapped me upon the breast with his fat finger and paused, with asignificant look upon his countenance.
"Oh, ye can out with it, Father Hamilton!" I cried, certain I knew hismeaning.
"Those who live in glass houses," said he, "should have some pity for apoor old devil out in the weather without a shelter of any sort."
"You were about to taunt me with my own unhappy affair," I said, littlerelishing his consideration.
"Was I, M. Greig?" he said softly. "Faith! a glass residence seems tobreed an ungenerous disposition! If thou can'st credit me I know nothingof thine affair beyond what I may have suspected from a Greig travellinghurriedly and in red shoes. I make you my compliments, Monsieur, of yourmorality that must be horror-struck at my foolish play with a pistol,yet thinks me capable of a retort so vile as that you indicate. My dearlad, I but spoke of what we have spoken of together before in our happychariot in the woods of Somme--thine uncle's fate, and all I expectedwas, that remembering the same, thou his nephew would'st have enoughtolerance for an old fool to leave his punishment in the hands ofthe constitute authority. _Voila!_ I wish to heaven they had given meanother cell, after all, that I might have imagined thy pity for onethat did thee no harm, or at least meant to do none, which is the mainthing with all our acts else Purgatory's more crowded than I fancy."
He went wearily over to the fire and spread his trembling hands tothe blaze; I looked after him perplexed in my mind, but not without anoverpowering pity.
"I have come, like thyself, doubtless," he said after a little, "overvile roads in a common cart, and lay awake last night in a dungeon--apretty conclusion to my excursion! And yet I am vastly more happy to-daythan I was this time yesterday morning."
"But then you were free," I said, "you had all you need wish for--money,a conveyance, servants, leisure----"
"And M' Croque-mort's company," he added with a poor smile. "True, true!But the thing was then to do," and he shuddered. "Now my part is done,'twas by God's grace a failure, and I could sing for content like one ofthe little birds we heard the other day in Somme."
He could not but see my bewilderment in my face.
"You wonder at that," said he, relinquishing the Roman manner as healways did when most in earnest. "Does Monsieur fancy a poor old priestcan take to the ancient art of assassination with an easy mind? _Nom denom!_ I could skip to the block like a ballet-dancer if 'twere eitherthat or live the past two days over again and fifty years after. I havenone of the right stomach for murder; that's flat! 'tis a business thatkeeps you awake too much at night, and disturbs the gastric essence;calls, too, for a confounded agility that must be lacking in a person ofmy handsome and plenteous bulk. I had rather go fishing any day in theweek than imbrue. When Buhot entered the room where I waited for a lessworthy man and I fired honestly for my money and missed, I could havedied of sheer rapture. Instead I threw myself upon his breast andembraced him."
"He said none of that to me."
"Like enough not, but 'tis true none the less, though he may keep sofavourable a fact out of his records. A good soul enough, Buhot! We knewhim, your uncle and I, in the old days when I was thinner and played agood game of chess at three in the morning. Fancy Ned Hamilton cuttingshort the glorious career of old Buhot! I'd sooner pick a pocket."
"Or kill a prince!"
"Felicitations on your wit, M. Greig! Heaven help the elderly whenthe new wit is toward! _N'importe!_ Perhaps 'twere better to kill someprinces than to pick a pocket. Is it not better, or less wicked, let ussay, to take the life of a man villainously abusing it than the purse ofa poor wretch making the most of his scanty _livres?_"
And then the priest set out upon his defence. It is too long here toreproduce in his own words, even if I recalled them, and too speciousin its terms for the patience of the honest world of our time. With hishands behind his back he marched up and down the room for the space ofa half-hour at the least, recounting all that led to his crime. Thetale was like a wild romance, but yet, as we know now, true in everyparticular. He was of the Society of Jesus, had lived a stormy youth,and fallen in later years into a disrepute in his own parish, and therethe heads of his Society discovered him a very likely tool for theirpurposes. They had only half convinced him that the death of CharlesEdward was for the glory of God and the good of the Church when theysent him marching with a pistol and L500 in bills of exchange andletters of credit upon a chase that covered a great part of three orfour countries, and ended at Lisbon, when a German Jesuit in the secretgave him ten crusadoes to bring him home with his task unaccomplished.
"I have what amounts almost to a genius for losing the opportunitiesof which I do not desire to avail myself," said Father Hamilton with awhimsical smile.
And then he had lain in disgrace with the Jesuits for a number ofyears until it became manifest (as he confessed with shame) that hisexperience of leisure, wealth, and travel had enough corrupted him tomake the prospect of a second adventure of a similar kind pleasing. Atthat time Charles, lost to the sight of Europe, and only discovered atbrief and tantalising intervals by the Jesuit agents, scarce slept twonights in the same town, but went from country to country _incognito_,so that 'twas no trivial task Father Hamilton undertook to run him toearth.
"The difficulty of it--indeed the small likelihood there was of my everseeing him," he said, "was what mainly induced me to accept the office,though in truth it was compelled. I was doing very well at Dunkerque,"he went on, "and very happy if I had never heard more of prince orpriest
hood, when Father Fleuriau sent me a hurried intimation that myvictim was due at Versailles on Easter and ordered my instant departurethere."
The name of Fleuriau recalled me to my senses. "Stop, stop, FatherHamilton!" I cried, "I must hear no more."
"What!" said he, bitterly, "is't too good a young gentleman to listen tothe confession of a happy murderer that has failed at his trade?"
"I have no feeling left but pity," said I, almost like to weep at this,"but you have been put into this cell along with me for a purpose."
"And what might that be, M. Greig?" he asked, looking round about him,and seeing for the first time, I swear, the sort of place he wasin. "Faith! it is comfort, at any rate; I scarce noticed that, in mypleasure at seeing Paul Greig again."
"You must not tell me any more of your Jesuit plot, nor name any ofthose involved in the same, for Buhot has been at me to cock an earto everything you may say in that direction, and betray you and yourfriends. It is for that he has put us together into this cell."
"_Pardieu!_ am not I betrayed enough already?" cried the priest,throwing up his hands. "I'll never deny my guilt."
"Yes," I said, "but they want the names of your fellow conspirators, andBuhot says they never expect them directly from you."
"He does, does he?" said the priest, smiling. "Faith, M. Buhot has agood memory for his friend's characteristics. No, M. Greig, if theyput this comfortable carcase to the rack itself. And was that allthy concern? Well, as I was saying--let us speak low lest some one belistening--this Father Fleuriau-"
Again I stopped him.
"You put me into a hard position, Father Hamilton," I said. "Myfreedom--my life, perhaps--depends on whether I can tell them yoursecret or not, and here you throw it in my face."
"And why not?" he asked, simply. "I merely wish to show myself largelythe creature of circumstances, and so secure a decent Scot's mostfavourable opinion of me before the end."
"But I might be tempted to betray you."
The old eagle looked again out at his eyes. He gently slapped mycheek with a curious touch of fondness almost womanly, and gave a low,contented laugh.
"_Farceur!_" he said. "As if I did not know my Don Dolorous, my merryAndrew's nephew!" His confidence hugely moved me, and, lest he shouldthink I feared to trust myself with his secrets, I listened to theremainder of his story, which I shall not here set down, as it bears butslightly on my own narrative, and may even yet be revealed only at costof great distress among good families, not only on the Continent but inLondon itself.
When he had done, he thanked me for listening so attentively to a matterthat was so much on his mind that it gave him relief to share it withsome one. "And not only for that, M. Greig," said he, "are my thanksdue, for you saved the life that might have been the prince's insteadof my old gossip, Buhot's. To take the bullet out of my pistol wasthe device your uncle himself would have followed in the likecircumstances."
"But I did not do that!" I protested.
He looked incredulous.
"Buhot said as much," said he; "he let it out unwittingly that I had hadmy claws clipped by my own household."
"Then assuredly not by me, Father Hamilton."
"So!" said he, half incredulous, and a look of speculation came upon hiscountenance.