Bernard Capes

“ I cried, choking and half-sobbing; “is it thou indeed?”
“Creep through the little hole,” she said, “and thou shalt see.”
I laughed and I cried in a single breath.
“Say what thou wilt, ma fillette. Yes, I will call thee as I choose. Didst thou hear but now? I think it is a dying man that speaks to thee. Carinne, say after all you keep a place in your heart for the little odd Thibaut.”
“Insidious! thou wouldst seek to devour the whole, like a little worm in a gall.”
“To hear your voice again! We are always shadows to one another now. As a shadow I swear that I love you dearly. ”

“ I had sunk asleep one afternoon in a copse neighbouring on the royal village of Cléry. Autumn is all a siesta in that mild and beautiful district. Waking, I felt the sunlight on my eyes like a damp warm sponge; and so with my lids gratefully closed I fell a-musing.
“To think,” I murmured, “that the twang of a beetle’s bowstring at my ear on the old bridge outside Coutras should have been the key-note to all this devil’s dance of mine!”
I thought I heard a faint rustle somewhere at hand—a squirrel or coney. I paid no attention to it, but indulged my mood of introspection. ”

“ Ragout of the kidneys and combs of cocks—that is very good—Carinne, see! the ragout! Holy saints, but my pocket! Slice of calf’s head, turtle fashion—girl, are you listening? Be reckless. Take of all if you will. I bid thee—thy little uncle, ma mie. Slice of—Carinne, this is better than the cabbages and fried eggs of Pierrettes. I will not care—I will not. Though I have to cut down trees to meet it, the palate shall have its holiday. Slice of—mon Dieu, Carinne! I ate of it once before in this very house. It melts like the manna of the Israelites. ”

“ THE HERD OF SWINE. I was back in the woods of Pierrettes, my precious satchel, still but two-thirds emptied, slung about my shoulders, my clothes wrinkled dry from their sopping in the waters of the Dordogne. All that day of my finding of the food had I lain concealed in the woods; but, with the fall of dusk, I made my way, by a long détour, to the river-bank, and crossed the stream swimming and in safety. And now was I again la Grand’ Bête, seeking to trace in the scent of trodden violets the path by which my phantom Carinne had vanished. ”

“ My end of the stick dropped into the gutter and wedged itself in slime. I looked up. Above me were Cabochon and a yellow-faced rascal. This last wore a sword by his side and on his head a high-crowned hat stuffed with plumes. I had seen him before—Maillard, l’Abbaye Maillard, a hound with a keen enough scent for blood to make himself a lusty living. He and his colleague Héron would often come to La Force to count their victims before following them to the scaffold.
“Plots—plots!” he muttered, shaking his head tolerantly, as if he were rebuking a child. “See to it, Citizen Cabochon.” ”

“ He preceded us the length of a single corridor, low and narrow—a mere human mole-run. All throughout it the rock seemed to grip us, the air to draw like wire into our lungs. And then, suddenly, we were come to a parapet of stone that cut our path like a whitewashed hoarding. For through a fissure in the plain above it a wedge of light entered—a very wise virgin with her lamp shining like snow;—and under the beam we stopped, and gazed upwards, and could not gaze enough.
But, for Carinne—she was translated! She laughed; she murmured ”

“ Living things!—Grand Dieu! the bats of the living Terror. They peered from holes and alcoves; they mowed and chattered; they shook their sooty locks at us and hailed Gusman in the jargon of the underworld. Thieves and rogues and cowards—here they swarmed in the warrens of despair, the very sacristans of devil-worship, the unclean acolytes of the desecrated rock-chapels, whose books of the Gospel were long since torn for fuel. ”

“ I was padding, towards evening, over a woodland lawn, when from a hollow at the foot of a great chestnut-tree a rumbling snarl issuing vibrated on the strings of my sensibilities, and I saw three or four very ugly snouts project themselves from the blackness. I went steadily by and steadily continued my way, which without doubt was the discerning policy to pursue. But impulse will push behind as well as fly before reason, and presently that which affects the nerves of motion did so frantically hustle me at the rear as to set me off running at the top of my speed. ”

“ Casimir was an epicure, with a palate that could joyfully accommodate itself to black bread and garlic; a sensualist, with the power to fly at a word from a hot-bed of pleasure to a dusty desert of debate. Undoubtedly in him (did I make him the mirror to my conscience) , and in a certain Crépin, with whom I came subsequently to lodge, and who was of the type only a step lower in the art of self-indulgence, I had an opportunity to see reflected a very serious canker in the national constitution. ”

“ So, a suicide, who goes to cast himself headlong into the river, may run in a panic from a falling beam, and be consistent, too; for his compact is with death—not mutilation.
Be that as it may, I know that for the moment terror so snapped at my heel that, under the very teeth of it, I leaped up the scaffold steps—with the wild idea of swarming to the beam above the knife and thence defying my pursuers, should they nose and bay me seated there at refuge—and stood with a white desperate face, scarcely daring to pant out the constriction of my lungs. ”

“ Early in the afternoon—so far as in that rayless desolation one could judge it to be—there broke upon our eyes the flutter of an advancing light, upon our ears the quick secret patter of hurrying steps. These ran up to the very opening of our lair and stopped.
“Hide!” said the deadman’s voice, “I hear them call me to the search! Hide!” and, without another word, he retreated as he had come.
Carinne uttered a little shuddering “Oh!” She took my head between her hands and kissed my lips, the admirable child. ”

“ It was the reflection of my own face, I think, in a little pool of water, that wrought in me this first dull recrudescence of reason. The wild countenance of a maniac stared up at me. Its hollow jaws bristled like the withered husks of a chestnut; its lips were black with the juice of berries; an animal abandon slept in the pupils of its eyes. Ah! it was better that reason should triumph over circumstance than that the soul should subscribe tamely to its own disinheritance. ”

“ With a brave effort, it seems, we might rise to the clouds by our own buoyancy. Take a long breath, Carinne. Canst thou swim?”
She laughed and stopped a moment, and took me by the hands.
“I should be able to,” she said; “I feel so like a fish, or a lizard, whose skin is a little loose on his body. Am I not a dreadful sight, Jean-Louis?”
“Thou art never anything but beautiful in my eyes.” ”

“ Sometimes, as if it crouched beneath a stroke, the flame of the torch would dip and shrink under a current of gas, then leap jocund again when the peril was swept by; sometimes the tinkle of falling water would gladden our ears as with a memory of ancient happiness; and, passing on, in a moment we should be bedewed with spray, and catch a glimpse, in the glare, of a very dropping well of fire. At length, at the turning of a corridor, Gusman called us to a halt. ”

“ I acquit myself of these follies. It is present life I desire. Messieurs, what is it to be? To the front, François!”
The man responded at a leap. The veins of all received the infection of his wild humour. In a moment, chattering and pushing and giggling, we were to take our places for “Shadow Buff.”
We had no sheet. The dirty drab of the wall must suffice. A stool was placed for the guesser—not yet appointed; and la Marquise’s four candles, relighted, were placed on the table over against it, in a receding row like a procession of acolytes. ”

“ His lids rose and fell. Patently his self-possession was an insecure tenure.
“Citizen,” I said, shaking my finger at him. “Since when hast thou learned to set thy will in opposition to that of Barrère?”
“Oh, nom de Dieu!” he whimpered, in great distress; and rose and trundled up and down the room. “I oppose nobody. I am a most unhappy being, condemned by vile circumstance to give the perpetual lie to my conscience.” ”

“ A fine self-sacrificial rapture illumined his wild face.
“Let me be hurled into the bottomless pit,” he cried, “that so the Millennium may rise in the east like an August sun!”
“Now,” said I, “I will commune with my soul during the night, that perchance it may be revealed to me how the guillotine may guillotine itself.”
To my surprise the ridiculous bait took, and the poor wretch sunk down upon his straw and uttered no further word. Crossing the cell to come to my own heap, my foot struck against an iron ring that projected from a flag. ”

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

“ Carinne turned to me with pitiful eyes.
“Ah, le pauvre Crépin!” I cried, in great emotion. “What can one hope but that death came to him passionately, as he desired!”
* * * * * * *
“Citizen Gusman, we are resolved. We must go forth, if it is only to perish. We can endure this damning gloom no longer.”
He looked down on us as we sat, this genii of the torch. His face was always framed to our vision in a lurid wreath; was the sport of any draught that swayed the leaping fire. Submitted to daylight, his features might have resolved themselves into expressionlessness and immobility. ”

“ It is the little incidents of life that are prolific as insects. The situation resolved itself into clamour and laughter and a boisterous groping of the company down the black stairway. In a minute the place was silent and deserted.
I lay still, as yet awaiting developments. I could not forget that M. Tic-tac, as a pronounced patriot, might not honour my confidence. For my escape, it must have been as I supposed. Another victim, eluding the murderers, had drawn them off my scent, and the showman had effected yet a second cross-current. He was indeed fortunate to have kept a whole skin. ”

“ The animal vented a hideous cry and shuffled back into its hole, shedding sparks on its way as if it smouldered like an old rag.
“Oh, mon ami!” whispered Carinne, in a febrile voice—“better the den by the skulls than this!”
The deadman gave an acrid grin.
“À la bonne heure,” said he. “Doubtless hunger pinches. Come back, then; and I will open my wallet and thou shalt thy purse.” ”

“ I seemed all mazed in a silent dream of pity.
“It is quite simple,” she said, “when no cavalier is by to look. Will the citizen turn his head?”
She was up in an instant, and stepping softly into the room beyond, leaned out towards me. On the moment an evil thing grew out of the shadow of a buttress close by, and a wicked insolent face looked into mine with a grin.
“A sweet good-night to Monsieur le Comte,” it said, and vanished. ”

“ Now I think you will acknowledge, M. le Comte, that the Revolution, for all its excesses, is capable of producing a gentleman of honour who knows how to make reparation.”
“Truly, this is no small thing that you have done.”
“Truly I think thou might’st apply superlatives to it, without extravagance. To outwit and baulk the Public Accuser—the cat-fish of the Committee of Safety—Dame! is there a hole in all Paris too small to admit his tentacles? But I tell thee, monsieur, I am already in the prison of my own holy namesake.” ”

“ Nor did this argue a brutish insensibility on my part; but only a lifting of idealism to spheres that offered a more tranquil and serener field for meditation.
Once during the night a single drawn sound, like the pipe of wind in a keyhole, roused me to a half-recovery of my faculties. I had been dreaming of Carinne and of the little pig that fell into the pit, and, associating the phantom cry with the voluble ghosts of my brain, I smiled and fled again to the heights. ”

“ She cried in a terrified voice: “Oh, mon Dieu! hold me, or I sink!” and committed herself shuddering to my embrace.
The blackness was blind, horrible, beyond reason. We could only shut our eyes and whisper to one another, expecting and hoping for Gusman’s return. But he came no more that night, and by-and-by Carinne slept in my arms.
* * * * * * *
The glare of torch-light on my face brought me to my senses. That sombre deadman, as Carinne called him, stood above us—visionless, without movement, it seemed—a lurid genii presented in a swirling drift of smoke. ”