than dogs. But, the other of the two, being angry likewise, struck
the man in like manner with his arm; the look and bearing of the
brothers were then so exactly alike, that I then first perceived
them to be twin brothers.
“From the time of our alighting at the outer gate (which we
found locked, and which one of the brothers had opened to admit
us, and had relocked), I had heard cries proceeding from an upper
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chamber. I was conducted to this chamber straight, the cries
growing louder as we ascended the stairs, and I found a patient in
a high fever of the brain, lying on a bed.
“The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young;
assuredly not much past twenty. Her hair was torn and ragged,
and her arms were bound to her sides with sashes and
handkerchiefs. I noticed that these bonds were all portions of a
gentleman’s dress. On one of them, which was a fringed scarf for a
dress ceremony, I saw the armorial bearings of a Noble, and the
letter E.
“I saw this, within the first minute of my contemplation of the
patient; for, in her restless strivings she had turned over on her
face on the edge of the bed, had drawn the end of the scarf into
her mouth, and was in danger of suffocation. My first act was to
put out my hand to relieve her breathing; and in moving the scarf
aside, the embroidery in the corner caught my sight.
“I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her breast to
calm her and keep her down, and looked into her face. Her eyes
were dilated and wild, and she constantly uttered piercing shrieks,
and repeated the words, ‘My husband, my father, and my brother!’
and then counted up to twelve, and said, ‘Hush!’ For an instant,
and no more, she would pause to listen, and then the piercing
shrieks would begin again, and she would repeat the cry, ‘My
husband, my father, and my brother!’ and would count up to
twelve, and say ‘Hush!’ There was no variation in the order, or the
manner. There was no cessation, but the regular moment’s pause,
in the utterance of these sounds.
“‘How long,’ I asked, ‘has this lasted?’
“To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the elder and the
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younger; by the elder, I mean, him who exercised the most
authority. It was the elder who replied, ‘Since about this hour last
night.’
“‘She has a husband, a father, and a brother?’
“‘A brother.’
“‘I do not address her brother?’
“He answered with great contempt, ‘No.’
“‘She has some recent association with the number twelve?’
“The younger brother impatiently rejoined, ‘With twelve
o’clock.’
“‘See, gentlemen,’ said I, still keeping my hands upon her
breast, ‘how useless I am, as you have brought me! If I had known
what I was coming to see, I could have come provided. As it is,
time must be lost. There are no medicines to be obtained in this
lonely place.’
“The elder brother looked to the younger, who said haughtily,
‘There is a case of medicines here’; and brought it from a closet,
and put it on the table.
“I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and put the stoppers
to my lips. If I had wanted to use anything save narcotic medicines
that were poisons in themselves, I would not have administered
any of those.
“‘Do you doubt them?’ asked the younger brother.
“‘You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,’ I replied, and said
no more.
“I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, and after
many efforts, the dose that I desired to give. As I intended to
repeat it after a while, and as it was necessary to watch its
influence, I then sat down by the side of the bed. There was a
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timid and suppressed woman in attendance (wife of the man
down-stairs), who had retreated into a corner. The house was
damp and decayed, indifferently furnished—evidently, recently
occupied and temporarily used. Some thick old hangings had been
nailed up before the windows, to deaden the sound of the shrieks.
They continued to be uttered in their regular succession, with the
cry, ‘My husband, my father, and my brother!’ the counting up to
twelve, and ‘Hush!’ The frenzy was so violent, that I had not
unfastened the bandages restraining the arms; but I had looked to
them, to see that they were not painful. The only spark of
encouragement in the case, was, that my hand upon the sufferer’s
breast had this much soothing influence, that for minutes at a time
it tranquilised the figure. It had no effect upon the cries; no
pendulum could be more regular.
“For the reason that my hand had this effect (I assume), I had
sat by the side of the bed for half an hour, with the two brothers
looking on, before the elder said:
“‘There is another patient.’
“I was startled, and asked, ‘Is it a pressing case?’
“‘You had better see,’ he carelessly answered; and took up a
light.
“The other patient lay in a back room across a second staircase,
which was a species of loft over a stable. There was a low plastered
ceiling to a part of it; the rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled
roof, and there were beams across. Hay and straw were stored in
that portion of the place, faggots for firing, and a heap of apples in
sand. I had to pass through that part, to get at the other. My
memory is circumstantial and unshaken. I try it with these details,
and I see them all, in this my cell in the Bastille, near the close of
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the tenth year of my captivity, as I saw them all that night.
“On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown under his
head, lay a handsome peasant boy—a boy of not more than
seventeen at the most. He lay on his back, with his teeth set, his
right hand clenched on his breast, and his glaring eyes looking
straight upward. I could not see where his wound was, as I
kneeled on one knee over him; but, I could see that he was dying
of a wound from a sharp point.
“‘I am a doctor, my poor fellow,’ said I. ‘Let me examine it.’
“‘I do not want it examined,’ he answered; ‘let it be.’ “It was
under his hand, and I soothed him to let me move his hand away.
The wound was a sword-thrust, received from twenty to twenty-
four hours before, but no skill could have saved him if it had been
looked to without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned my
eyes to the elder brother, I saw him looking down at this
handsome boy whose life was ebbing out, as if he were a wounded
bird, or hare, or rabbit; not at all as if he were a fellow-creature.
“‘How has this been done, monsieur?’ said I.
“‘A crazed young common dog! A serf! Forced my brother to
draw upon him, and has fallen by my brother’s sword—like a
gentleman.’
“There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred humanity in
this answer. The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was
inconvenient to have that different order of creature dying there,
and that it would have been better if he had died in the usual
obscure routine of his vermin kind. He was quite incapable of any
compassionate feeling about the boy, or about his fate.
“The boy’s eyes had slowly moved to him as he had spoken, and
they now slowly moved to me.
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“‘Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we common
dogs are proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, outrage us, beat
us, kill us; but we have a little pride left, sometimes. She—have
you seen her, Doctor?’
“The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though subdued
by the distance. He referred to them, as if she were lying in our
presence.
“I said, ‘I have seen her.’
“‘She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their shameful rights,
these Nobles. in the modesty and virtue of our sisters, many years,
but we have had good girls among us. I know it, and have heard
my father say so. She was a good girl. She was betrothed to a good
young man, too: a tenant of his. We were all tenants of his—that
man’s who stands there. The other is his brother, the worst of a
bad race.’
“It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily
force to speak; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis.
“‘We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we
common dogs are by those superior Beings—taxed by him without
mercy, obliged to work for him without pay, obliged to grind our
corn at his mill, obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our
wretched crops, and forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame
bird of our own, pillaged and plundered to that degree that when
we chanced to have a bit of meat, we ate it in fear, with the door
barred and the shutters closed, that his people should not see it
and take it from us—I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and
were made so poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing
to bring a child into the world, and that what we should most pray
for, was, that our women might be barren and our miserable race
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die out!’ “I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed,
bursting forth like a fire. I had supposed that it must be latent in
the people somewhere; but. I had never seen it break out, until I
saw it in the dying boy.
“‘Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He was ailing at that
time, poor fellow, and she married her lover, that she might tend
and comfort him in our cottage—our dog-hut, as that man would
call it. She had not been married many weeks, when that man’s
brother saw her and admired her, and asked that man to lend her
to him—for what are husbands among us! He was willing enough,
but my sister was good and virtuous, and hated his brother with a
hatred as strong as mine. What did the two then, to persuade her
husband to use his influence with her, to make her willing?’
“The boy’s eyes, which had been fixed on mine, slowly turned
to the looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was
true. The two opposing kinds of pride confronting one another, I
can see, even in this Bastille; the gentleman’s all negligent
indifference; the peasant’s, all trodden-down sentiment, and
passionate revenge.
“‘You know, Doctor, that it is among the Rights of these Nobles
to harness us common dogs to carts, and drive us. They so
harnessed him and drove him. You know that it is among their
Rights to keep us in their grounds all night, quieting the frogs, in
order that their noble sleep may not be disturbed. They kept him
out in the unwholesome mists at night, and ordered him back into
his harness in the day. But he was not persuaded. No! Taken out
of harness one day at noon, to feed—if he could find food—he
sobbed twelve times, once for every stroke of the bell, and died on
her bosom.’ “Nothing human could have held life in the boy but
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his determination to tell all his wrong. He forced back the
gathering shadows of death, as he forced his clenched right hand
to remain clenched, and to cover his wound.
“‘Then, with that man’s permission and even with his aid, his
brother took her away; in spite of what I know she must have told
his brother—and what that is, will not be long unknown to you,
Doctor, if it is now—his brother took her away—for his pleasure
and diversion, for a little while. I saw her pass me on the road.
When I took the tidings home, our father’s heart burst; he never
spoke one of the words that filled it. I took my young sister (for I
have another) to a place beyond the reach of this man, and where,
at least, she will never be his vassal. Then, I tracked the brother
here, and last night climbed in—a common dog, but sword in
hand.—Where is the loft window? It was somewhere here?’
“The room was darkening to his sight; the world was narrowing
around him. I glanced about me, and saw that the hay and straw
were trampled over the floor, as if there had been a struggle.
“‘She heard me, and ran in. I told her not to come near us till he
was dead. He came in and first tossed me some pieces of money;
then struck at me with a whip. But I, though a common dog, so
struck at him as to make him draw. Let him break into as many
pieces as he will, the sword that he stained with my common
blood; he drew to defend himself—thrust at me with all his skill for
his life.’
“My glance had fallen, but a few moments before. on the
fragments of a broken sword, lying among the hay. That weapon
was a gentleman’s. In another place. lay an old sword that seemed
to have been a soldier’s.
“‘Now, lift me up, Doctor; lift me up. Where is he?’
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“‘He is not here,’ I said, supporting the boy, and thinking that
he referred to the brother.
“‘He! Proud as these Nobles are, he is afraid to see me. Where
is the man who was here? Turn my face to him.’
“I did so, raising the boy’s head against my knee. But, invested
for the moment with extraordinary power, he raised himself
completely: obliging me to rise too, or I could not have still
supported him.
“‘Marquis,’ said the boy, turned to him with his eyes opened
wide, and his right hand raised, ‘in the days when all these things
are to be answered for, I summon you and yours, the last of your
bad race, to answer for them. I mark this cross of blood upon you,
as a sign that I do it. In the days when all these things are to be
answered for, I summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to
answer for them separately. I mark this cross of blood upon him,
as a sign that I do it.’
“Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and with his
forefinger drew a cross in the air. He stood for an instant with the
finger yet raised, and, as it dropped, he dropped with it, and I laid
