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'Hola, Pig!' cried Rigaud, with a noisy stimulating cry, as if

Cavalletto were an Italian horse or mule. 'What! The infernal old jail

was a respectable one to this. There was dignity in the bars and stones

of that place. It was a prison for men. But this? Bah! A hospital for

imbeciles!'

He smoked his cigarette out, with his ugly smile so fixed upon his face

that he looked as though he were smoking with his drooping beak of a

nose, rather than with his mouth; like a fancy in a weird picture. When

he had lighted a second cigarette at the still burning end of the first,

he said to Clennam:

'One must pass the time in the madman's absence. One must talk. One

can't drink strong wine all day long, or I would have another bottle.

She's handsome, sir. Though not exactly to my taste, still, by

the Thunder and the Lightning! handsome. I felicitate you on your

admiration.'

'I neither know nor ask,' said Clennam, 'of whom you speak.'

'Della bella Gowana, sir, as they say in Italy. Of the Gowan, the fair

Gowan.'

'Of whose husband you were the--follower, I think?'

'Sir? Follower? You are insolent. The friend.'

'Do you sell all your friends?'

Rigaud took his cigarette from his mouth, and eyed him with a momentary

revelation of surprise. But he put it between his lips again, as he

answered with coolness:

'I sell anything that commands a price. How do your lawyers live, your

politicians, your intriguers, your men of the Exchange? How do you live?

How do you come here? Have you sold no friend? Lady of mine! I rather

think, yes!'

Clennam turned away from him towards the window, and sat looking out at

the wall.

'Effectively, sir,' said Rigaud, 'Society sells itself and sells me: and

I sell Society. I perceive you have acquaintance with another lady. Also

handsome. A strong spirit. Let us see. How do they call her? Wade.'

He received no answer, but could easily discern that he had hit the

mark.

'Yes,' he went on, 'that handsome lady and strong spirit addresses me in

the street, and I am not insensible. I respond. That handsome lady and

strong spirit does me the favour to remark, in full confidence, "I have

my curiosity, and I have my chagrins. You are not more than ordinarily

honourable, perhaps?" I announce myself, "Madame, a gentleman from

the birth, and a gentleman to the death; but NOT more than ordinarily

honourable. I despise such a weak fantasy." Thereupon she is pleased to

compliment. "The difference between you and the rest is," she answers,

"that you say so." For she knows Society. I accept her congratulations

with gallantry and politeness. Politeness and little gallantries are

inseparable from my character. She then makes a proposition, which is,

in effect, that she has seen us much together; that it appears to her

that I am for the passing time the cat of the house, the friend of

the family; that her curiosity and her chagrins awaken the fancy to be

acquainted with their movements, to know the manner of their life, how

the fair Gowana is beloved, how the fair Gowana is cherished, and so

on. She is not rich, but offers such and such little recompenses for the

little cares and derangements of such services; and I graciously--to do

everything graciously is a part of my character--consent to accept them.

O yes! So goes the world. It is the mode.'

Though Clennam's back was turned while he spoke, and thenceforth to the

end of the interview, he kept those glittering eyes of his that were too

near together, upon him, and evidently saw in the very carriage of the

head, as he passed with his braggart recklessness from clause to clause

of what he said, that he was saying nothing which Clennam did not

already know.

'Whoof! The fair Gowana!' he said, lighting a third cigarette with a

sound as if his lightest breath could blow her away. 'Charming, but

imprudent! For it was not well of the fair Gowana to make mysteries of

letters from old lovers, in her bedchamber on the mountain, that her

husband might not see them. No, no. That was not well. Whoof! The Gowana

was mistaken there.'

'I earnestly hope,' cried Arthur aloud, 'that Pancks may not be long

gone, for this man's presence pollutes the room.'

'Ah! But he'll flourish here, and everywhere,' said Rigaud, with an

exulting look and snap of his fingers. 'He always has; he always will!'

Stretching his body out on the only three chairs in the room besides

that on which Clennam sat, he sang, smiting himself on the breast as the

gallant personage of the song.

'Who passes by this road so late?

Compagnon de la Majolaine!

Who passes by this road so late?

Always gay!

'Sing the Refrain, pig! You could sing it once, in another jail. Sing

it! Or, by every Saint who was stoned to death, I'll be affronted and

compromising; and then some people who are not dead yet, had better have

been stoned along with them!'

'Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,

Compagnon de la Majolaine!

Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,

Always gay!'

Partly in his old habit of submission, partly because his not doing it

might injure his benefactor, and partly because he would as soon do

it as anything else, Cavalletto took up the Refrain this time. Rigaud

laughed, and fell to smoking with his eyes shut.

Possibly another quarter of an hour elapsed before Mr Pancks's step was

heard upon the stairs, but the interval seemed to Clennam insupportably

long. His step was attended by another step; and when Cavalletto opened

the door, he admitted Mr Pancks and Mr Flintwinch. The latter was no

sooner visible, than Rigaud rushed at him and embraced him boisterously.

'How do you find yourself, sir?' said Mr Flintwinch, as soon as he could

disengage himself, which he struggled to do with very little ceremony.

'Thank you, no; I don't want any more.' This was in reference to another

menace of attention from his recovered friend.

'Well, Arthur. You remember what I said to you about sleeping dogs and

missing ones. It's come true, you see.'

He was as imperturbable as ever, to all appearance, and nodded his head

in a moralising way as he looked round the room.

'And this is the Marshalsea prison for debt!' said Mr Flintwinch. 'Hah!

you have brought your pigs to a very indifferent market, Arthur.'

If Arthur had patience, Rigaud had not. He took his little Flintwinch,

with fierce playfulness, by the two lapels of his coat, and cried:

'To the Devil with the Market, to the Devil with the Pigs, and to the

Devil with the Pig-Driver! Now! Give me the answer to my letter.'

'If you can make it convenient to let go a moment, sir,' returned Mr

Flintwinch, 'I'll first hand Mr Arthur a little note that I have for

him.'

He did so. It was in his mother's maimed writing, on a slip of paper,

and contained only these words:

'I hope it is enough that you have ruined yourself. Rest contented

without more ruin. Jeremiah Flintwinch is my messenger and

representative. Your affectionate M. C.'

Clennam read this twice, in silence, and then tore it to pieces. Rigaud

in the meanwhile stepped into a chair, and sat himself on the back with

his feet upon the seat.

'Now, Beau Flintwinch,' he said, when he had closely watched the note to

its destruction, 'the answer to my letter?'

'Mrs Clennam did not write, Mr Blandois, her hands being cramped,

and she thinking it as well to send it verbally by me.' Mr Flintwinch

screwed this out of himself, unwillingly and rustily. 'She sends

her compliments, and says she doesn't on the whole wish to term

you unreasonable, and that she agrees. But without prejudicing the

appointment that stands for this day week.'

Monsieur Rigaud, after indulging in a fit of laughter, descended from

his throne, saying, 'Good! I go to seek an hotel!' But, there his eyes

encountered Cavalletto, who was still at his post.

'Come, Pig,' he added, 'I have had you for a follower against my will;

now, I'll have you against yours. I tell you, my little reptiles, I

am born to be served. I demand the service of this contrabandist as my

domestic until this day week.'

In answer to Cavalletto's look of inquiry, Clennam made him a sign

to go; but he added aloud, 'unless you are afraid of him.' Cavalletto

replied with a very emphatic finger-negative.'No, master, I am not

afraid of him, when I no more keep it secrettementally that he was once

my comrade.' Rigaud took no notice of either remark until he had lighted

his last cigarette and was quite ready for walking.

'Afraid of him,' he said then, looking round upon them all. 'Whoof! My

children, my babies, my little dolls, you are all afraid of him. You

give him his bottle of wine here; you give him meat, drink, and lodging

there; you dare not touch him with a finger or an epithet. No. It is his

character to triumph! Whoof!

'Of all the king's knights he's the flower, And he's always gay!'

With this adaptation of the Refrain to himself, he stalked out of the

room closely followed by Cavalletto, whom perhaps he had pressed into

his service because he tolerably well knew it would not be easy to get

rid of him. Mr Flintwinch, after scraping his chin, and looking about

with caustic disparagement of the Pig-Market, nodded to Arthur, and

followed. Mr Pancks, still penitent and depressed, followed too; after

receiving with great attention a secret word or two of instructions from

Arthur, and whispering back that he would see this affair out, and stand

by it to the end.

The prisoner, with the feeling that he was more despised, more scorned

and repudiated, more helpless, altogether more miserable and fallen than

before, was left alone again.

CHAPTER 29. A Plea in the Marshalsea

Haggard anxiety and remorse are bad companions to be barred up with.

Brooding all day, and resting very little indeed at night, t will not

arm a man against misery. Next morning, Clennam felt that his health was

sinking, as his spirits had already sunk and that the weight under which

he bent was bearing him down.

Night after night he had risen from his bed of wretchedness at twelve or

one o'clock, and had sat at his window watching the sickly lamps in the

yard, and looking upward for the first wan trace of day, hours before it

was possible that the sky could show it to him. Now when the night came,

he could not even persuade himself to undress.

For a burning restlessness set in, an agonised impatience of the prison,

and a conviction that he was going to break his heart and die there,

which caused him indescribable suffering. His dread and hatred of the

place became so intense that he felt it a labour to draw his breath in

it. The sensation of being stifled sometimes so overpowered him, that

he would stand at the window holding his throat and gasping. At the

same time a longing for other air, and a yearning to be beyond the blind

blank wall, made him feel as if he must go mad with the ardour of the

desire.

Many other prisoners had had experience of this condition before him,

and its violence and continuity had worn themselves out in their cases,

as they did in his. Two nights and a day exhausted it. It came back by

fits, but those grew fainter and returned at lengthening intervals. A

desolate calm succeeded; and the middle of the week found him settled

down in the despondency of low, slow fever.

With Cavalletto and Pancks away, he had no visitors to fear but Mr and

Mrs Plornish. His anxiety, in reference to that worthy pair, was that

they should not come near him; for, in the morbid state of his nerves,

he sought to be left alone, and spared the being seen so subdued and

weak. He wrote a note to Mrs Plornish representing himself as occupied

with his affairs, and bound by the necessity of devoting himself to

them, to remain for a time even without the pleasant interruption of

a sight of her kind face. As to Young John, who looked in daily at a

certain hour, when the turnkeys were relieved, to ask if he could do

anything for him; he always made a pretence of being engaged in writing,

and to answer cheerfully in the negative. The subject of their only

long conversation had never been revived between them. Through all these

changes of unhappiness, however, it had never lost its hold on Clennam's

mind.

The sixth day of the appointed week was a moist, hot, misty day. It

seemed as though the prison's poverty, and shabbiness, and dirt, were

growing in the sultry atmosphere. With an aching head and a weary heart,

Clennam had watched the miserable night out, listening to the fall of

rain on the yard pavement, thinking of its softer fall upon the country

earth. A blurred circle of yellow haze had risen up in the sky in lieu

of sun, and he had watched the patch it put upon his wall, like a bit of

the prison's raggedness. He had heard the gates open; and the badly shod

feet that waited outside shuffle in; and the sweeping, and pumping,

and moving about, begin, which commenced the prison morning. So ill and

faint that he was obliged to rest many times in the process of getting

himself washed, he had at length crept to his chair by the open window.

In it he sat dozing, while the old woman who arranged his room went

through her morning's work.

Light of head with want of sleep and want of food (his appetite, and

even his sense of taste, having forsaken him), he had been two or three

times conscious, in the night, of going astray. He had heard fragments

of tunes and songs in the warm wind, which he knew had no existence.

Now that he began to doze in exhaustion, he heard them again; and voices