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Exchange?'

He kept his small smooth hand in constant requisition, as if it were a

witness to his gentility that had often done him good service before.

'Two years ago I came to Marseilles. I admit that I was poor; I had been

ill. When your lawyers, your politicians, your intriguers, your men of

the Exchange fall ill, and have not scraped money together, they become

poor. I put up at the Cross of Gold,--kept then by Monsieur Henri

Barronneau--sixty-five at least, and in a failing state of health. I had

lived in the house some four months when Monsieur Henri Barronneau had

the misfortune to die;--at any rate, not a rare misfortune, that. It

happens without any aid of mine, pretty often.'

John Baptist having smoked his cigarette down to his fingers' ends,

Monsieur Rigaud had the magnanimity to throw him another. He lighted the

second at the ashes of the first, and smoked on, looking sideways at his

companion, who, preoccupied with his own case, hardly looked at him.

'Monsieur Barronneau left a widow. She was two-and-twenty. She had

gained a reputation for beauty, and (which is often another thing) was

beautiful. I continued to live at the Cross of Gold. I married Madame

Barronneau. It is not for me to say whether there was any great

disparity in such a match. Here I stand, with the contamination of a

jail upon me; but it is possible that you may think me better suited to

her than her former husband was.'

He had a certain air of being a handsome man--which he was not; and

a certain air of being a well-bred man--which he was not. It was mere

swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others,

blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.

'Be it as it may, Madame Barronneau approved of me. That is not to

prejudice me, I hope?'

His eye happening to light upon John Baptist with this inquiry, that

little man briskly shook his head in the negative, and repeated in an

argumentative tone under his breath, altro, altro, altro, altro--an

infinite number of times.

'Now came the difficulties of our position. I am proud. I say nothing

in defence of pride, but I am proud. It is also my character to govern.

I can't submit; I must govern. Unfortunately, the property of Madame

Rigaud was settled upon herself. Such was the insane act of her late

husband. More unfortunately still, she had relations. When a wife's

relations interpose against a husband who is a gentleman, who is proud,

and who must govern, the consequences are inimical to peace. There

was yet another source of difference between us. Madame Rigaud was

unfortunately a little vulgar. I sought to improve her manners and

ameliorate her general tone; she (supported in this likewise by her

relations) resented my endeavours. Quarrels began to arise between us;

and, propagated and exaggerated by the slanders of the relations of

Madame Rigaud, to become notorious to the neighbours. It has been said

that I treated Madame Rigaud with cruelty. I may have been seen to slap

her face--nothing more. I have a light hand; and if I have been seen

apparently to correct Madame Rigaud in that manner, I have done it

almost playfully.'

If the playfulness of Monsieur Rigaud were at all expressed by his smile

at this point, the relations of Madame Rigaud might have said that

they would have much preferred his correcting that unfortunate woman

seriously.

'I am sensitive and brave. I do not advance it as a merit to be

sensitive and brave, but it is my character. If the male relations of

Madame Rigaud had put themselves forward openly, I should have known how

to deal with them. They knew that, and their machinations were conducted

in secret; consequently, Madame Rigaud and I were brought into frequent

and unfortunate collision. Even when I wanted any little sum of money

for my personal expenses, I could not obtain it without collision--and

I, too, a man whose character it is to govern! One night, Madame Rigaud

and myself were walking amicably--I may say like lovers--on a height

overhanging the sea. An evil star occasioned Madame Rigaud to advert to

her relations; I reasoned with her on that subject, and remonstrated on

the want of duty and devotion manifested in her allowing herself to be

influenced by their jealous animosity towards her husband. Madame Rigaud

retorted; I retorted; Madame Rigaud grew warm; I grew warm, and provoked

her. I admit it. Frankness is a part of my character. At length, Madame

Rigaud, in an access of fury that I must ever deplore, threw herself

upon me with screams of passion (no doubt those that were overheard

at some distance), tore my clothes, tore my hair, lacerated my hands,

trampled and trod the dust, and finally leaped over, dashing herself to

death upon the rocks below. Such is the train of incidents which

malice has perverted into my endeavouring to force from Madame Rigaud

a relinquishment of her rights; and, on her persistence in a refusal to

make the concession I required, struggling with her--assassinating her!'

He stepped aside to the ledge where the vine leaves yet lay strewn

about, collected two or three, and stood wiping his hands upon them,

with his back to the light.

'Well,' he demanded after a silence, 'have you nothing to say to all

that?'

'It's ugly,' returned the little man, who had risen, and was brightening

his knife upon his shoe, as he leaned an arm against the wall.

'What do you mean?' John Baptist polished his knife in silence.

'Do you mean that I have not represented the case correctly?'

'Al-tro!' returned John Baptist. The word was an apology now, and stood

for 'Oh, by no means!'

'What then?'

'Presidents and tribunals are so prejudiced.'

'Well,' cried the other, uneasily flinging the end of his cloak over his

shoulder with an oath, 'let them do their worst!'

'Truly I think they will,' murmured John Baptist to himself, as he bent

his head to put his knife in his sash.

Nothing more was said on either side, though they both began walking

to and fro, and necessarily crossed at every turn. Monsieur Rigaud

sometimes stopped, as if he were going to put his case in a new light,

or make some irate remonstrance; but Signor Cavalletto continuing to

go slowly to and fro at a grotesque kind of jog-trot pace with his eyes

turned downward, nothing came of these inclinings.

By-and-by the noise of the key in the lock arrested them both. The sound

of voices succeeded, and the tread of feet. The door clashed, the voices

and the feet came on, and the prison-keeper slowly ascended the stairs,

followed by a guard of soldiers.

'Now, Monsieur Rigaud,' said he, pausing for a moment at the grate, with

his keys in his hands, 'have the goodness to come out.'

'I am to depart in state, I see?' 'Why, unless you did,' returned the

jailer, 'you might depart in so many pieces that it would be difficult

to get you together again. There's a crowd, Monsieur Rigaud, and it

doesn't love you.'

He passed on out of sight, and unlocked and unbarred a low door in the

corner of the chamber. 'Now,' said he, as he opened it and appeared

within, 'come out.'

There is no sort of whiteness in all the hues under the sun at all like

the whiteness of Monsieur Rigaud's face as it was then. Neither is there

any expression of the human countenance at all like that expression in

every little line of which the frightened heart is seen to beat. Both

are conventionally compared with death; but the difference is the whole

deep gulf between the struggle done, and the fight at its most desperate

extremity.

He lighted another of his paper cigars at his companion's; put it

tightly between his teeth; covered his head with a soft slouched hat;

threw the end of his cloak over his shoulder again; and walked out into

the side gallery on which the door opened, without taking any further

notice of Signor Cavalletto. As to that little man himself, his whole

attention had become absorbed in getting near the door and looking out

at it. Precisely as a beast might approach the opened gate of his den

and eye the freedom beyond, he passed those few moments in watching and

peering, until the door was closed upon him.

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.

CHAPTER 2 Fellow Travellers

'No more of yesterday's howling over yonder to-day, Sir; is there?'

'I have heard none.'

'Then you may be sure there is none. When these people howl, they howl

to be heard.'

'Most people do, I suppose.'

'Ah! but these people are always howling. Never happy otherwise.'

'Do you mean the Marseilles people?'

'I mean the French people. They're always at it. As to Marseilles, we

know what Marseilles is. It sent the most insurrectionary tune into the

world that was ever composed. It couldn't exist without allonging and

marshonging to something or other--victory or death, or blazes, or

something.'

The speaker, with a whimsical good humour upon him all the time, looked

over the parapet-wall with the greatest disparagement of Marseilles; and

taking up a determined position by putting his hands in his pockets and

rattling his money at it, apostrophised it with a short laugh.

'Allong and marshong, indeed. It would be more creditable to you,

I think, to let other people allong and marshong about their lawful

business, instead of shutting 'em up in quarantine!'

'Tiresome enough,' said the other. 'But we shall be out to-day.'

'Out to-day!' repeated the first. 'It's almost an aggravation of the

enormity, that we shall be out to-day. Out! What have we ever been in

for?'

'For no very strong reason, I must say. But as we come from the East,

and as the East is the country of the plague--'

'The plague!' repeated the other. 'That's my grievance. I have had the

plague continually, ever since I have been here. I am like a sane man

shut up in a madhouse; I can't stand the suspicion of the thing. I came

here as well as ever I was in my life; but to suspect me of the plague

is to give me the plague. And I have had it--and I have got it.'

'You bear it very well, Mr Meagles,' said the second speaker, smiling.

'No. If you knew the real state of the case, that's the last observation

you would think of making. I have been waking up night after night, and

saying, NOW I have got it, NOW it has developed itself, NOW I am in for

it, NOW these fellows are making out their case for their precautions.

Why, I'd as soon have a spit put through me, and be stuck upon a card in

a collection of beetles, as lead the life I have been leading here.'

'Well, Mr Meagles, say no more about it now it's over,' urged a cheerful

feminine voice.

'Over!' repeated Mr Meagles, who appeared (though without any

ill-nature) to be in that peculiar state of mind in which the last word

spoken by anybody else is a new injury. 'Over! and why should I say no

more about it because it's over?'

It was Mrs Meagles who had spoken to Mr Meagles; and Mrs Meagles was,

like Mr Meagles, comely and healthy, with a pleasant English face which

had been looking at homely things for five-and-fifty years or more, and