"Dear Pisgah," read the text, "I am here at claim of restaurateur; shall die to-morrow at or before twelve o'clock, if Andy Plade don't fork over my subscription of two hundred francs. Andy Plade damned knave—no mistake! No living soul been to see me, except letter from Hon. Mr. Slidell. He has got sixteen thousand dollars in specie for Simp. Where's Simp, dogorn him! Hon. S. sent to Simp's house; understood he'd sailed for America. Requested Hon. S. to give me small part of money as Simp's next friend. Hon. S. declined. Population of prison very great. Damned scrub stock! Don't object to imprisonment as much as the fleas. Fleas bent on aiding my escape. If they crawl with me to-morrow night as far again as last night I'll be clear—no mistake! Live on soup, chiefly. Abhor soup. Had forty francs here first day, but debtor with one boot and spectacles won it atpicquet. Restaurateur says bound to keep me here a thousand years if I don't sock—shall die—no mistake! Come see me,toute suite. Fetch pocket-comb, soap, and English Bible."Yours, in deep waters,Freckle."
"The whole world is in deep waters," said Pisgah, dismally. "So much the better for them; here goes for something stronger!"
He repaired to the nearest drinking-saloon, and demanded a glass brimful of absinthe, at which all the garçons and patrons held up their hands while he drank it to the dregs.
"Sacristie!" cried a man with mouth wide open, "that gentleman can drink clear laudanum."
"I wish," thought Pisgah, with a pale face, "that it had been laudanum; I should have been dead by this time and all over. Why don't I get thedelirium tremens? I should like to be crazy. Oh, ho, ho, ho!" he continued, laughing wildly, "to be in a hospital—nurses, soft bed, good food, pity—oh, ho! that would be a fate fit for an emperor."
Here his eye caught something across the way which riveted it, and he took half a step forward, exultingly. A greatcaserne, or barrack, adjoined the Hôtel de Ville, and twice every day, after breakfast and dinner, the soldiers within distributed the surplus of their rations to mendicants without. The latter were already assembling—laborers in neat, common clothing, with idlers and profligates not more forbidding, while a soldier on guard directed them where to rest and in what order or number to enter the building. Pisgah halted a moment with his heart in his throat. But he was very hungry, and his silver was half gone already; if he purchased a dinner, he might not be left with sufficient to obtain a bed for the night.
"Great God!" he said aloud, lifting his clenched hands and swollen eyes to the stars, "am I, then, among the very dogs, that I should beg the crumbs of a common soldier?"
He took his place in the line, and when at length his turn was announced, followed the rabble shamefacedly. Thechasseursin the mess-room were making merry after dinner with pipes and cards, and one of these, giving Pisgah a piece of bread and a tin basin ofstrong soup, slapped him smartly upon the shoulder, and cried:
"My fine fellow! you have the stuff in you for a soldier."
"I am just getting a soldier's stuff into me," responded Pisgah, antithetically.
"Why do you go abroad, hungry, ill-dressed, and houseless, when you can wear the livery of France?"
Pisgah thought the soldier a very presuming person.
"I am a foreigner," he said, "a—a—a French Canadian (we speakpatoisthere). My troubles are temporary merely. A day or two may make me rich."
"Yet for that day or two," continued thechasseur, "you will have the humiliation of begging your bread. What signifies seven years of honorable service to three days of mendicancy and distress? We are well cared for by the nation; we are respected over the world. It is a mean thing to be a soldier in other lands; here we are the gentlemen of France."
Pisgah had never looked upon it in that light, and said so.
"Your poverty may have unmanned you," repeated the other; "to recover your own esteem do a manly act! We have all feared death as citizens; but take cold steel in your hand, and you can look into your grave without a qualm. I say to you," spoke thechasseur, clearly and eloquently, "be one of us. Decide now, before a doubt mars your better resolve! You are a young man, though the soulless career of a citizen has anticipated the whitening of your hairs. Plant your foot; throw back your shoulders; say 'yes!'"
"I do!" cried Pisgah, with something of the other's enthusiasm; "I was born a gentleman, I will die a gentleman, or a soldier."
They put Mr. Pisgah among the conscripts recently levied, and he went about town with a fictitious number in his hat, joining in their bacchanal choruses. The next day he appeared in white duck jacket and pantaloons, looking like an overgrown baker's boy, with a chapeau like a flat, burnt loaf. He was then put through the manual, which seemed to indicate all possible motions save that of liquoring up, and when he was so fatigued that he had not the energy even to fall down, he was clasped in the arms of Madame Francine, who had traced him to the barracks, but was too late to avert his destiny.
"Oh!mon amant!" she cried, falling upon his neck. "Why did you go and do it? You knew that I did not mean to see you starve."
"You have consigned me to a soldier's grave, woman!" answered Pisgah, in the deepest tragedy tone.
"Do not say so, mybonbon!" pleaded the good lady, covering him with kisses. "I would have worn my hands to the bone to save you from this dreadful life. Suppose you should be sent to Algiers or Mexico, or some other heathen country, and die there."
It was Pisgah's turn to be touched.
"My blood is upon your head, Francine! Have you any money?"
"Yes, yes! a gentleman, anoir, anaigre, for whom I have washed, paid me fifty francs this evening. It is all here; take it, my love!"
"I do not know, creature! that your conduct permits me to do so," said Pisgah, drawing back.
"You will drive me mad if you refuse," shrieked the blanchisseuse. "Oh! oh! how wicked and wretched am I!"
"Enough, madame! step over the way for my habitual glass of absinthe. Be particular about the change. We military men must be careful of our incomes. Stay! you may embrace me if you like."
The poor woman came every day to the barracks, bringing some trifle of food or clothing. She washed his regimentals, burnished his buckles and boots, paid his losses at cards, and bought him books and tobacco. She could never persuade herself that Pisgah was not her victim, and he found it useful to humor the notion.
Down in the swift Seine, at her booth in the great lavatory, where the ice rushed by and the rain beat in, she thought of Pisgah as she toiled; and though her back ached and her hands were flayed, she never wondered if her lot were not the most pitiable, and his in part deserved.
How often should we hard, selfish men, thank God for the weaknesses of women!
And so, with Mr. Pisgah on the road to glory, Mr. Simp on the smooth sea, Mr. Freckle in the debtor's jail, Mr. Risque behind his four-in-hand, and Mr. Lees in the charity grave, let us sit with the two remaining colonists in the cabriolet at Bellinzona; for it is themonth of April, and they are to cross the great St. Gotharden routefor Paris. Here is the scene: a gloomy stone building for the diligence company; two great yellow diligences, empty and unharnessed in the area before; one other diligence, packed full, with the horses' heads turned northward, and the blue-nosed Swiss clerk calling out the names of passengers; a half-dozen cabriolets looking at each other irresolutely and facing all possible ways; two score of unwashed loungers, in red neck-kerchiefs and velvet jackets, smoking rank, rakish, black cigars; several streets of equal crookedness and filthiness abutting against a grimy church, whence beggars, old women, and priests emerge continually; and far above all, as if suspended in the air, a grim, battlemented castle, a defence, as it seems, against the snowy mountains which march upon Bellinzona from every side to crush its orchards and vineyards and drown it in the marshes of Lago Maggiore.
"Diligenza compito!" cries the clerk, moving toward the waiting cabriolet—"Signore Hugenoto."
"Here!" replies a small, consequential-looking person, reconnoitring the interior of the vehicle.
"Le Signore Plaèdo!"
"Ci," responds a dark, erect gentleman, striding forward and saying, in clear Italian, "Are there no other passengers?"
"None," answered the clerk; "you will have a good time together; please remember the guard!"
The guard, however, was in advance, a tall person, wrapped to the eyes in fur, wearing a silver bugle in front of his cap, and covered with buff breeches.
He flourished his whip like a fencing-master, moved in a cloud of cigar-smoke, and, as he placed his bare hand upon the manes of his horses, they reined back, as if it burned or frosted them.
"My ancestry," says the small gentleman, "encourage no imposition. Shall we give the fellow a franc?"
The other had already given double the sum, and it was odd, now that one looked at him, how pale and hard had grown his features.
"God bless me, Andy!" cries the little person, stopping short; "you have not had your breakfast to-day; apply my smelling-bottle to your nose; you are sick, man!"
"Thank you," says the other, "I prefer brandy; I am only glad that we are quite alone."
The paleness faded out of his cheeks as he drank deeply of the spirits, but the jaws were set hard, and the eyes looked stony and pitiless. The man was ailing beyond all doubt.
The whip cracked in front; the great diligence started with a groan and a crackling of joints; the little postilion set the cabriolet going with a chirp and a whistle; the priests and idlers looked up excitedly; the women rushed to the windows to flutter their handkerchiefs, and all the beggars gave sturdy chase, dropping benedictions and damnations as they went.
The small person placed his boots upon the empty cushion before and regarded them with some benevolence; then he touched his mustache with a comb, which he took from the head of his cane.
"It is surprising, Andy," he said, "how the growthof one's feet bears no proportion to that of his head. Observe those pedals. One of my ancestors must have found a wife in China. They have gained no increase after all these pilgrimages—and I flatter myself that they are in some sort graceful—ay? Now remark my head. What does Hamlet, or somebody, say about the front of Jove? This trip to Italy has actually enlarged the diameter of my head thirteen barleycorns! Thirteen, by measurement!"
The tall gentleman said not a word, but compressed his tall shoulders into the corner of the coach, and muffled his face with his coat-collar and breathed like one sleeping uneasily.
"It has been a cheap trip!" exclaimed the diminutive person, changing the theme; "you have been an invaluable courier, Andy. The most ardent patriot cannot call us extravagant."
"How much money have you left?" echoed the other in a suppressed tone. "Count it. I will then tell you to a sou what will carry us to Paris."
The little person drew a wallet from his side-pocket and enumerated carefully certain circular notes. "Eleven times twenty is two hundred and twenty; twenty-five times two hundred and twenty, five thousand five hundred, plus nine gold louis—total, five thousand seven hundred and twenty-five francs."
One eye only of the large gentleman was visible through the folds of his collar. It rested like a charmed thing upon the roll of gold and paper. It was only an eye, but it seemed to be a whole face, an entire man. It was full of thoughts, of hopes, of acts! Had the little person marked it, thus sinister, and glittering and intense, he would have shrunk as from a burning-glass.
He folded up the wallet, however, and slipped it into his inside-pocket, while the other pushed forward his hat, so that it concealed even the eye, and sat rigid and still in his corner.
"You have not named the fare to Paris."
The tall man only breathed short and hard.
"Don't you recollect?"
"No!"
"I have a 'Galignani' here; perhaps it is advertised. But hallo, Andy!"
The exclamation was loud and abrupt, but the silent person did not move.
"The Confederate Privateer Planter will sail from Dieppe on Tuesday—(that is, to-morrow evening)—she will cruise in the Indian Ocean, if report be true."
The tall man started suddenly and uncovered his face with a quick gesture. It was flushed and earnest now, and he clutched the journal almost nervously, though his voice was yet calm and suppressed.
"To-morrow night, did you say? A cruise on the broad sea—glory without peril, gold without work; I would to God that I were on the Planter's deck, Hugenot!"
"Why not do something for ou-ah cause, Andy?"
"I am to return to Paris for what? To be dunned by creditors, to be marked for a parasite at the hotels, to be despised by men whom I serve, and pitied by men whom I hate. This pirate career suits me. What is society to me, whom it has ostracised? I was a gentleman once—quick at books, pleasing in company,shrewd in business. They say that I have power still, but lack integrity. Be it so! Better a freebooter at sea than upon the land. I have half made up my mind to evil. Hugenot, listen to me! I believe that were I to do one bad, dark deed, it would restore me courage, resolution, energy."
The little gentleman examined the other with some alarm; but just now the teams commenced the ascent of a steep hill, and as he beheld the guard a little way in advance, he forgot the other's earnestness, and raised his lunette.
"Andy," he said, "by my great ancestry! I have seen that man before. Look! the height, the style, the carriage, are familiar. Who is he?"
His co-voyageur was without curiosity; the former pallidness and silentness resumed their dominion over him, and the lesser gentleman settled moodily back to his newspaper.
No word was interchanged for several hours. They passed through shaggy glens, under toppled towers and battlements, by squalid villages, and within the sound of dashing streams. If they descended ever, it was to gain breath for a longer ascent; for now the mountain snows were above them on either side, and the Alps rose sublimely impassable in front. The hawks careened beneath them; the chamois above dared not look down for dizziness, and Hugenot said, at Ariola, that they were taking lunch in a balloon. The manner of Mr. Plade now altered marvellously. It might have been his breakfast that gave him spirit and speech; he sang a merry, bad song, which the rocks echoed back, and all the goitred women at the roadside stopped withtheir pack burdens to listen. He told a thousand anecdotes. He knew all the story of the pass; how the Swiss, filing through it, had scattered the Milanese; how Suwarrow and Massena had made its sterility fertile with blood.
Hugenot's admiration amounted to envy. He had never known his associate so brilliant, so pleasing; the exaltation was too great, indeed, to arise from any ordinary cause; but Hugenot was not shrewd enough to inquire into the affair. He wearied at length of the talk and of the scene, and when at last they reached the region of perpetual ice, he closed the cabriolet windows, and watched the filtering flakes, and heard the snow crush under the wheels, and dropped into a deep sleep which the other seemed to share.
The clouds around them made the mountains dusky, and the interior of the carriage was quite gloomy. At length the large gentleman turned his head, so that his ear could catch every breath, and he regarded the dim outlines of the lesser with motionless interest. Then he took a straw from the litter at his feet, and, bending forward, touched his comrade's throat. The other snored measuredly for a while, but the titillation startled him at length, and he beat the air in his slumber. When the irritation ceased he breathed tranquilly again, and then the first-named placed his hand softly into the sleeper's pocket. He drew forth the wallet with steady fingers, and as coolly emptied it of its contents. These he concealed in the leg of his boot, but replaced the book where he had found it. For a little space he remained at rest, leaning against the back of the carriage, with his head bent upon hisbreast and his hands clenched like one at bay and in doubt.
The slow advance of the teams and the frequent changes of direction—sometimes so abrupt as almost to reverse the cabriolet—advised him that they were climbing the mountain by zigzags or terraces. He knew that they were in theVal Tremola, or Trembling Way, and he shook his comrade almost fiercely, as if relieved by some idea which the place suggested.
"Hugenot," he said, "rouse up! The grandeur of the Alps is round about us; you must not miss this scene. Come with me! Quit the vehicle! I know the place, and will exhibit it."
The other, accustomed to obey, leaped to the ground immediately, and followed through the snow, ankle deep, till they passed the diligence, which kept in advance. The guard could not be seen—he might have resorted to the interior; and the two pedestrians at once left the roadway, climbing its elbows by a path more or less distinctly marked, so that after a half hour they were perhaps a mile ahead. The agility of Mr. Plade during this episode was the marvel of his companion. He scaled the rocks like a goatherd, and his foot-tracks in the snow were long, like the route of a giant. The ice could not betray the sureness of his stride; the rare, thin atmosphere was no match for his broad, deep chest. He shouted as he went, and tossed great boulders down the mountain, and urged on his flagging comrade by cheer and taunt and invective. No madman set loose from captivity could be guilty of so extravagant, exaggerated elation.
At last they stood upon a little bridge spanning achasm like a cobweb. A low parapet divided it from the awful gulf. On the other side the mountain lifted its jagged face, clammy with icicles, and far over all towered the sterile peaks, above the reach of clouds or lightnings, forever in the sunshine—forever desolate.
"Stand fast!" said the leader, suddenly cold and calm. "Uncover, that the snow-flakes may give us the baptism of nature! There is no human God at this vast height; they worshipHimin the flat world below. Give me your hand and look down! You are not dizzy? One should be free from the baseness of fear, standing here upon St. Gothard."
"If I had no qualm before," said Hugenot, "your words would make me shudder."
"You have heard of the 'valley of the shadow'? Was your ideal like this? I told you in Florence of the great poet Dante. You have here at a glance more beauty and dread conjoined than even his mad fancy could conjure up. That is the Tessino, braining itself in cataracts. Yonder, where the clouds make a golden lake, laving forests of firs, lies Italy as the Goths first beheld it, with their spears quivering. See how the eagles beat the mist beneath!—that was a symbol that the Roman standards should be rent."
The other, half in charm, half in awe, listened like one spell-bound, with his fingers tingling and his eyeballs throbbing.
"This silence," said the elder, "is more freezing to me than the bitterness of the cold. The very snow-flakes are dumb; nothing makes discord but the avalanche; it is always twilight; men lie down in the snows to die, but they are numb and cannot cry."
"Be still," replied the other, "your talk is strangely out of place. I feel as if my ancestors in their shrouds were beside me."
"You are not wrong," cried the greater, raising his voice till it became shrill and terrible; "your last moments are passing; that yawning ravine is your grave. I told you an hour ago how one bad, dark deed would redeem me. It is done! I have robbed you, and your death is essential to my safety."
Hugenot sank upon the snow of the parapet, speechless and almost lifeless. He clasped his hands, but could not raise his head; the whole scene faded from his eye. If he had been weak before, he was impotent now.
The strong man held him aloft by the shoulders with an iron grasp, and his cold eye gave evidence to the horrible validity of his words.
"I do not lie or play, Hugenot," he said, in the same clear voice; "I have premeditated this deed for many weeks. You are doomed! Only a miracle can help you. The dangers of the pass will be my exculpation; it will be surmised that you fell into the ravine. There will be no marks of violence upon you but those of the sharp stones. We have been close comrades. Only Omniscience can have seen premeditation. I have brought you into this wilderness to slay you!"
The victim had recovered sufficiently to catch a part of this confession. His lips framed only one reply—the dying man's last straw:
"After death!" he said; "have you thought of that?"
"Ay," answered the other, "long and thoroughly.Phantoms, remorses and hells—they have all had their argument. I take the chances."
It was only a moment's struggle that ensued. The wretch clung to the parapet, and called on God and mercy. He was lifted on high in the strong arms, and whirled across the barrier. The other looked grimly at the falling burden. He wondered if a dog or a goat would have been so long falling. The distance was profound indeed; but to the murderer's sanguine thought the body hung suspended in the air. It would not sink. The clouds seemed to bear it up for testimony; the cold cliffs held aloft their heads for justice; the snow-flakes fell like the ballots of jurymen, voting for revenge—all nature seemed roused to animation by this one act. An icicle dropped with a keen ring like a knife, and the stream below pealed a shrill alarum.
He had done the bad, dark deed. Was he more resolute or courageous now that he had taken blood upon his hands and shadow upon his soul?
The body disappeared at length, carried downward by the torrent; but a wild bird darted after it, as if to reveal the secret of its concealment, and then a noise like a human footfall crackled in the snow.
"I like a man who takes the chances," said a cold, hard voice; "but Chance, Andy Plade, decides against you to-day."
The murderer turned from his reverie with hands extended and trembling; the snow was not more bleached than his bloodless face, and his feet grewslippery and infirm. An alcove, which he had not marked, was hewn in the brow of the precipice. It had been intended to shelter pilgrims from the wind and the snow; and there, wrapped in his buff garments, whose hue, assimilating to that of the rock, absorbed him from detection, stood a witness to the deed—the guard to the diligence—none other than Auburn Risque.
For an instant only the accused shrank back. Then his body grew short and compact; he was gathering himself up for a life-struggle.
"Hold off!" said Risque, in his old, hard, measured way; "we guards go armed; if you move, I shall scatter your brains in the snow; if I miss you, a note of this whistle will summon my postilions."
The cold face was never more emotionless; he held a revolver in his hand, and kept the other in his blank, spotted eye, as if locating the vital parts with the end to bring him down at a shot.
"You do not play well," said Risque at length, when the other, ghastly white, sat speechless upon the parapet; "if you were the student of chance, that I have been, you would know that at murder the odds are always against you!"
"You will not betray me?" pleaded Plade; "so inveterate a gamester can have no conventional ideas of life or crime. I am ready to pay for your discretion with half my winnings."
"I am a gambler," said Risque, curtly; "not an assassin! I always give my opponents fair show. But I will not touch blood-money."
"What fair show do you give me?"
"Two hours' start. I am responsible for my passengers. Go on, unharmed, if you will. But at Hospice I shall proclaim you. Every moment that you falter spins the rope for your gallows!"
Plade did not dally, but took to flight at once. He climbed by the angles of the terraces, and saw the diligence far below tugging up the circuitous road. He ran at full speed; no human being was abroad besides, but yet there were other footfalls in the snow, other sounds, as of a man breathing hard and pursued upon the lonely mountain. The fugitive turned—once, twice, thrice; he laughed aloud, and shook his clenched hand at the sky. Still the flat, dead tramp followed close behind, and the pace seemed not unfamiliar. It could not be—his blood ceased to circulate, and stood freezing at the thought—was it the march, the tread of Hugenot?
He dropped a loud curse, like a howl, and kept upon his way. The footfalls were as swift; he saw their impressions at his heels—prints of a small, lithe, human foot, made by no living man. He shut his eyes and his ears, but the consciousness remained, the inexplicable phenomenon of some invisible but familiar thing which would not leave him; which made its register as it passed; which no speed could outstrip, no argument exorcise.
Was it a sick fancy, a probed heart, or did the phantom of the dead man indeed give chase?
Ah! there is but one class of folks whose faith in spirits nothing can shake—the guilty, the bloody-handed.
He came to a perturbed rest at the huge, half-hospitable Hospice, to the enthusiasm of the postilions.
"Will the gentleman have a saddle-horse?"
"A chariot?"
"A cabriolet?"
"Ten francs to Andermatt!"
"Thirty francs to Fluelen!"
"One hundred francs," cried Plade, "for the fleetest pony to Andermatt. Ten francs to the postilion who can saddle him in two minutes. My mother is dying in Lyons."
He climbed one of the dark flights of stairs, and an old, uncleanly monk gave him a glass of Kerschwasser. He descended to the stables, and cursed the Swiss lackeys into speed. He gave such liberal largess that there was an involuntary cheer, and as he galloped away the great diligence appeared in sight to rouse his haste to frenzy.
The telegraph kept above him—a single line; he knew the tardiness of foot when pursued by the lightning. In one place, the conductor, wrenched from the insulators, dropped almost to the ground. There was a strap upon his saddle; he reined his nag to the side of the road, and, making a knot about the wire, dashed off at a bound; the iron snapped behind; his triumphant laugh pealed yet on the twilight, when the cries of his pursuers rang over the fields of snow. They were aroused; he was fleetly mounted, but they came behind in sledges.
The night closed over the road as he caught the wizard bells. The moonlight turned the peaks to fire. The dark firs shook down their burdens of snow. There were cries of wild beasts from the ravines below. The post-houses were red with firelight. The steedfloundered through the snow-drifts driven by blow and halloo. It was a fearful ride upon the high Alps; the sublimity of nature bowed down to the mystery of crime!
Bright noon, on the third day succeeding, saw the fugitive emerge from the railway station at Dieppe. He had escaped the Swiss frontier with his life, but had failed to make sure that escape by reaching the harbor at the appointed time. Broken in spirit, grown old already, he faltered toward the town, and, stopping on the fosse-bridge, looked sorrowfully across the shipping in the dock. Something caught his regard amid the cloud of tri-color; he looked again, shading his eye with a tremulous palm. There could not be a doubt—it was the Confederate standard—the Stars and Bars.
The Planter had been delayed; she waited with steam up and an expectant crew; her slender masts leaned against the sky; her anchor was lifted; a knot of idlers watched her from the quay.
In a moment Mr. Plade was on board. He asked for the commander, and a short, gristly, sunburnt personage being indicated, he introduced himself with that plausible speech which had wooed so many to their fall.
"I am a Charlestonian," said Plade; "a Yankee insulted me at the Grand Hotel; we met in the Bois de Boulogne, and I ran him through the body. His friends in Paris conspire against my life. I ask to save it now, only to die on your deck, that it may be worth something to my country."
They went below, and the privateer put the applicant through a rigid examination.
"This vessel must get to sea to night," he said. "Iwill not hazard trouble with the French authorities by keeping you here. Spend the afternoon ashore; we sail at eleven o'clock precisely; if at that time you come aboard, I will take you."
Plade protested his gratitude, but the skipper motioned him to peace.
"You seem to be a gentleman," he added; "if I find you so, you shall be my purser. But, hark!" he looked keenly at the other, and laid his hand upon his throat—"I am under the espionage of the Yankee ambassador. There are spies who seek to join my crew for treasonable ends; if I find you one of these, you shall hang to my yard-arm!"
The felon walked into the dim old city, and seated himself in a wine-shop. Some market folks were chanting inpatois, and their light-heartedness enraged him. He turned up a crooked street, and stopped before an ancient church, grotesque with broken buttresses, pinnacles, and gargoyles. The portal was wide open, and, as he entered, some scores of school-children burst suddenly into song. It seemed to him an accusation, shouted by a choir of angels.
At the end of the city, facing the sea, rose a massive castle. He scaled its stairs, and passed through the courtyard, and, crossing the farther moat, stood upon a grassy hill—once an outwork—whence the blue channel was visible half way to England.
A knot of soldiers came out to regard him, and his fears magnified their curiosity; he ran down the parapet, to their surprise, and re-entered the town by a roundabout way. "I will take a chamber," he said, "and shun observation."
An old woman, in a starched cap, who talked incessantly, showed him a number of rooms in a great stone building. He chose a garret among the chimney-stacks, and lit a fire, and ordered a newspaper and a bottle of brandy. He sat down to read in loneliness. As he surmised, the murder was printed among the "Faits Divers;" it gave his name and the story of the tragedy. His chair rattled upon the tiles as he read, and the tongs, wherewith he touched the fire, clattered in his nervous fingers.
The place was not more composed than himself; the flame was the noisiest in the world; it crackled and crashed and made horrible shadows on the walls. There were rats under the floor whose gnawings were like human speech, and the old house appeared to settle now and then with a groan as if unwilling to shelter guilt. As he looked down upon the clustering roofs of the town they seemed wonderfully like a crowd of people gazing up at his retreat. All the dormer-windows were so many pitiless eyes, and the chimney-pots were guns and cannon to batter down his eyrie.
When night fell upon the city and sea, his fancies were not less alarming. He could not rid himself of the idea that the dead man was at his side. In vain he called upon his victim to appear, and laughed till the windows shook. It was there,there, alwaysTHERE! He did not see it—but it wasthere! He felt its breath, its eye, its influence. It leaned across his shoulder; it gossiped with the shadows; it laid its hand heavily upon his pocket where lay the unholy gold. Some prints of saints and the Virgin upon the wall troubled him; their faces followed him whereverhe turned; he tore them down at length, and tossed them in the fire, but they blazed with so great flame that he cried out for fear.
The town-bells struck the hours; how far apart were the strokes! They tolled rather than pealed, as if for an execution, and the lamps of some passing carriages made a journey as of torches upon the ceiling.
After nine o'clock there was a heavy tread upon the stairs. It kept him company, and he was glad of its coming; but it drew so close, at length, that he stood upright, with the cold sweat upon his forehead.
The steps halted at his threshold; the door swung open; a corporal and a soldier stood without, and the former saluted formally:
"Monsieur the stranger, will remain in his chamber under guard. I grieve to say that he is an object of grave suspicion.Au revoir!"
The corporal retired without waiting for a reply; the soldier entered, and, leaning his musket against the wall, drew a chair before the door and sat down. The firelight fell upon his face after a moment, and revealed to Mr. Plade his old associate, Pisgah!
The former uttered a cry of hope and surprise; the soldier waved him back with a menace.
"I know you," he said; "but I am here upon duty; besides, I have no friendship with a murderer."
"We are both victims of a mistake! This accusation is not true. Will you take my hand?"
"I am forbidden to speak upon guard," answered Pisgah, sullenly. "Resume your chair."
"At least join me in a glass."
"There is blood in it," said Pisgah.
"I swear to you, no! Let me ring for your old beverage, absinthe."
The soldier halted, irresolutely; the liquor came before he could refuse. When once his lips touched the vessel, Mr. Plade knew that there was still a chance for life.
In an hour Mr. Pisgah was impotent from intoxication; his musket was flung down the stairway, the door was bolted upon him, and the prisoner was gone.
He gained the Planter's deck as the screw made its first revolution; they turned the channel-piles with a good-by gun; the motley crew cheered heartily as they cleared the mole.
The pirate was at sea on her mission of plunder—the murderer was free!
The engines stopped abreast the city; the steamer lay almost motionless, for there were lights upon the beach; a shrill "Ahoy!" broke over the intervening waters, and the dip of oars indicated some pursuit. The crew, half drunken, rallied to the edge of the vessel; knives glittered amid the confusion of oaths and the click of pistols, while Mr. Plade hastened to the skipper's side, and urged him for pity and mercy to hasten seaward.
The other motioned him back, coldly, and the boatswain piped all hands upon deck. Lafitte nor Kidd never looked down such desperate faces as this gristly privateer, when his buccaneers were around him.
"Seamen," he spoke aloud, "you are afloat! Gold and glory await you; you shall glut yourselves by the ruin of your enemy, and count your plunder by the light of his burning merchantmen."
The knives flickered in the torchlight, and a cheer, like the howl of the damned, went up.
"On the brink of such fortune, you find yourselves imperilled; treason is with you; this pursuit, which we attend, is a part of its programme! There is, within the sound of my voice, a spy!—a Yankee!"
The weapons rang again; the desperadoes pressed forward, demanding with shrieks and imprecations that the man should be named.
"He is here," answered the captain, turning full upon the astonished fugitive. "He came to me with a story of distress. I pitied him, and gave him shelter; but I telegraphed to Paris to test his veracity, and I find that he lied. No man has been slain in a duel as he states. I believe him to be a Federal emissary, and he is in our power."
A dozen rough hands struck Plade to the deck; he staggered up, with blood upon his face, and called Heaven to witness that he was no traitor.
"Did you speak the truth to me to-day?" cried the accuser.
"I did not; had I done so, you would have refused me relief."
"What are you then? Speak!"
The murderer cowered, with a face so blanched that the blood ceased to flow at its gashes.
"I cannot, I dare not tell!" he muttered.
The skipper made a sign to an attendant. A rope from the yard-arm was flung about the felon's neck, and made fast in a twinkling. He struggled desperately, but the fierce buccaneers held him down; his clothing was rent, and his hairs dishevelled; he madethree frantic struggles for speech; but the loud cheers mocked his words as they brandished their cutlasses in his eyes.
Then began that strange lifetime of reminiscence; that trooping of sins and cruelties, in sure, unbroken continuity, through the reeling brain; that moment of years; that great day of judgment, in a thought; that last winkful of light, which flashes back upon time, and makes its frailties luminous. And, higher than all offences, rose that of the fair young wife deserted abroad, left to the alternatives of shame or starvation. Her wail came even now, from the bed of the crowded hospital, to follow him into the world of shadows.
"Monsieur the Commander," hailed the spokesman in the launch, "the government of his Imperial Majesty does not wish to interpose any obstacle to the departure of the Confederate cruiser. It is known, however, that a person guilty of an atrocious crime is concealed on board. In this paper, Monsieur the Capitaine will find all the specifications. The name of the person, Plade. The crime of the person, murder, with premeditation. The giving up of said person is essential to the departure of the cruiser from his Imperial Majesty's waters."
There was blank silence on the deck of the privateer; the torches in the launch threw a glare upon the water and sky. They lit up something struggling between both at the tip of the rocking yard-arm. It was the effigy of a man, bound and suspended, around which swept timidly the bats and gulls, and the sea wind beat it with a shrill, jubilant cry.
"I have done justice unconsciously," said the privateer; "may it be remembered for me when I shall do injustice consciously!"
The catastrophe of the Colony and the episode having been attained, we have only to leave Mr. Pisgah in Algiers, whither court-martial consigned him, with the penalty of hard labor, and Mr. Risque on the stage route he was so eminently fitted to adorn. The unhappy Freckle continued in the prison of Clichy, and, having nothing else to do, commenced the novel process of thinking. The prison stood high up on Clichy Hill, walled and barred and guarded, like other jails, but within it a fair margin of liberty was allowed the bankrupts, just sufficient to make their fate terrible by temptation. Some good soul had endowed it with a library; newspapers came every day; a café was attached to it, where spirituous liquors were prohibited, to the wrath of the dry throats and raging thirsts of the captives; there was a garden behind it, and a billiard saloon, but these luxuries were not gratuitous; poor Freckle could not even pay his one sou per diem to cook his rations, so that the Prisoners' Relief Association had to make him a present of it. He spent his time between his bare, cheerless bedroom and the public hall. There were many Americans in the place; but none of them were friendly with him when he was found to have no cash. Yet he heard them speak together of their countrymen who had lain in the samejail years before. Yonder was the room of Horace Greeley, incarcerated for a debt which was not his own; here the blood-stains of the Pennsylvania youth who looked out of the window, heedless of warning, and was shot dead by the guard; there the ancient chair, in which Hallidore, the Creole, sat so often, possessor of a million francs, but too obstinate to pay his tailor's bill and go free. While Freckle thought of these, it was suggested to him that he was a very wicked man. The tuitions of his patriarchal father came to mind; he was seen on his knees, to the infinite amusement of the other debtors, who were, however, quite too polite to laugh in his face, and he no longer staked his ration of wine at cards, whereby he had commonly lost it, but held long conversations with an ardent old priest who visited the jail. The priest gave Frecklebreviariesand catechisms, and told him that there was no peace of mind outside of the apostolic fold.
So Freckle diligently embraced the ancient Romish faith, renounced the tenets of his plain old sire as false and heretical, and earnestly prepared himself to enter the priesthood.
In this frame of mind he was found by Mr. Simp, who had unexpectedly returned to Paris, and, finding himself again prosperous, came to release Freckle from the toils of Clichy.
The latter waved him away. "I wish to know none of you," he said. "I shall serve out this term, and never again speak to an American abroad."
He was firm, and achieved his purpose. Enthusiasm often answers for brains, and Freckle's religious zeal made him a changed man. He entered a Jesuits'school after his discharge, and in another fashion became as stern, severe, and self-denying as had been his father. He sometimes saw his old comrade, Simp, driving down the Champs Elysées as Freckle came from church in Paris, but the gallant did not recognize the young priest in his dark gown and hose, and wide-rimmed hat.
They followed their several directions, and in the end, with the lessening fortunes of the Confederacy, grew more moody, and yet more ruined by the consciousness that after once suffering the agony of expatriation, they had not improved the added chance to make of themselves men, not Colonists.
It is not the pleasantest phase of our human nature to depict, but since we have essayed it, let it close with its own surrounding shadow.
If we have given no light touch of womanhood to relieve its sombre career, we have failed to be artistic in order to be true.
But that which made the Colonists weak has passed away. There are no longer slaves at home—may there be no exiles abroad!