One day when I was in the patio, to which I had free admission
whenever I pleased, by permission of the alcayde, I went up to the
Frenchman, who stood in his usual posture, leaning against the
wall, and offered him a cigar. I do not smoke myself, but it will
never do to mix among the lower classes of Spain unless you have a
cigar to present occasionally. The man glared at me ferociously
for a moment, and appeared to be on the point of refusing my offer
with perhaps a hideous execration. I repeated it, however,
pressing my hand against my heart, whereupon suddenly the grim
features relaxed, and with a genuine French grimace, and a low bow,
he accepted the cigar, exclaiming, "Ah, Monsieur, pardon, mais
c'est faire trop d'honneur a un pauvre diable comme moi."
"Not at all," said I, "we are both fellow prisoners in a foreign
land, and being so we ought to countenance each other. I hope that
whenever I have need of your co-operation in this prison you will
afford it me."
"Ah, Monsieur," exclaimed the Frenchman in rapture, "vous avez bien
raison; il faut que les eirangers se donnent la main dans ce . . .
pays de barbares. Tenez," he added, in a whisper, "if you have any
plan for escaping, and require my assistance, I have an arm and a
knife at your service: you may trust me, and that is more than you
could any of these sacres gens ici," glancing fiercely round at his
fellow prisoners.
"You appear to be no friend to Spain and the Spaniards," said I.
"I conclude that you have experienced injustice at their hands.
For what have they immured you in this place?"
"Pour rien du tout, c'est a dire pour une bagatelle; but what can
you expect from such animals? For what are you imprisoned? Did I
not hear say for Gypsyism and sorcery?"
"Perhaps you are here for your opinions?"
"Ah, mon Dieu, non; je ne suis pas homme a semblable betise. I
have no opinions. Je faisois . . . mais ce n'importe; je me trouve
ici, ou je creve de faim."
"I am sorry to see a brave man in such a distressed condition,"
said I; "have you nothing to subsist upon beyond the prison
allowance? Have you no friends?"
"Friends in this country, you mock me; here one has no friends,
unless one buy them. I am bursting with hunger; since I have been
here I have sold the clothes off my back, that I might eat, for the
prison allowance will not support nature, and of half of that we
are robbed by the Batu, as they call the barbarian of a governor.
Les haillons which now cover me were given by two or three devotees
who sometimes visit here. I would sell them if they would fetch
aught. I have not a sou, and for want of a few crowns I shall be
garroted within a month unless I can escape, though, as I told you
before, I have done nothing, a mere bagatelle; but the worst crimes
in Spain are poverty and misery."
"I have heard you speak Basque, are you from French Biscay?"
"I am from Bordeaux, Monsieur; but I have lived much on the Landes
and in Biscay, travaillant a mon metier. I see by your look that
you wish to know my history. I shall not tell it you. It contains
nothing that is remarkable. See, I have smoked out your cigar; you
may give me another, and add a dollar if you please, nous sommes
creves ici de faim. I would not say as much to a Spaniard, but I
have a respect for your countrymen; I know much of them; I have met
them at Maida and the other place." {18}
"Nothing remarkable in his history!" Why, or I greatly err, one
chapter of his life, had it been written, would have unfolded more
of the wild and wonderful than fifty volumes of what are in general
called adventures and hairbreadth escapes by land and sea. A
soldier! what a tale could that man have told of marches and
retreats, of battles lost and won, towns sacked, convents
plundered; perhaps he had seen the flames of Moscow ascending to
the clouds, and had "tried his strength with nature in the wintry
desert," pelted by the snow-storm, and bitten by the tremendous
cold of Russia: and what could he mean by plying his trade in
Biscay and the Landes, but that he had been a robber in those wild
regions, of which the latter is more infamous for brigandage and
crime than any other part of the French territory. Nothing
remarkable in his history! then what history in the world contains
aught that is remarkable?
I gave him the cigar and dollar: he received them, and then once
more folding his arms, leaned back against the wall and appeared to
sink gradually into one of his reveries. I looked him in the face
and spoke to him, but he did not seem either to hear or see me.
His mind was perhaps wandering in that dreadful valley of the
shadow, into which the children of earth, whilst living,
occasionally find their way; that dreadful region where there is no
water, where hope dwelleth not, where nothing lives but the undying
worm. This valley is the facsimile of hell, and he who has entered
it, has experienced here on earth for a time what the spirits of
the condemned are doomed to suffer through ages without end.
