“The pit! _Boudiou!_”
“What do you expect, my lad? I am ordered to put you in Bonnivard’s
dungeon... I have put you in Bonnivard’s dungeon... Now, if you have
the means, you can be furnished with certain comforts, for instance, a
mattress and coverlet for the night.”
“Something to eat, in the first place,” said Tartarin, from whom, very
luckily, they had not taken his purse.
The concierge returned with a fresh roll, beer, and a sausage, greedily
devoured by the new prisoner of Chillon, fasting since the night before
and hollow with fatigue and emotion. While he ate on his stone bench
in the gleam of his vent-hole window, the jailer examined him with a
good-natured eye.
“Faith,” said he, “I don’t know what you have done, nor why they should
treat you so severely...”
“Nor I either, _coquin de sort!_ I know nothing about it,” said
Tartarin, with his mouth full.
“Well, it is very certain that you don’t look like a bad man, and,
surely, you would n’t hinder a poor father of a family from earning
his living, would you?.. Now, see here!.. I have got, up above there, a
whole party of people who have come to see Bonnivard’s dungeon... If you
would promise me to keep quiet, and not try to run away...”
The worthy Tartarin bound himself by an oath; and five minutes later he
beheld his dungeon invaded by his old acquaintances on the Rigi-Kulm
and the Tellsplatte, that jackass Schwan-thaler, the ineptissimus
Astier-Réhu, the member of the Jockey-Club with his niece (h’m! h’m!..)
and all the travellers on Cook’s Circular. Ashamed, dreading to be
recognized, the unfortunate man concealed himself behind pillars,
getting farther and farther away as the troop of tourists advanced,
preceded by the concierge and his homily, delivered in a doleful voice:
“Here is where the unfortunate Bonnivard, etc...”
They advanced slowly, retarded by discussions between the two _savants_,
quarrelling as usual and ready to jump at each other’s throats; the
one waving his campstool, the other his travelling-bag in fantastic
attitudes, which the twilight from the window-slits lengthened upon the
vaulted roof.
By dint of retreating, Tartarin presently found himself close to the
hole of the pit, a black pit open to the level of the soil, emitting the
breath of ages, malarious and glacial. Frightened, he stopped short,
and curled himself into a corner, his cap over his eyes. But the damp
saltpetre of the walls affected him, and suddenly a stentorian sneeze,
which made the tourists recoil, gave notice of his presence.
“_Tiens_, there’s Bonnivard!..” cried the bold little Parisian woman
in a Directory hat whom the gentleman from the Jockey-Club called his
niece.
The Tarasconese hero did not allow himself to be disconcerted.
“They are really very curious, these pits,” he said, in the most natural
tone in the world, as if he was visiting the dungeon, like them, for
pleasure; and so saying, he mingled with the other travellers,
who smiled at recognizing the Alpinist of the Rigi-Kulm, the merry
instigator of the famous ball.
“_Hi!_ mossié... ballir... dantsir!..”
The comical silhouette of the little fairy Schwan-thaler rose up before
him ready to seize him for a country dance. A fine mood he was in now
for dancing! But not knowing how to rid himself of that determined
little scrap of a woman, he offered his arm and gallantly showed her
his dungeon, the ring to which the captive was chained, the trace of his
steps on the stone round that pillar; and never, hearing him converse
with such ease, did the good lady even dream that he too was a prisoner
of state, a victim of the injustice and the wickedness of men. Terrible,
however, was the departure, when the unfortunate Bonnivard, having
conducted his partner to the door, took leave of her with the smile of a
man of the world: “No, thank you, _vé!_.. I stay a few moments longer.”
Thereupon he bowed, and the jailer, who had his eye upon him, locked and
bolted the door, to the stupefaction of everybody.
What a degradation! He perspired with anguish, unhappy man, while
listening to the exclamations of the tourists as they walked away.
Fortunately, the anguish was not renewed. No more tourists arrived that
day on account of the bad weather. A terrible wind blew through the
rotten boards, moans came up from the pit as from victims ill-buried,
and the wash of the lake, swollen with rain, beat against the walls to
the level of the window-slits and spattered its water upon the
captive. At intervals the bell of a passing steamer, the clack of its
paddle-wheels cut short the reflections of poor Tartarin, as evening,
gray and gloomy, fell into the dungeon and seemed to enlarge it.
How explain this arrest, this imprisonment in the ill-omened place?
Costecalde, perhaps... electioneering manoeuvre at the last hour?..
Or, could it be that the Russian police, warned of his very imprudent
language, his liaison with Sonia, had asked for his extradition? But if
so, why arrest the delegates?.. What blame could attach to those poor
unfortunates, whose terror and despair he imagined, although they were
not, like him, in Bonnivard’s dungeon, beneath those granite arches,
where, since night had fallen, roamed monstrous rats, cockroaches,
silent spiders with hairy, crooked legs.
But see what it is to possess a good conscience! In spite of rats, cold,
spiders, and beetles, the great Tartarin found in the horror of that
state-prison, haunted by the shades of martyrs, the same solid and
sonorous sleep, mouth open, fists closed, which came to him, between
the abysses and heaven, in the hut of the Alpine Club. He fancied he was
dreaming when he heard his jailer say in the morning:--
“Get up; the prefect of the district is here... He has come to examine
you...” Adding, with a certain respect, “To bring the prefect out in
this way... why, you must be a famous scoundrel.”
Scoundrel! no--but you may look like one, after spending the night in a
damp and dusty dungeon without having a chance to make a toilet, however
limited. And when, in the former stable of the castle transformed into a
guardroom with muskets in racks along the walls,--when, I say, Tartarin,
after a reassuring glance at his Alpinists seated between two gendarmes,
appeared before the prefect of the district, he felt his disreputable
appearance in presence of that correct and solemn magistrate with the
carefully trimmed beard, who said to him sternly:--
“You call yourself Manilof, do you not?.. Russian subject... incendiary
at St. Petersburg, refugee and murderer in Switzerland.”
“Never in my life... It is all a mistake, an error...”
“Silence, or I ‘ll gag you...” interrupted the captain.
The immaculate prefect continued: “To put an end to your denials... Do
you know this rope?”
His rope! _coquin de sort!_ His rope, woven with iron, made at Avignon.
He lowered his head, to the stupefaction of the delegates, and said: “I
know it.”
“With this rope a man has been hung in the Canton of Unterwald...”
Tartarin, with a shudder, swore that he had nothing to do with it.
“We shall see!”
The Italian tenor was now introduced,--in other words, the police spy
whom the Nihilists had hung to the branch of an oak-tree on the Brünig,
but whose life was miraculously saved by wood-choppers.
The spy looked at Tartarin. “That is not the man,” he said; then at the
delegates, “Nor they, either... A mistake has been made.”
The prefect, furious, turned to Tartarin. “Then, what are you doing
here?” he asked.
“That is what I ask myself, _vé!_..” replied the president, with the
aplomb of innocence.
After a short explanation the Alpinists of Tarascon, restored to
liberty, departed from the Castle of Chillon, where none have ever felt
its oppressive and romantic melancholy more than they. They stopped at
the Pension Müller to get their luggage and banner, and to pay for the
breakfast of the day before which they had not had time to eat; then
they started for Geneva by the train. It rained. Through the streaming
windows they read the names of stations of aristocratic villeggiatura:
Clarens, Vevey, Lausanne; red chalets, little gardens of rare shrubs
passed them under a misty veil, the branches of the trees, the turrets
on the roofs, the galleries of the hotels all dripping.
Installed in one corner of a long railway carriage, on two seats facing
each other, the Alpinists had a downcast and discomfited appearance.
Bravida, very sour, complained of aches, and repeatedly asked Tartarin
with savage irony: “Eh _bé!_you’ve seen it now, that dungeon of
Bonnivard’s that you were so set on seeing... I think you have seen it,
_qué?_” Excourbaniès, voiceless for the first time in his life, gazed
piteously at the lake which escorted them the whole way: “Water! more
water, _Boudiou!_.. after this, I ‘ll never in my life take another
bath.”
Stupefied by a terror which still lasts, Pascalon, the banner between
his legs, sat back in his seat, looking to right and left like a hare
fearful of being caught again... And Tartarin?.. Oh! he, ever dignified
and calm, he was diverting himself by reading the Southern newspapers, a
package of which had been sent to the Pension Müller, all of them having
reproduced from the _Forum_ the account of his ascension, the same he
had himself dictated, but enlarged, magnified, and embellished with
ineffable laudations. Suddenly the hero gave a cry, a formidable cry,
which resounded to the end of the carriage. All the travellers sat up
excitedly, expecting an accident. It was simply an item in the _Forum_,
which Tartarin now read to his Alpinists:--
“Listen to this: ‘Rumour has it that V. P. C. A. Costecalde, though
scarcely recovered from the jaundice which kept him in bed for some
days, is about to start for the ascension of Mont Blanc; to climb higher
than Tartarin!..’ Oh! the villain... He wants to ruin the effect of my
Jung-frau... Well, well! wait a bit; I ‘ll blow you out of water, you
and your mountain... Chamounix is only a few hours from Geneva; I’ll do
Mont Blanc before him! Will you come, my children?”
Bravida protested. _Outre!_ he had had enough of adventures.
“Enough and more than enough...” howled Excourbaniès, in his almost
extinct voice.
“And you, Pascalon?” asked Tartarin, gently.