And as for the Bastile, the terror is in the word. Make the most of it
you can, said I to myself, the Bastile is but another word for a
tower, and a tower is but another word for a house you can't get out
of. Mercy on the gouty! for they are in it twice a year; but with nine
livres a day, and pen, and ink, and paper, and patience, albeit a man
can't get out, he may do very well within, at least for a month or six
weeks; at the end of which, if he is a harmless fellow, his innocence
appears, and he comes out a better and wiser man than he went in.
I had some occasion--I forget what--to step into the courtyard as I
settled this account; and remember I walked down-stairs in no small
triumph with the conceit of my reasoning. Beshrew the somber pencil,
said I vauntingly, for I envy not its powers, which paints the evils
of life with so hard and deadly a coloring. The mind sits terrified
at the objects she has magnified herself and blackened: reduce them to
their proper size and hue, she overlooks them. "'Tis true," said I,
correcting the proposition, "the Bastile is not an evil to be
despised; but strip it of its towers, fill up the fosse, unbarricade
the doors, call it simply a confinement, and suppose 'tis some tyrant
of a distemper and not of a man which holds you in it, the evil
vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint." I was
interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy with a voice which I took
to be of a child, which complained "it could not get out." I looked up
and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman nor child, I went
out without further attention.
In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated
twice over; and looking up I saw it was a starling hung in a little
cage; "I can't get out, I can't get out," said the starling. I stood
looking at the bird; and to every person who came through the passage,
it ran fluttering to the side toward which they approached it, with
the same lamentation of its captivity: "I can't get out," said the
starling. "God help thee!" said I, "but I'll let thee out, cost what
it will"; so I turned about the cage to get the door. It was twisted
and double-twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open
without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it. The bird
flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and
thrusting his head through the trellis, prest his breast against it as
if impatient. "I fear, poor creature," said I, "I can not set thee at
liberty." "No," said the starling, "I can't get out; I can't get
out," said the starling. I vow I never had my affections more
tenderly awakened; or do I remember an incident in my life where the
dissipated spirits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so
suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in
tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew
all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I heavily walked
up-stairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.
"Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery," said I, "still thou
art a bitter draft; and tho thousands in all ages have been made to
drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. 'Tis thou,
thrice sweet and gracious goddess," addressing myself to liberty,
"whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful,
and ever will be so, till Nature herself shall change; no tint of
words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chemic power turn thy scepter into
iron; with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is
happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious
Heaven!" cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my
ascent, "grant me but health, thou great bestower of it, and give me
but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy miters, if
it seem good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are
aching for them."
The bird in his cage pursued me into my room. I sat down close to my
table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself
the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I
gave full scope to my imagination. I was going to begin with the
millions of my fellow creatures born to no inheritance but slavery;
but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring
it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but
distract me, I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in
his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to
take his picture. I beheld his body half-wasted away with long
expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the
heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer I
saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze had not
once fanned his blood; he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time,
nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice;
his children--but here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go
on with another part of the portrait. He was sitting upon the ground
upon a little straw, in the furthest corner of his dungeon, which was
alternately his chair and bed; a little calendar of small sticks lay
at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had
passed there; he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with
a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap.
As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye
toward the door, then cast it down, shook his head, and went on with
his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned
his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh:
I saw the iron enter into his soul. I burst into tears: I could not
sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.