IN the evening came the superintendent, attended by Schiller, another
captain, and two soldiers, to make the usual search. Three of these
inquisitions were ordered each day, at morning, noon, and midnight.
Every corner of the prison was examined, and each article of the most
trivial kind. The inferior officers then left, and the superintendent
remained a little time to converse with me.
The first time I saw this troop of jailers approach, a strange thought
came into my head. Being unacquainted with their habits of search, and
half delirious with fever, it struck me that they were come to take my
life, and seizing my great chain I resolved to sell it dearly by knocking
the first upon the head that offered to molest me.
“What mean you?” exclaimed the superintendent; “we are not going to hurt
you. It is merely a formal visit to ascertain that all is in proper
order in the prisons.”
I hesitated, but when I saw Schiller advance and stretch forth his hand
with a kind, paternal look, I dropped the chain and took his proffered
hand. “Lord! how it burns,” he said, turning towards the superintendent;
“he ought at least to have a straw bed;” and he said this in so truly
compassionate a tone as quite to win my heart. The superintendent then
felt my pulse, and spoke some consolatory words: he was a man of
gentlemanly manners, but dared not for his life express any opinion upon
the subject.
“It is all a reign of terror here,” said he, “even as regards myself.
Should I not execute my orders to the rigour of the letter, you would no
longer see me here.” Schiller made a long face, and I could have wagered
he said within himself, “But if I were at the head, like you, I would not
carry my apprehensions so very far; for to give an opinion on a matter of
such evident necessity, and so innocuous to government, would never be
esteemed a mighty fault.”
When left alone, I felt my heart, so long incapable of any deep sense of
religion, stirred within me, and knelt down to pray. I besought a
blessing upon the head of old Schiller, and appealing to God, asked that
he would so move the hearts of those around me, as to permit me to become
attached to them, and no longer suffer me to hate my fellow-beings,
humbly accepting all that was to be inflicted upon me from His hand.
About midnight I heard people passing along the gallery. Keys were
sounding, and soon the door opened; it was the captain and his guards on
search.
“Where is my old Schiller?” inquired I. He had stopped outside in the
gallery.
“I am here—I am here!” was the answer. He came towards the table, and,
feeling my pulse, hung over me as a father would over his child with
anxious and inquiring look. “Now I remember,” said he, “to-morrow is
Thursday.”
“And what of that?” I inquired.
“Why! it is just one of the days when the doctor does not attend, he
comes only on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Plague on him.”
“Give yourself no uneasiness about that!”
“No uneasiness, no uneasiness!” he muttered, “but I do; you are ill, I
see; nothing is talked of in the whole town but the arrival of yourself
and friends; the doctor must have heard of it; and why the devil could he
not make the extraordinary exertion of coming once out of his time?”
“Who knows!” said I, “he may perhaps be here to-morrow,—Thursday though
it will be?”
The old man said no more, he gave me a squeeze of the hand, enough to
break every bone in my fingers, as a mark of his approbation of my
courage and resignation. I was a little angry with him, however, much as
a young lover, if the girl of his heart happen in dancing to press her
foot upon his; he laughs and esteems himself highly favoured, instead of
crying out with the pain.