"_Per Bacco!_" said Dr. Riccabocca, putting his hand on Lenny's
shoulder, and bending down to look into his face--"_Per Bacco!_ my young
friend, do you sit here from choice or necessity?"
Lenny slightly shuddered, and winced under the touch of one whom he had
hitherto regarded with a sort of superstitious abhorrence.
"I fear," resumed Riccabocca, after waiting in vain for an answer to his
question, "that, though the situation is charming, you did not select it
yourself. What is this,"--and the irony of the tone vanished--"what is
this, my poor boy? You have been bleeding, and I see that those tears
which you try to check come from a deep well. Tell me, _povero fanciullo
mio_, (the sweet Italian vowels, though Lenny did not understand them,
sounded softly and soothingly,)--tell me, my child, how all this
happened. Perhaps I can help you--we have all erred; we should all help
each other."
Lenny's heart, that just before had seemed bound in brass, found itself
a way as the Italian spoke thus kindly, and the tears rushed down; but
he again stopped them, and gulped out sturdily,--
"I have not done no wrong; it ben't my fault--and 'tis that which kills
me!" concluded Lenny, with a burst of energy.
"You have not done wrong? Then," said the philosopher, drawing out his
pocket handkerchief with great composure, and spreading it on the
ground--"then I may sit beside you. I could only stoop pityingly over
sin, but can lie down on equal terms with misfortune."
Lenny Fairfield did not quite comprehend the words, but enough of their
general meaning was apparent to make him cast a grateful glance on the
Italian. Riccabocca resumed, as he adjusted the pocket-handkerchief, "I
have a right to your confidence, my child, for I have been afflicted in
my day; yet I too say with thee, 'I have not done wrong.' _Cospetto!_
(and here the Doctor seated himself deliberately, resting one arm on
the side column of the stocks, in familiar contact with the
captive's shoulder, while his eye wandered over the lovely scene
around)--_Cospetto!_ my prison, if they had caught me, would not have
had so fair a look-out as this. But, to be sure, it is all one: there
are no ugly loves, and no handsome prisons!"
With that sententious maxim, which, indeed, he uttered in his native
Italian, Riccabocca turned round, and renewed his soothing invitations
to confidence. A friend in need is a friend indeed, even if he come in
the guise of a Papist and wizard. All Lenny's ancient dislike to the
foreigner had gone, and he told him his little tale.
Dr. Riccabocca was much too shrewd a man not to see exactly the motives
which had induced Mr. Stirn to incarcerate his agent, (barring only that
of personal grudge, to which Lenny's account gave him no clue.) That a
man high in office should make a scape-goat of his own watch-dog for an
unlucky snap, or even an indiscreet bark, was nothing strange to the
wisdom of the student of Machiavelli. However, he set himself to the
task of consolation with equal philosophy and tenderness. He began by
reminding, or rather informing, Lenny Fairfield of all the instances of
illustrious men afflicted by the injustice of others that occurred to
his own excellent memory. He told him how the great Epictetus, when in
slavery, had a master whose favorite amusement was pinching his leg,
which, as the amusement ended in breaking that limb, was worse than the
stocks. He also told him the anecdote of Lenny's own gallant countryman,
Admiral Byng, whose execution gave rise to Voltaire's celebrated
witticism, "_En Angleterre on tue un amiral pour encourager les
autres._" ("In England they execute one admiral in order to encourage
the others.") Many more illustrations, still more pertinent to the case
in point, his erudition supplied from the stores of history. But on
seeing that Lenny did not seem in the slightest degree consoled by these
memorable examples, he shifted his ground, and, reducing his logic to
the strict _argumentum ad rem_, began to prove, 1st, that there was no
disgrace at all in Lenny's present position, that every equitable person
would recognize the tyranny of Stirn and the innocence of its victim;
2dly, that if even here he were mistaken, for public opinion was not
always righteous, what was public opinion after all?--"A breath--a
puff," cried Dr. Riccabocca--"a thing without matter--without length,
breadth, or substance--a shadow--a goblin of our own creating. A man's
own conscience is his sole tribunal, and he should care no more for that
phantom 'opinion' than he should fear meeting a ghost if he cross the
churchyard at dark."
Now, as Lenny did very much fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the
churchyard at dark, the simile spoiled the argument, and he shook his
head very mournfully. Dr. Riccabocca was about to enter into a third
course of reasoning, which, had it come to an end, would doubtless have
settled the matter, and reconciled Lenny to sitting in the stocks till
doomsday, when the captive, with the quick ear and eye of terror and
calamity, became conscious that church was over, that the congregation
in a few seconds more would be flocking thitherwards. He saw visionary
hats and bonnets through the trees, which Riccabocca saw not, despite
all the excellence of his spectacles--heard phantasmal rustlings and
murmurings which Riccabocca heard not, despite all that theoretical
experience in plots, stratagems, and treasons, which should have made
the Italian's ear as fine as a conspirator's or a mole's. And, with
another violent but vain effort at escape, the prisoner exclaimed:
"Oh, if I could but get out before they come! Let me out--let me out. O,
kind sir, have pity--let me out!"
"_Diavolo!_" said the philosopher, startled, "I wonder that never
occurred to me before. After all, I believe he has hit the right nail on
the head;" and looking close, he perceived that though the partition
wood had hitched firmly into a sort of spring-clasp, which defied
Lenny's unaided struggles, still it was not locked, (for, indeed, the
padlock and key were snug in the justice-room of the Squire, who never
dreamt that his orders would be executed so literally and summarily as
to dispense with all formal appeal to himself.) As soon as Dr.
Riccabocca made that discovery, it occurred to him that all the wisdom
of all the schools that ever existed can't reconcile man or boy to a bad
position, the moment there is a fair opportunity of letting him out of
it. Accordingly, without more ado, he lifted up the creaking board, and
Lenny Fairfield darted forth like a bird from a cage--halted a moment as
if for breath, or in joy; and then, taking at once to his heels, fled,
fast as a hare to its form--fast to his mother's home.
Dr. Riccabocca dropped the yawning wood into its place, picked up his
handkerchief and restored it to his pocket; and then, with some
curiosity, began to examine the nature of that place of duresse which
had caused so much painful emotion to its rescued victim.
"Man is a very irrational animal at best," quoth the sage,
soliloquizing, "and is frightened by strange buggaboos! 'Tis but a piece
of wood! how little it really injures; and, after all, the holes are but
rests to the legs, and keep the feet out of the dirt. And this green
bank to sit upon--under the shade of the elm-tree--verily the position
must be more pleasant than otherwise! I've a great mind--" Here the
Doctor looked around, and, seeing the coast still clear, the oddest
notion imaginable took possession of him; yet not indeed a notion so
odd, considered philosophically--for all philosophy is based on
practical experiment--and Dr. Riccabocca felt an irresistible desire
practically to experience what manner of thing that punishment of the
stocks really was. "I can but try!--only for a moment," said he
apologetically to his own expostulating sense of dignity. "I have time
to do it, before any one comes." He lifted up the partition again; but
stocks are built on the true principle of English law, and don't easily
allow a man to criminate himself--it was hard to get into them without
the help of a friend. However, as we before noticed, obstacles only
whetted Dr. Riccabocca's invention. He looked round and saw a withered
bit of stick under the tree--this he inserted in the division of the
stocks, somewhat in the manner in which boys place a stick under a sieve
for the purpose of ensnaring sparrows: the fatal wood thus propped, Dr.
Riccabocca sat gravely down on the bank, and thrust his feet through the
apertures.
"Nothing in it!" cried he triumphantly, after a moment's deliberation.
"The evil is only in idea. Such is the boasted reason of mortals!" With
that reflection, nevertheless, he was about to withdraw his feet from
their voluntary dilemma, when the crazy stick suddenly gave way, and the
partition fell back into its clasp. Doctor Riccabocca was fairly
caught--"_Facitis descensus--sed revocare gradum!_" True, his hands were
at liberty, but his legs were so long that, being thus fixed, they kept
the hands from the rescue; and as Dr. Riccabocca's form was by no means
supple, and the twin parts of the wood stuck together with that firmness
of adhesion which things newly painted possess, so, after some vain
twists and contortions, in which he succeeded at length (not without a
stretch of the sinews that made them crack again) in finding the clasp
and breaking his nails thereon, the victim of his own rash experiment
resigned himself to his fate. Dr. Riccabocca was one of those men who
never do things by halves. When I say he resigned himself, I mean not
only Christian but philosophical resignation. The position was not quite
so pleasant as, theoretically, he had deemed it; but he resolved to make
himself as comfortable as he could. And first, as is natural in all
troubles to men who have grown familiar with that odoriferous comforter
which Sir Walter Raleigh is said first to have bestowed upon the
Caucasian races, the Doctor made use of his hands to extract from his
pocket his pipe, match-box, and tobacco-pouch. After a few whiffs he
would have been quite reconciled to his situation, but for the discovery
that the sun had shifted its place in the heavens, and was no longer
shaded from his face by the elm-tree. The Doctor again looked round, and
perceived that his red silk umbrella, which he had laid aside when he
had seated himself by Lenny, was within arm's reach. Possessing himself
of this treasure, he soon expanded its friendly folds. And thus doubly
fortified within and without, under shade of the umbrella, and his pipe
composedly between his lips, Dr. Riccabocca gazed on his own
incarcerated legs, even with complacency.
"'He who can despise all things,'" said he, in one of his native
proverbs, "'possesses all things'--if one despise freedom, one is free!
This seat is as soft as a sofa! I am not sure," he resumed,
soliloquizing, after a pause--"I am not sure that there is not something
more witty than manly and philosophical in that national proverb of
mine, which I quoted to the _fanciullo_, that there are no handsome
prisons! Did not the son of that celebrated Frenchman, surnamed _Bras de
Fer_, write a book not only to prove that adversities are more necessary
than prosperities, but that among all adversities a prison is the most
pleasant and profitable?[32] But is not this condition of mine,
voluntarily and experimentally incurred, a type of my life? Is it the
first time that I have thrust myself into a hobble?--and if in a hobble
of mine own choosing, why should I blame the gods?"
Upon this Dr. Riccabocca fell into a train of musing so remote from time
and place, that in a few minutes he no more remembered that he was in
the parish stocks, than a lover remembers that flesh is grass, a miser
that mammon is perishable, a philosopher that wisdom is vanity.--Dr.
Riccabocca was in the clouds.