“But you know we have our experience. When a prisoner has been with
his counsel, I almost always go up to see him, and to offer him
something,--a little trifle to set him up again. So yesterday, after M.
Magloire had been here, I climbed up”--
“And you found M. de Boiscoran sick?”
“I found him in a pitiful condition, gentlemen. He lay on his stomach on
his bed, his head in the pillow, and stiff as a corpse. I was some time
in his cell before he heard me. I shook my keys, I stamped, I coughed.
No use. I became frightened. I went up to him, and took him by the
shoulder. ‘Eh, sir!’ Great God! he leaped up as if shot and, sitting
up, he said, ‘What to you want?’ Of course, I tried to console him, to
explain to him that he ought to speak out; that it is rather unpleasant
to appear in court, but that people don’t die of it; that they even come
out of it as white as snow, if they have a good advocate. I might just
as well have been singing, ‘O sensible woman.’ The more I said, the
fiercer he looked; and at last he cried, without letting me finish, ‘Get
out from here! Leave me!’”
He paused a moment to take a whiff at his pipe; but it had gone out: he
put it in his pocket, and went on,--
“I might have told him that I had a right to come into the cells
whenever I liked, and to stay there as long as it pleases me. But
prisoners are like children: you must not worry them. But I opened the
wicket, and I remained there, watching him. Ah, gentlemen, I have been
here twenty years, and I have seen many desperate men; but I never saw
any despair like this young man’s. He had jumped up as soon as I turned
my back, and he was walking up and down, sobbing aloud. He looked
as pale as death; and the big tears were running down his cheeks in
torrents.”
M. Magloire felt each one of these details like a stab at his heart. His
opinion had not materially changed since the day before; but he had had
time to reflect, and to reproach himself for his harshness.
“I was at my post for an hour at least,” continued the jailer, “when all
of a sudden M. de Boiscoran throws himself upon the door, and begins
to knock at it with his feet, and to call as loud as he can. I keep him
waiting a little while, so he should not know I was so near by, and then
I open, pretending to have hurried up ever so fast. As soon as I show
myself he says, ‘I have the right to receive visitors, have I not? And
nobody has been to see me?’--‘No one.’--‘Are you sure?’--‘Quite sure.’ I
thought I had killed him. He put his hands to his forehead this way; and
then he said, ‘No one!--no mother, no betrothed, no friend! Well, it
is all over. I am no longer in existence. I am forgotten, abandoned,
disowned.’ He said this in a voice that would have drawn tears from
stones; and I, I suggested to him to write a letter, which I would send
to M. de Chandore. But he became furious at once, and cried, ‘No, never!
Leave me. There is nothing left for me but death.’”