The Bastille was on the top of a hill about a couple of miles long, and
the journey thither was much lengthened by the desire of the family to
avoid the main road. They were all intensely ashamed; Darius was
ashamed to tears, and did not know why; even his little sister wept and
had to be carried, not because she was shoeless and had had nothing to
eat, but because she was going to the Ba-ba-bastille; she had no notion
what the place was. It proved to be the largest building that Darius
had ever seen; and indeed it was the largest in the district; they stood
against its steep sides like flies against a kennel. Then there was
rattling of key-bunches, and the rasping voices of sour officials, who
did not inquire if they would like a meal after their stroll. And they
were put into a cellar and stripped and washed and dressed in other
people's clothes, and then separated, amid tears. And Darius was
pitched into a large crowd of other boys, all clothed like himself. He
now understood the reason for shame; it was because he could have no
distinctive clothes of his own, because he had somehow lost his identity.
All the boys had a sullen, furtive glance, and when they spoke it was in
whispers.
In the low room where the boys were assembled there fell a silence, and
Darius heard some one whisper that the celebrated boy who had run away
and been caught would be flogged before supper. Down the long room ran
a long table. Some one brought in three candles in tin candlesticks and
set them near the end of this table. Then somebody else brought in a
pickled birch-rod, dripping with the salt water from which it had been
taken, and also a small square table. Then came some officials, and a
clergyman, and then, surpassing the rest in majesty, the governor of the
Bastille, a terrible man. The governor made a speech about the crime of
running away from the Bastille, and when he had spoken for a fair time,
the clergyman talked in the same sense; and then a captured tiger,
dressed like a boy, with darting fierce eyes, was dragged in by two men,
and laid face down on the square table, and four boys were commanded to
step forward and hold tightly the four members of this tiger. And, his
clothes having previously been removed as far as his waist, his breeches
were next pulled down his legs. Then the rod was raised and it
descended swishing, and blood began to flow; but far more startling than
the blood were the shrill screams of the tiger; they were so loud and
deafening that the spectators could safely converse under their shelter.
The boys in charge of the victim had to cling hard and grind their
teeth in the effort to keep him prone. As the blows succeeded each
other, Darius became more and more ashamed. The physical spectacle did
not sicken nor horrify him, for he was a man of wide experience; but he
had never before seen flogging by lawful authority. Flogging in the
workshop was different, a private if sanguinary affair between free
human beings. This ritualistic and cold-blooded torture was infinitely
more appalling in its humiliation. The screaming grew feebler, then
ceased; then the blows ceased, and the unconscious infant (cured of
being a tiger) was carried away leaving a trail of red drops along the
floor.
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