-
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 mouth 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 court-yard, as
I settled this account; and remember I walk'd down stairs in no
small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning. - Beshrew the sombre
pencil! said I, vauntingly - for I envy not its powers, which paints
the evils of life with so hard and deadly a colouring. 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 look'd up and down the passage, and seeing neither man,
woman, nor child, I went out without farther 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 towards which they
approach'd 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
to 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 pressed his breast
against it as if impatient. - I fear, poor creature! said I, I
cannot 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; nor do I
remember an incident in my life, where the dissipated spirits, to
which my reason had been a bubble, were so suddenly call'd 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 upstairs,
unsaying every word I had said in going down them.
Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! said I, - still thou
art a bitter draught! and though 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 chymic power turn
thy sceptre 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 mitres, if it seems good unto thy divine
providence, upon those heads which are aching for them!
THE CAPTIVE. PARIS.
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 look'd 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 deferr'd. Upon looking nearer I saw him
pale and feverish: in thirty years the western breeze had not once
fann'd 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 were laid at the head, notch'd 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
towards the door, then cast it down, - shook his head, and went on
with his work of affliction.
