Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas

by Charles James Lever

Here then was I in a jail, with the danger of a horrible disease superadded. Algebraically, my case stood thus: letting the letter P represent a prison, L the leprosy, and N my nose, P + L—N being equal to any given number of deaths by torture. Such was my case, such my situation; while of the past, by what chain of events I came to be thus a prisoner, I knew nothing. A little memoir at the head of my bed set forth that I was “a case of punctured wound in the thorax,” with several accessory advantages, not over intelligible by my ignorance, but which I guessed to imply, that if the doctor didn't finish me off at once, there was every chance of my slipping away by a lingering malady,—some one of those “chest affections” that make the fortunes of doctors, but are seldom so profitable to the patients. One fact was, however, very suggestive. It was above four months since the date of my admission to the hospital,—a circumstance that vouched for the gravity of my illness, as well as showing what a number of events might have occurred in the interval.

Four months! and where was Donna Maria now? Had she forgotten me,—forgotten the terrible scene on the Collorado; forgotten the starlit night in the forest? Had they left me, without any interest in my future,—deserted me, wounded, perhaps dying?—a sad return for the services I had rendered them! That Fra Miguel should have done this, would have caused me no surprise; but the Señhora,—she who sprang by a bound into intimacy with me, and called me “brother”! Alas! if this were so, what faith could be placed in woman?

In vain I sought information on these points from those around me. My Spanish was not the very purest Castilian, it is true; but here, another and greater obstacle to knowledge existed: no one cared anything for the past, and very little for the future; the last event that held a place in their memory was the day of their admission, the fell malady was the centre round which all thoughts revolved, and I was regarded as a kind of visionary, when asking about circumstances that occurred before I entered the hospital. There were vague and shadowy rumors about me and my adventure,—so much I could find out; but whatever these were, scarcely two agreed on,—not one cared. Some said I had killed a priest; others averred it was a negro; a few opined that I had done both; and an old mulatto woman, with a face like a target, the bull's-eye being represented by where the nose ought to be, related a more connected narrative about my having stolen a horse, and being overtaken by a negro slave of the owner, who rescued the animal and stabbed me.

All the stories tallied in one particular, which was in representing me as a fellow of the most desperate character and determination, and who cared as little for shedding blood as spilling water,—traits, I am bound to acknowledge, which never appeared to lower me in general esteem. Of course, all inquiries as to my horse, poor Charry, my precious saddle-bags, my rifle, my bowie-knife, and my “Harper's-ferry,” would have proved less than useless,—actually absurd. The patients would have reckoned such questions as little vagaries of mental wandering, and the servants of the house never replied to anything.

My next anxiety was, when I should be at liberty? The doctor, when I asked him, gave a peculiar grin, and said, “We cannot spare you, amigo; we shall want to look at your pericardium one of these days. I say it is perforated; Don Emanuel says not. Time will tell who 's right.”

“You mean when I'm dead, Señhor, of course?” cried I, not fancying the chance of resolving the difficulties by being carved alive.

“Of course I do,” said he. “Yours is a very instructive case; and I shall take care that your heart and a portion of the left lung be carefully injected, and preserved in the museum.”

“May you live a thousand years!” said I, bowing my gratitude, while a chill crept over me that I thought I should have fainted.

I have already mentioned that sentries were placed at intervals round the walls to prevent escape,—a precaution which, were one to judge from the desolate and crippled condition of the inmates, savored of over care. A few were able to crawl along upon crutches, the majority were utterly helpless, while the most active were only capable of creeping up the bank which formed the boundary of the grounds, to look down into the moat beneath,—a descent of some twenty feet, but which, to imaginations such as theirs, was a gulf like the crater of a volcano.

Whenever a little group, then, would station themselves on the “heights,” as they were called, and gaze timidly into the depths below, the guards, far from dispersing them, saw that no better lesson could be administered than what their own fears suggested, and prudently left them to the admonitions of their terrors. I remembered this fact, and resolved to profit by it. If death were to be my lot, it could not come anywhere with more horrors than here; so that, happen what might, I resolved to make an effort at escape. The sentry's bullet had few terrors for one who saw himself surrounded by such objects of suffering and misery, and who daily expected to be one of their number. Were the leap to kill me,—a circumstance that in my weak and wounded condition I judged far from unlikely,—it was only anticipating a few days; and what days were they!