Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel

by Charles James Lever

To one point the old man would, however, continue to recur without success—had some womanly influence not swayed him? Whether his heart had not been touched, and some secret spring of love had given the impulse to his character, remained a mystery.

‘No man,’ said the Prévôt, ‘ever lived as you allege. He who reads Jean Jacques lives like Rousseau; he who pores over Diderot acts the fatalist.’

‘Enough of this,’ cried a rough, rude voice. ‘Is he of us or not?’

It was a ‘Bird of Passage’ that spoke, impatient for the moment when the new-comer should pay his entrance fee.

‘He is not of you, be assured of that,’ said the Prévôt, ‘and for the present his place shall be “L’Opinion.”’

By chance—a mere chance—a death on the day before had left a vacancy in that section, and thither Gerald was now with due solemnity conducted.

If his present associates were the ‘best of the bad’ around him, they were still far from being to his taste. They were the lowest emissaries of every party—the agents employed for all purposes of espionage and corruption. They affected a sort of fidelity to the cause they served while sober, but once filled with wine, avowed their utter indifference to every party, as they avowed that they took bribes from each in turn. Many, it is true, had moved in the better classes of society, were well-mannered and educated; but even through these there ran the same vein of profligacy, a tone of utter distrust, and a scepticism as to all good here and hereafter.

One or two of these remembered to have seen Gerald in his days of Garde du Corps, and were more than disposed to connect him with the scandals circulated about the Queen; others inclined to regard him as a revolutionist in the garb of the court party; none trusted him, and he lived in a kind of haughty estrangement from all. The Prévôt, indeed, liked him, and would talk with him for hours long; and to the old man himself the companionship seemed a boon. He now learned for the first time a true account of the great changes ‘without,’ as he called the world, and heard with an approach to accuracy the condition in which France then stood.

The sense of indignation at a groundless charge, the cruelty of an imprisonment upon mere suspicion, had long ceased to weigh upon Fitzgerald, and a dreamy apathy, the true lethargy of the prison, stole over him. To lie half sleeping on his hard bed, to sit crouched down, gazing listlessly at the small patch of sky seen through the window, to spell over the names scratched by former prisoners on the plaster, to count for the thousandth time the fissures in the damp walls—these filled his days. His nights were drearier still, tormented with distressing dreams, to be dispelled only by the gloom of awaking in a dungeon.

At intervals of a week or two, orders would come for this or that prisoner to be delivered to the care of the Marshal of the Temple—none knew for what, though all surmised the worst, since not one was seen to return; and so time sped on, month after month, death and removal doing their work, till at last Gerald was the oldest détenu in the section of ‘L’Opinion.’