The fatuous vacuity of his mind was such that though he heard the voices around him, and even tried at times to follow what they said, he could collect nothing of it: sometimes the sounds would simply seem to weary and fatigue him—they acted as some deep monotonous noise might have done on a tired brain; sometimes they would cause the most intense irritation, exciting him to a sense of anger he could with difficulty control; and at others, again, they would overcome him so thoroughly with sorrow, that he would weep for hours. How time passed, what he had himself been in former years, where and how and with whom he lived, only recurred to him in short fitful passages, like the scenes of some moving panorama, present for a moment and then lost to view. He would fancy, too, that he had many distinct and separate existences, as many deaths; and then marvel to himself in which of these states he was at that moment.
His wild talk; his absurd answers when questioned; the incoherent things he would say, stamped him among his fellow-prisoners as one bereft of reason; nor was there, to all seeming, much injustice in the suspicion. If the chance mention of some name he once knew would start and arouse him, his very observations would appear those of a wandering intellect, since he seemed to have been acquainted with persons the most opposite and incongruous; and it even became a jest—a sort of prison ‘plaisanterie’—to ask him whether he was not intimate with this man or that, mentioning persons the least likely for him ever to have met.
‘There goes another of your friends, Maître,’ said one to him: ‘they have guillotined Brissot this morning; you surely knew him, he edited the Droit du Peuple.’
‘Yes, I knew him. Poor Brissot!’ said Gerald, with a sigh.
‘What was he like, Maître? was he short and thick, with a beard like mine?’
‘No, he was fair and gentle-looking.’
‘Parbleu! that was a good guess: so he was.’
‘And kind-hearted as he looked,’ muttered Gerald.
‘He died with Gaudet, Gensonné, Louvet, and four other Maratists. You have seen most of them, I ‘m sure.’
‘Yes. Gaudet and Gensonné I remember; I forget Louvet. Had he a scar on his temple?’