“On that point we are not agreed,” said the prefetto, sarcastically; “but you have admitted enough to warrant me in the course I shall pursue respecting you—the fact of a false name and passport, the identity with a well-known character admitted—I have now to detain you in custody until such time as the consul of your country may take steps for your conveyance to England, where already new evidence of your criminality awaits you. Yes, prisoner, the mystery which involved your guilt is at length about to be dissipated, and the day of expiation draws nigh.”
Roland did not speak. Shame at the degraded position he occupied, even in the eyes of those with whom he had associated, overwhelmed him, and he suffered himself to be led away without a word.
Alone in the darkness and silence of a prison, he sat indifferent to what might befall him, wearied of himself and all the world.
Days, even weeks passed on, and none inquired after him; he seemed forgotten of all, when the consul, who had been absent, having returned, it was discovered that the allegations respecting the murder were not sufficient to warrant his being transmitted to England, and that the only charge against him lay in the assumed nationality,—an offence it was deemed sufficiently expiated by his imprisonment. He was free then once more,—free to wander forth into the world where his notoriety had been already proclaimed, and where, if not his guilt, his shame was published.
Of Maritaña all that he could learn was that she had left Venice without again appearing in public; but in what direction none knew accurately. Cashel justly surmised that she had not gone without seeing him once more had it not been from the compulsion of others; and if he grieved to think they were never to meet more, he felt a secret consolation on reflecting how much of mutual shame and sorrow was spared them. Shame was indeed the predominant emotion of his mind; shame for his now sullied name—his character tarnished by the allegations of crime; and shame for her, degraded to a ballarina.
Had fortune another reverse in store for him? Was there one cherished hope still remaining? Had life one solitary spot to which he could now direct his weary steps, and be at rest? The publicity which late events had given to his name rendered him more timid and retiring than ever. A morbid sense of modesty—a shrinking dread of the slights to which he would be exposed in the world—made him shun all intercourse, and live a life of utter seclusion.
Like all men who desire solitude, he soon discovered that it is alone attainable in great cities. Where the great human tide runs full and strong, the scattered wrecks are scarcely noticeable.
To Paris, therefore, he repaired; not to that brilliant Paris where sensuality and vice costume themselves in all the brilliant hues derived from the highest intellectual culture, but to the dark and gloomy Paris which lies between the arms of the Seine,—“the Ile St. Louis.” There, amid the vestiges of an extinct feudalism, and the trials of a present wretchedness, he passed his life in strict solitude. In a mean apartment, whose only solace was the view of the river, with a few books picked up on a neighboring stall, and the moving crowd beneath his window to attract his wandering thoughts, he lived his lonely life. The past alone occupied his mind; for the future he had neither care nor interest, but of his bygone life he could dream for hours. These memories he used to indulge each evening in a particular spot; it was an old and ruinous stair which descended to the river, from a little wooden platform, near where he lived. It had been long disused, and suffered to fall into rot and decay. Here he sat, each night, watching the twinkling lights that glittered along the river, and listening to the distant hum of that great hive of pleasure that lay beyond it.
That the neighborhood about was one of evil repute and danger, mattered little to one who set small store by his life, and whose stalwart figure and signs of personal prowess were not unknown in the quarter. The unbroken solitude of the spot was its attraction to him, and truly none ever ventured near it after nightfall.
There he was sitting one night, as usual, musing, as was his wont. It was a period when men's minds were stirred by the expectation of some great but unknown event; a long political stagnation—the dead sea of hopeless apathy—was beginning to be ruffled by short and fitful blasts that told of a coming hurricane. Vague rumors of a change—scattered sentences of some convulsion, whence proceeding, or whither tending, none could guess—were abroad. The long-sleeping terrors of a past time of blood were once more remembered, and men talked of the guillotine and the scaffold, as household themes. It was the summer of 1830—that memorable year, whose deeds were to form but the prologue of the great drama we are to-day the spectators at. Roland heard these things as he who wanders along the shore at night may hear the brooding signs of a gathering storm, but has no “venture on the sea.” He thought of them with a certain interest, too—but it was with that interest into which no personal feeling enters; for how could great convulsions of states affect him How could the turn of fortune raise or depress him?