Seated at a table, I could not help feeling amused at the strange medley of rank and country about me. Here were old militaire, with bushy beards and mustaches, side by side with muddy-faced peasants, whose long, yellow locks bespoke them of Norman blood; hard, weather-beaten sailors from the coast of Bretagne, talking familiarly with venerable seigneurs in all the pomp of powder and a queue; priests with shaven crowns; young fellows, whose easy looks of unabashed effrontery betrayed the careless Parisian,—all were mingled up together, and yet not one among the number did I see whose appearance denoted sorrow for his condition or anxiety for his fate.
The various circumstances of their imprisonment, the imputation they lay under, the acts of which they were accused, formed the topics of conversation, in common with the gossip of the town, the news of the theatres, and the movements in political life. Never was there a society with less restraint; each man knew his neighbor's history too well to make concealment of any value, and frankness seemed the order of the day. While I was initiating myself into so much of the habit of the place, a large, flat, florid personage, who sat at the head of the table, called out to me for my name.
“The governor desires to have your name and rank for his list,” said my neighbor at the right hand.
Having given the required information, I could not help expressing my surprise how, in the presence of the governor of the prison, they ventured to speak so freely.
“Ha,” said the person I addressed, “he is not the governor of the Temple; that's merely a title we have given him among ourselves. The office is held always by the oldest détenu. Now he has been here ten months, and succeeded to the throne about a fortnight since. The Abbé, yonder, with the silk scarf round his waist, will be his successor, in a few days.”
“Indeed! Then he will be at liberty so soon. I thought he seemed in excellent spirits.”
“Not much, perhaps, on that score,” replied he. “His sentence is hard labor for life at the Bagne de Toulon.”
I started back with horror, and could not utter a word.