As I stood terror-struck and speechless, I felt a tap oif my shoulder. I turned; it was the Abbé, who, with a smile of peculiar irony, stood behind me.
“Poor Savary!” said he, in a whisper; “how will he ever get over this blunder, and it so very like the former one!”
He did not wait for a reply, but moved away.
“Who is to be the next, sir?” cried George, with a deep voice, as he saw the assemblage thus accidentally collected about to break up. “Moreau, perhaps. One thing I bid you all bear witness to: suicide is a crime I 'll never commit; let no narrative of a cravat and a fagot—”
“Do you never eat mushrooms, General?” said the Abbé, dryly; and whether from the manner of the speaker, or the puzzled look of him to whom the speech was addressed, the whole crowd burst into a fit of laughter,—the emotion seemed like one in which relief was felt by all. They laughed long and loud; and now the faces that a minute before were marked by every character of deep affliction, looked merry and happy. Each had some story, some apropos to tell, or some smart witticism to let off against his neighbor; and to hear them you would say that never was there a subject more suggestive of drollery than the one of suicide and sudden death.
And thus was it ever. No event, however dreadful,—no circumstance, however shocking,—could do more than momentarily affect those whose life possessed no security, was governed by no principle. Levity and unbelief—unbelief that extended not only to matters of religion, but actually penetrated every relation of life, rendering them sceptical of friendship, love, truth, honor, and charity—were the impulses under which they lived; and they would have laughed him to scorn who should have attempted to establish another code of acting or thinking. Such feelings, if they made them but little suited to all the habits and charities of life, certainly rendered them most indifferent to death; and much of that courage so much lauded and admired on the scaffold had no other source than in the headlong recklessness the prison had inculcated,—the indifference to everything, where everything was questionable and doubtful.
I struggled powerfully against the taint of such a consuming malady. I bethought me of my boyhood and its early purpose,—of him who first stirred my soul to ambition,—and asked myself, what would he have thought of me had I yielded to such a trial as this? I pictured before me a career when such devotion as I felt, aided by a stout heart, must win its way to honor; and when roused to thought, these low, depressing dreams, these dark hours of doubt and despair, vanished before it. But gradually my health gave way, my lethargic apathy increased upon me, the gloomy walls of my cell had thrown their shadow over my spirit, and I sank into a state of moping indifference in which I scarcely marked the change of day and night; and felt at length that had the sentence been pronounced which condemned me for life to the walls of the Temple, I could have heard it without emotion.
“Come, sous-lieutenant, it's your turn now!” said the turnkey, entering my cell one morning, where I sat alone at breakfast; “I have just received the orders for your appearance.”
“How! where?” said I, scarcely able to do more than guess at the meaning of his words; “before the préfet, is it?”
“No, no; a very different affair, indeed. You are summoned with the Chouan prisoners to appear at the Palais de Justice.”