“Would that it had!” said I, as the door closed upon me, and I was left in total solitude.
The day was over, and the evening already late, when a turnkey appeared, and desired me to follow him. A moody indifference to everything had settled on me, and I never spoke as I walked behind him down corridor after corridor; and across a court, into a large, massive-looking building, whose grated windows and strongly-barred doors reminded me of the Temple.
“Here is your cell,” said he, roughly, as he unlocked a low door near the entrance.
“It is gloomy enough,” said I, with a sad smile.
“And yet many have shed tears to leave it before now,” rejoined he, with a savage twinkle of his small eyes.
I was glad when the hoarse crash of the closed door told me I was alone; and I threw myself upon my bed and buried my face in my hands.
There is a state which is not sleep, and yet is akin to it, into which grief can bring us,—a half-dreary stupor, where only sorrows are felt; and even they come dulled and blunted, as if time and years had softened down their sting. But no ray of hope shines there,—a dreary waste, without a star. The cold, dark sea, boundless and bleak, is not more saddening than life then seems before us; there is neither path to follow nor goal to reach, and an apathy worse than death creeps over all our faculties. And yet, when we awake we wish for this again. Into this state I sank, and when morning came felt sorry that the light should shine into my narrow cell, and rouse me from my stupor. When the turnkey entered to bring me breakfast, I turned towards the wall, and trembled lest he should speak to me; and it was with a strange thrill I heard the door close as he went out. The abandonment of one's sorrow—that daily, hourly indulgence in grief which the uncheered solitude of a prison begets—soon brings the mind to the narrow range of one or two topics. With the death of hope, all fancy and imagination perish, the springs of all speculation are dried up, and every faculty bent towards one point; the reason, like a limb unexercised, wastes and pines, and becomes paralyzed.
Now and then the thought would flash across me, “What if this were madness?”—and I shuddered not at the thought. Such had my prison made me.
Four days and nights passed over thus,—a long, monotonous dream, in which I counted not the time,—and I lay upon my straw bed watching the expiring light of the candle with that strange interest one attaches to everything within the limits of a prison-cell. The flame waned and flickered: now lighting up for a second the cold gray walls, scratched with many a prisoner's name; now subsiding, it threw strange and fitful shapes upon them,—figures that seemed to move and to beckon to one another,—goblin outlines, wild and fanciful. Then came a bright flash as the wick fell, and all was dark.
“If the dead do but sleep!” was the first thought that crossed my mind as the gloom of total night wrapped every object about me, and a stillness most appalling prevailed. Suddenly I heard the sounds of a heavy bolt withdrawn and a door opening; then a low, rushing noise, like wind blowing through a narrow corridor; and at last the marching sounds of feet, and the accents of men speaking together: nearer and nearer they came, and at length halted at the door of my cell. A cold, faint feeling, the sickness of the heart, crept over me; the hour, the sounds, reminded me of what so often I had heard men speak of in the Temple, and the dread of assassination made me tremble from head to foot. The light streamed from beneath the door, and reached to my bed; and I calculated the number of steps it would take before they approached me. The key grated in the lock and the door opened slowly, and three men stood at the entrance. I sprang up wildly to my feet; a sudden impulse of self-defence seized me; and with a wild shout for them to come on, I rushed forward. My foot, however, caught the angle of the iron bedstead, and I fell headlong and senseless to the ground.