The next day my keeper brought me a loaf of hard bread and a jug of water. I ate part of the bread and went to sleep. On awaking, I failed to find the remainder. I shuddered. Who was with me? Who had stolen my bread? I was wrought up to a state of frenzy which the entrance of my jailer subdued. I asked him who had taken my bread. He did not answer. Leaving more bread and water, he departed. I ate half my bread and went to sleep. I awoke hungry and sought the remainder. It was gone. The next day I put some bread underneath the straw and lay upon it pretending sleep. A light pattering of feet and shrill attenuated noises seemed to indicate a troop of tiny creatures in the darkness. A hairy coat swept my cheek and O the sickening horror of it!—the sharp teeth of a rat pierced my fingers. With staring sightless eyes, I understood. Rats raced over my body pushed beneath me in search for food, swept their cold tails over my sore face and grunted contentedly while eating the crumbs. I was often roused from the sleep of exhaustion by their shrill disputes or their nibbling my ears and fingers.
[Chapter VIII]
THE EXECUTION
It has been said that our family were the martyrs of the Revolution. Our parents suffered but they had previously known happiness. But I? What earthly fruit of good had passed my lips? What wrong had I, an innocent boy, committed? As I daily sat in darkness awaiting my bread and water, what a world was revealed to me, Thérèse! Retributive justice demanding an eye for an eye stood in my dungeon. I was called upon to balance the accounts of my delinquent ancestry.
Man is a creature of habit. My senses daily grew more accustomed to the pestilential cavern. I began to distinguish the objects in my dungeon. Light seemed to gleam faintly through the joinings of the stones. My pupils dilated like those of nocturnal birds. My hearing grew more acute and recognized the jailer's footfall long before he reached my door. I could dimly hear the call of the sentinels and the tramping of the guard.
One night in spring I distinguished voices in the ditch outside my cell and the dull sound of spades. Some one said, "Make it deeper and wider that it may hold the body." A platoon of soldiers halted and struck the breeches of their guns upon the ground. They were arranging an execution!
Only the wall separated us as a voice which was harsh yet timid, almost apologetic, pronounced a death sentence. The name of the condemned made me start: Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, Conte. Our family blood was about to spatter those walls erected by our ancestors. A sweet sonorous voice penetrated the stones. The Count was asking an officer to be the bearer of a death memento.
"For the Princesse de Rohan," he said, placing in his hands a letter, a ring and a lock of hair.
"Hang a lantern around his neck," was the brutal order that interrupted the prisoner. "No aim can be taken in this darkness."