Then followed a cruel fateful moment; then the order; then the rebounding of the balls from the outer wall of my dungeon; then the thud of the falling body; then suppressed oaths and stern commands; then the noise of spades. As the platoon of soldiers marched away, I said to myself, "My cousin, the Duke d'Enghien has been keeping me company, and now he lies very close."
No clothes had been given me during my imprisonment and I was in tatters. I shivered, wrapped in my filthy blanket. My hair hung on my shoulders in long matted curls; my face—beardless on entering the tower—was half covered with a tangled crop, my nails so long that they tore off in great shreds unless I gnawed them close with my teeth. I could not calculate the duration of my captivity. I seemed losing the power of thought. I lived over and over my cousin's execution until it seemed to have been my own. I assured myself that I was awakening after death and I felt the bullet wounds in my head. I refused nourishment, saying feebly that dead men required no food. On the third day of my self-imposed starvation the hinges of my door creaked at an unaccustomed hour and my jailer was communicative for the first time.
"Get up and follow me," he said.
I remained motionless, for was I not a corpse? The man raised me roughly and placed an arm around my shoulders. Then I comprehended that I lived and concluded that execution was about to take place. A great peace followed this conviction. When we reached daylight, the air asphyxiated me like a powerful gas and when my guide opened a door, saying, "Here!" I fell on the floor in a swoon.
[Chapter IX]
THE ESCAPE
I regained consciousness upon a real bed. Some people were near me. My jailer, with a softened expression, was handing me a cup of soup. I closed my eyes and realized that some one raised the sheet covering me and searched over my almost nude body for a birthmark. A voice said, "Thank God, it is he!" and human lips pressed my cadaverous hands.
The tower's warden said affably as he took his leave:
"Assure the Empress that he shall be well cared for."