The child, so rudely aroused, would drag himself with trembling limbs from his wretched bed to the grating, his feet colder than the damp floor on which he trod, to answer gently:
“Here I am!”
“Come nearer, then, so we can see you!” they would cry, holding up a lantern to light the cell.
“Very good! Go to bed again!”
Two hours later there would be another rattling of bolts, other deputies would appear, and again the Prince would be roused from his sleep and compelled, half-naked and shivering with cold and terror, to answer the questions of his jailers. This persecution soon exhausted him mentally and physically. The lack of fresh air, the darkness and solitude, benumbed all his faculties. He no longer wept. His feeble hands could scarcely lift the earthen plate or jug in which his food and water were brought. He had ceased to try to clean his room; he no longer had even the strength to shake up the sack of straw that formed his bed, or to turn the mattress. The bedclothes were never changed, and his pillow was in tatters; he could not get clean linen or mend his ragged clothes; he had not resolution enough to wash and clean himself, but lay patiently on his bed most of the time, his dull eyes staring into vacancy.
How often must he have prayed to God, “When, oh! when, will my sufferings end?” How long—how long it must have seemed before the Almighty listened to the feeble voice and sent the blessed release of death. But at last the petition was heard, and a gleam of human pity brightened the last days of this innocent victim of man’s cruelty.
After the execution of Robespierre[21] and his associates in the Reign of Terror, better days dawned for the little Prince. The new government sent him a jailer named Laurent, who was kind and humane, and dared to show his pity for his prisoner. He had the barred door opened, and, horror-stricken at the sight disclosed, at once took measures to relieve the poor child, whom he found cowering on a filthy bed, clothed in rags, his back bent as if with age, his little body covered with sores. The once lovely child showed scarcely a trace of his former beauty. His face was yellow and emaciated, his eyes dim and sunken; he was ill, and the bright and vigorous mind was no longer active. “I want to die! I want to die!” were the only words Laurent was able to draw from him at his first visit.
The kindly jailer lost no time in bettering his situation as far as he could. The barred door with the wicket was removed, the shutters taken down from the windows to admit the light and air freely, and the cell thoroughly cleaned. One of his first cares was to have the boy bathed, cleaned, and placed in another bed. He also sent for a physician, and ordered a tailor to make some new clothes for his charge. At first the poor little Prince could not understand these expressions of sympathy and kindness. He had suffered so much and so deeply from the inhumanity of men, that his crushed sensibilities were slow in starting to life again.
“Why do you trouble yourself about me?” he asked one day, and when Laurent made some kindly answer, added, with a swelling heart, “I thought no one cared for me any more!” while he tried to hide his tears.
Simon had introduced the custom of addressing the Prince simply as “Capet”; Laurent changed this, and called him by his first name, “M. Charles.” He also obtained permission for him to walk on the platform of the Tower whenever he chose, and enjoy the blue sky and the sunshine again after his long, sad imprisonment. Here, one day, he found some little yellow flowers that were trying to live in the seams and crevices of the crumbling stone. He gathered them eagerly, and tied them into a little nosegay, recalling, perhaps, the sunny days of his early childhood.