“In winter! Yes! this night; or I shall never see winter.”
“This night! Oh, certainly! You can have a fire, though it is not usual with us at this season. Bellines—a fire here immediately.”
He saw his prisoner surveying, by the dim light from the deep window, the miserable cell—about twenty-eight feet by thirteen, built of blocks of stone, its vaulted ceiling so low that it could be touched by the hand; its floor, though planked, rotten and slippery with wet; and no furniture to be seen but a table, two chairs, and two heaps of straw in opposite corners.
“I am happy,” said the Commandant, “to have been able to avoid putting you underground. The orders I have had, from the First Consul himself, as to your being mis au secret, are very strict. Notwithstanding that, I have been able, you see, to place you in an apartment which overlooks the courtyard; and which, too, affords you other objects”—pointing through the gratings to the few feet of the pavement without, and the few yards of the perpendicular rock opposite, which might be seen through the loop-hole.
“How many hours of the day and night are we to pass in tills place?”
“How many hours? We reckon twenty-four hours to the day and night, as is the custom in Europe,” replied Rubaut; whether in ignorance or irony, his prisoner could not, in the dim twilight, ascertain. He only learned too surely that no exit from this cell was to be allowed.
Firewood and light were brought. Rubaut, eager to be busy till he could go, and to be gone as soon as possible, found fault with some long-deceased occupant of the cell, for having covered its arched ceiling with grotesque drawings in charcoal; and then with Bellines, for not having dried the floor. Truly the light gleamed over it as over a pond. Bellines pleaded in his defence that the floor had been dried twice since morning; but that there was no stopping the melting of the ice above. The water would come through the joints till the winter frosts set in.
“Ay, the winter frosts—they will set all to rights. They will cure the melting of the ice, no doubt.” Turning to his prisoners, he congratulated himself on not being compelled to search their persons. The practice of searching was usual, but might, he rejoiced to say, be dispensed with on the present occasion. He might now, therefore, have the pleasure of wishing them a good evening.
Pointing to the two heaps of straw, he begged that his prisoners would lay down their beds in any part of the cell which pleased them best. Their food, and all that they wanted, would be brought to the door regularly. As for the rest, they would wait upon each other. Having thus exhausted his politeness, he quitted the cell; and lock, bolt, and bar were fastened upon the captives.
By the faint light, Toussaint then perceived that his companion was struggling with laughter. When Mars Plaisir perceived by his master’s smile that he had leave to give way, he laughed till the cell rang again, saying—