All was not sombre. This group had become friends. Ripe autumn light lay at times upon the stones and made the tree aerial. Sitting on the steps before Death’s great door the hearts of men and women were unbound, their minds enlarged. More than twice or thrice a day the grey walls threw back laughter. Those there were who thought, imagined, visioned. Underneath the pall the good-as-dead smiled and planned the dawn.
Jean and Espérance Merlin sat, part of this handful, beneath the tree. This individual earth-summer was turning toward brown autumn, toward winter icy-fingered. The leaves of the tree were drifting down. But ever, behind the winter, might be seen another spring.
In this cluster of prisoners were men and women, the young, those at prime and the old. Many grades of opinion were there, various lives and sorrows and joys. But all now were friends, and as friends sat and talked.
They talked of Freedom....
It seemed that it was the Unimprisonable.
Fell a bright evening, soft and bright and sweet in the courtyard, beneath the tree from which the leaves were falling. Toward sunset came a visitation, a gaoler and men with tri-colour sashes, officers of the Terror, of that bloody excrescence upon Revolution. “To-morrow other folk here, but none here who are now here!”
“Unless it be their ghosts—”
They turned and went, leaving the gold light in the courtyard. “Imperishably here, too!” said Espérance Merlin. “How many prisons, and how many leave-takings of prisons! Let it pass into a mood, grave and lifted!”
The rooms darkened, the courtyard darkened. This cluster of prisoners sat quietly, talked quietly until the stars shone like fruit in the tree. They parted, to sleep, or to lie straight and still upon their pallets, or to rise and measuredly pace, through the night, their prison room. The night passed. In the faintest dawn, by candlelight, they were brought together in the courtyard. Food and drink were given them, and they waited here for the wagons of death.
Among the distinguishing characteristics of this time must be placed courage before the death of the body. None of this especial cluster lacked that courage. It had been long a cluster, thought and feeling running swiftly from globe to globe. The eastern sky, behind the building line, began to glow.