The jailer, very anxious to make favor for himself, continued:
“If you will come with me to the cell that the dead man occupied, I will show you his handwriting on the wall.”
Still silent, the Bishop walking heavily, they went down the corridor, and the jailer opened the door of the cell, large and with many windows, and swung the lantern so that its yellow gleam fell upon the whitewashed wall.
The Bishop read the first two lines, and then his voice broke. Neither Diane nor Jean took up the reading.
The jailer, still obsequious, chattered on.
“He was the coolest hand I ever saw, and making jokes until the very last, complaining that he would catch cold if he didn’t wear his hat on the way to be shot. He was very proud of his poetry, and complained only that he had not time to finish the last verse.”
The Bishop, a man of simple mind, went down on his knees, and Diane and Jean knelt, too. So did the jailer, who did not mind a little thing like that in order to keep the good-will of his recent prisoners.
The Bishop made a prayer for the soul of François, known as Le Bourgeois, a prayer that came from the heart of an honest man.
When they rose, Jean said to the Bishop:
“Now we know that François, whom the world reckoned a rapscallion, was a better man than most. He stood up against the wall, and was huddled into the trench in my place, not so much for my sake as for this woman, whom, I know now, he loved well.”