“The count told me to say you had better eat heartily,” said the peon, “as this will be your last meal; and,” he continued, in a lower voice, pointing to a roll of bread, “you must break this bread, even if you don’t eat it.”
The gesture and tone attracted Harding’s attention. He approached the bench and raised the roll, while the boy, repeating his injunction, went back to the door, and was cautiously let out. The lieutenant waited until the bolts were drawn again, and then broke the bread. A small slip of paper fell to the floor; and, on raising it, he found the following hopeful, though unsatisfactory words:
“Will you pay me the twenty dollars, or shall I keep the horse?”
“It would be cheaper,” muttered Harding, perversely, “to let him keep the horse, if he has ridden him thirty leagues already. But,” he added, a suspicion flashing across his mind, “that is impossible! I ought to have known the young scoundrel would betray me—and this is only a cruel ruse of De Marsiac!”
He turned the paper over as he spoke, and his eye caught these words written on the reverse:
“I will be with you by 9 o’clock—McCulloch.”
“I did the boy injustice,” was his first thought; “he shall have both the money and the horse.” And seating himself on the bench, he followed the count’s well-meant advice, and was soon refreshed by a hearty meal.
It is wonderful how much the state of the stomach has to do with the moods of the mind. Indeed, the two organs seem to be inter-reactive; and I believe some physiologists now contend, with great plausibility, too, that the brain is really the digestive organ. If this theory be true, mental distress must be only another name for dispepsia; and—though I have seen men who ate like anacondas, when under great affliction—I am strongly inclined to endorse the speculation. At all events, Harding was “a case, or subject, in point;” for, but a few minutes before, when he was apprehending many certain and uncertain evils, from the resentment of the count, he had not the least desire for refreshment; but, on the first glimpse of hope, he had an appetite like a soldier escaped from a beleaguered city. And, no sooner was the inner man replenished, than—on the aforesaid principle of inter-reaction—his spirits rose almost to the point of absolute content. Most axioms are tautological; but none is more so than that which asserts that “man is a strange animal.” The word “strange” might be advantageously and conveniently left out.
So thoroughly had the important act of receiving his rations reinvigorated the captive, both corporeally and mentally, that, when he resumed his walk up and down the floor, he dismissed all anxiety about his own fate, and began to speculate in reference to the condition of his fellow-prisoner, Grant. From regret that he had been compelled to strike him, his mind wandered to a more pleasing subject of contemplation—he began to long for some information about Margarita; how she was treated by the ruffian count, and, more particularly—for love is always egotistical—how she viewed his captivity; and finally, whether she had not forgotten her grief for her murdered mother, in devising means of giving him his liberty. These, or such as these, are often very pleasant fancies—the misfortune is, that, in most cases, they are only fancies, and are occasionally rather rudely dispelled.
So it was, at all events, with Harding; for, just as he had reached that supreme apex of egotism, to which lovers so easily attain—where one’s mistress is not supposed to know that there is any thing, or anybody else in the world, about which, or whom, she can think—when he was recalled to more substantial realities, by hearing the count, in loud, stern tones, giving a rapid and ominous command.