Within an Inch of His Life by Emile Gaboriau (good summer reads .TXT) 📖

“Yes, it is yours,” replied Dionysia.

“I did not know how sixteen thousand francs would look. How beautiful gold is! Just look, wife.”

But Colette turned her head away. She was quite as covetous as her husband, and perhaps even more excited; but she was a woman, and she knew how to dissemble.

“Ah, my dear young lady!” she said, “never would my old man and myself have asked you for money, if we had only ourselves to think of. But we have children.”

“Your duty is to think of your children,” replied Dionysia.

“I know sixteen thousand francs is a big sum. Perhaps you will be sorry to give us so much money.”

“I am not sorry at all: I would even add to it willingly.” And she showed them one of the other four rolls in her bag.

“Then, to be sure, what do I care for my place!” cried Blangin. And, intoxicated by the sight and the touch of the gold, he added,—

“You are at home here, madam; and the jail and the jailer are at your disposal. What do you desire? Just speak. I have nine prisoners, not counting M. de Boiscoran and Trumence. Do you want me to set them all free?”

“Blangin!” said his wife reprovingly.

“What? Am I not free to let the prisoners go?”

“Before you play the master, wait, at least, till you have rendered our young lady the service which she expects from you.”

“Certainly.”

“Then go and conceal this money,” said the prudent woman; “or it might betray us.”

And, drawing from her cupboard a woollen stocking, she handed it to her husband, who slipped the sixteen thousand francs into it, retaining about a dozen gold-pieces, which he kept in his pocket so as always to have in his hands some tangible evidence of his new fortune. When this was done, and the stocking, full to overflowing, had been put back in the cupboard under a pile of linen, she ordered her husband,—

“Now, you go down. Somebody might be coming; and, if you were not there to open when they knock, that might look suspicious.”

Like a well-trained husband, Blangin obeyed without saying a word; and then his wife bethought herself how to entertain Dionysia. She hoped, she said, her dear young lady would do her the honor to take something. That would strengthen her, and, besides, help her to pass the time; for it was only seven o’clock, and Blangin could not take her to M. de Boiscoran’s cell before ten, without great danger.

“But I have dined,” Dionysia objected. “I do not want any thing.”

The woman insisted only the more. She remembered (God be thanked!) her dear young lady’s taste; and she had made her an admirable broth, and some beautiful dessert. And, while thus talking, she set the table, having made up her mind that Dionysia must eat at all hazards; at least, so says the tradition of the place.

The eager zeal of the woman had, at least, this advantage,—that it prevented Dionysia from giving way to her painful thoughts.

Night had come. It was nine o’clock; then it struck ten. At last, the watch came round to relieve the sentinels. A quarter of an hour after that, Blangin reappeared, holding a lantern and an enormous bunch of keys in his hands.

“I have seen Trumence to bed,” he said. “You can come now, madam.”

Dionysia was all ready.

“Let us go,” she said simply.

Then she followed the jailer along interminable passages, through a vast vaulted hall, in which their steps resounded as in a church, then through a long gallery. At last, pointing at a massive door, through the cracks of which the light was piercing, he said,—

“Here we are.”

But Dionysia seized his arm, and said in an almost inaudible voice,—

“Wait a moment.”

She was almost overcome by so many successive emotions. She felt her legs give way under her, and her eyes become dim. In her heart she preserved all her usual energy; but the flesh escaped from her will and failed her at the last moment.

“Are you sick?” asked the jailer. “What is the matter?”

She prayed to God for courage and strength: when her prayer was finished, she said,—

“Now, let us go in.”

And, making a great noise with the keys and the bolts, Blangin opened the door to Jacques de Boiscoran’s cell.

Jacques counted no longer the days, but the hours. He had been imprisoned on Friday morning, June 23, and this was Wednesday night, June 28, He had been a hundred and thirty-two hours, according to the graphic description of a great writer, “living, but struck from the roll of the living, and buried alive.”

Each one of these hundred and thirty-two hours had weighed upon him like a month. Seeing him pale and haggard, with his hair and beard in disorder, and his eyes shining brightly with fever, like half-extinguished coals, one would hardly have recognized in him the happy lord of Boiscoran, free from care and trouble, upon whom fortune had ever smiled,—that haughty sceptical young man, who from the height of the past defied the future.

The fact is, that society, obliged to defend itself against criminals, has invented no more fearful suffering than what is called “close confinement.” There is nothing that will sooner demoralize a man, crush his will, and utterly conquer the most powerful energy. There is no struggle more distressing than the struggle between an innocent man accused of some crime, and the magistrate,—a helpless being in the hands of a man armed with unlimited power.

If great sorrow was not sacred, to a certain degree, Dionysia might have heard all about Jacques. Nothing would have been easier. She would have been told by Blangin, who was watching M. de Boiscoran like a spy, and by his wife, who prepared his meals, through what anguish he had passed since his imprisonment.

Stunned at first, he had soon recovered; and on Friday and Saturday he had been quiet and confident, talkative, and almost cheerful. But Sunday had been a fatal day. Two gendarmes had carried him to Boiscoran to take off the seals; and on his way out he had been overwhelmed with insults and curses by the people who had recognized him. He had come back terribly distressed.

On Tuesday, he had received Dionysia’s letter, and answered it. This had excited him fearfully, and, during a part of the night, Trumence had seen him walk up and down in his cell with all the gestures and incoherent imprecations of a madman.

He had hoped for a letter on Wednesday. When none came, he had sunk into