27. THE PRISONERS.

He stepped aside to the ledge where the vine leaves yet lay strewn about, collected two or three, and stood wiping his hands upon them, with his back to the light.

"Well," he demanded after a silence, "have you. nothing to say to all that?"

'It's ugly," returned the little man, who had risen, and was brightening his knife upon his shoe, as he leaned an arm against the wall.

“What do you mean?"

John Baptist polished his knife in silence.

"Do you mean that I have not represented the case correctly?"

"Al-tro!" returned John Baptist. The word was an apology now, and stood for, “Oh, by no means!" "What then?"

Presidents and tribunals are so prejudiced."

"Well," cried the other, uneasily flinging the end of his cloak over his shoulder with an oath, "let them do their worst!"

Truly I think they will," murmured John Baptist to himself, as he bent his head to put his knife in his sash.

Nothing more was said on either side, though they both began walking to and fro, and necessarily crossed at every turn. Monsieur Rigaud sometimes half stopped, as if he were going to put his case in a new light, or make some irate remonstrance; but Signor Cavalletto continuing to go slowly to and fro

at a grotesque kind of jog-trot pace, with his eyes turned downward, nothing came of these inclinings.

By-and-by the noise of the key in the lock arrested them both. The sound of voices succeeded, and the tread of feet. The door clashed, the voices and the feet came on, and the prison-keeper slowly ascended the stairs, followed by a guard of soldiers.

"Now, Monsieur Rigaud," said he, pausing for a moment at the grate, with his keys in his hand, "have the goodness to come out."

"I am to depart in state, I see?"

Why, unless you did," returned the jailer, "you might depart in so many pieces that it would be difficult to get you together again. There's a crowd, Monsieur Rigaud, and it doesn't love you."

He passed on out of sight, and unlocked and unbarred a low door in the corner of the chamber. "Now," said he, as he opened it and appeared within, come out."

There is no sort of whiteness in all the hues under the sun at all like the whiteness of Monsieur Rigaud's face as it was then.

He lighted another of his paper cigars at his companion's, put it tightly between his teeth, covered his head with a soft slouched hat, threw the end of his cloak over his shoulder again, and walked out into the side gallery on which the door opened, without taking any further notice of Signor Cavalletto. to that little man himself, his whole attention had become absorbed in getting near the door and looking out at it. Precisely as a beast might approach the

As

opened gate of his den and eye the freedom beyond, he passed those few minutes in watching and peering until the door was closed upon him.

There was an officer in command of the soldiers, a stout, serviceable, profoundly calm man, with his drawn sword in his hand, smoking a cigar. He very briefly directed the placing of Monsieur Rigaud in the midst of the party, put himself with consummate indifference at their head, gave the word "March!" and so they all went jingling down the staircase. The door clashed, the key turned, and a ray of unusual light, and a breath of unusual air, seemed to have passed through the jail, vanishing in a thin wreath of smoke from the cigar.

Still, in his captivity, like a lower animal-like some impatient ape, or roused bear of the smaller species-the prisoner, now left solitary, had jumped upon the ledge, to lose no glimpse of this departure. As he yet stood clasping the grate with both hands, an uproar broke upon his hearing-yells, shrieks, oaths, threats, execrations, all comprehended in it, though (as in a storm) nothing but a raging swell of sound distinctly heard.

Excited into a still greater resemblance to a caged wild animal by his anxiety to know more, the prisoner leaped nimbly down, ran round the chamber, leaped nimbly up again, clasped the grate and tried to shake it, leaped down and ran, leaped up and listened, and never rested until the noise, becoming more and more distant, had died away. How many better prisoners

have worn their noble hearts out so! no man think

ing of it, not even the beloved of their souls realizing it; great kings and governors, who had made them captive, careering in the sunlight jauntily, and men cheering them on. Even the said great personages dying in bed, making exemplary ends and sounding speeches; and polite history, more servile than their instruments, embalming them!

At last John Baptist, now able to choose his own spot within the compass of those walls, for the exercise of his faculty of going to sleep when he would, lay down upon the bench, with his face turned over on his crossed arms, and slumbered-in his submission, in his lightness, in his good humour, in his shortlived passion, in his easy contentment with hard bread and hard stones, in his ready sleep, in his fits and starts altogether, a true son of the land that gave him birth.

The wide stare stared itself out for one while; the sun went down in a red, green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the fireflies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate the goodness of a better order of beings; the long dusty roads and the interminable plains were in repose; and so deep a hush was on the sea that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its dead. From "Little Dorrit," by CHARLES DICKENS.

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Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an heritage.

Richard Lovelace.