How many better prisoners have worn their noble hearts out so; no man thinking of it; not even the beloved of their souls realising 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 short-lived 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 fire-flies 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.
CHAPTER 2 Fellow Travellers
′No more of yesterday′s howling over yonder to-day, Sir; is there?′
′I have heard none.′
′Then you may be sure there is none. When these people howl, they howl to be heard.′
′Most people do, I suppose.′
′Ah! but these people are always howling. Never happy otherwise.′
′Do you mean the Marseilles people?′
′I mean the French people. They′re always at it. As to Marseilles, we know what Marseilles is. It sent the most insurrectionary tune into the world that was ever composed. It couldn′t exist without allonging and marshonging to something or other—victory or death, or blazes, or something.′
The speaker, with a whimsical good humour upon him all the time, looked over the parapet-wall with the greatest disparagement of Marseilles; and taking up a determined position by putting his hands in his pockets and rattling his money at it, apostrophised it with a short laugh.
′Allong and marshong, indeed. It would be more creditable to you, I think, to let other people allong and marshong about their lawful business, instead of shutting ′em up in quarantine!′
′Tiresome enough,′ said the other. ′But we shall be out to-day.′
′Out to-day!′ repeated the first. ′It′s almost an aggravation of the enormity, that we shall be out to-day. Out! What have we ever been in for?′
′For no very strong reason, I must say. But as we come from the East, and as the East is the country of the plague—′
′The plague!′ repeated the other. ′That′s my grievance. I have had the plague continually, ever since I have been here. I am like a sane man shut up in a madhouse; I can′t stand the suspicion of the thing. I came here as well as ever I was in my life; but to suspect me of the plague is to give me the plague. And I have had it—and I have got it.′
′You bear it very well, Mr Meagles,′ said the second speaker, smiling.
′No. If you knew the real state of the case, that′s the last observation you would think of making.
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