CHAPTER XV.

IN THE DUNGEONS OF THE BASTILLE.

“There is silver for your flowers, and I thank you for bringing the first choice here. So you are Doudel’s daughter; I wonder he never gave me a sight of you before. A faithful man is Doudel. So you wish to speak with him,—have a message from his dame. Well, there is no treason in that; few women can pass from this court across the ditch of the Bastille; but you shall go with your flowers and brighten the gloomy shadows, if that is possible. Ho! there! Pass this girl and her basket across the draw-bridge, and find the guard Doudel; he is her father.”

Seldom had an order like that passed from the governor of the Bastille; but Marguerite had brought him fresh flowers, of which he was passionately fond; and Doudel, one of the oldest of his guards, had been faithful to his trust so many years, that it seemed impossible that he, or this beautiful young creature who called herself his daughter, could be in any way dangerous.

A guard answered this order, and conducted Marguerite down the large avenue, which led from the Cour de Gouvernment, to the deep stagnant ditch of the Bastille, which coiled itself around that gloomy group of towers like some hideous serpent, green and slimy with incessant slow creeping.

A huge draw-bridge, with great rusty chains dangling from it, and rust-eaten hinges, which shrieked and groaned like living things in torment, began to move heavily, and at last fell with all its ponderous weight across the ditch, over which the girl, now shivering and white as a ghost, walked.

When she had crossed the bridge, which rose groaning behind her, it was to pass through a guard house, full of wondering sentinels.

Then a strong barrier of crossed timbers, sheeted with iron, loomed before her; and, passing that, she stood in the interior court, bound by nine lofty towers linked together with massive stone walls, adown which the sunshine never came. These towers, black, weather-stained, and hideous in grim antiquity, were pierced here and there with narrow slits widening inwards, and crossed with rust-corroded iron bars.

In the dread solitude of this place, the girl was left alone, while her guide went in search of Doudel.

The damp dreariness of the court chilled her through and through. In the dull gray light, her flowers looked like the ghost of blossoms long since dead.

All at once, far above her, she heard a hoarse clangor, as of bells clearing the rust from their throats. She looked up, and there, on the grim face of the nearest tower, two iron figures, chained to the dial of a huge clock, clanked forth the hour. The very soul in that poor girl’s body, recoiled from this weird sound. She would gladly have fled from the spot, but her limbs shook and refused to move.

At last some one approached, and a voice close behind her said,

“Little one, be still, be cautious, and you shall see him now.”

The blood stirred once more in those young veins. A glow of life rushed through the frame that a moment before had seemed chilled to death.

“Come, tread softly, and keep close. It is my turn to visit the lower vaults, and for this one minute we are alone. Keep close to the wall, then no one can see us from the ramparts. Now be swift and still.”

Doudel spoke in a hoarse whisper; his voice was husky with apprehension. A single cry or failure of courage on the part of that frail girl, would inevitably plunge him into ruin. He moved close to the foundations of the nearest tower, and turned his face back, to make sure that she was following him. The face that met his was white as death.

“Do not fear,” she whispered, “I will follow.”

Doudel opened a ponderous door in the wall, and held it while she passed through. Then it was closed and they stood together in total darkness, but for the time safe from observation. Doudel felt for a lantern in a niche of the wall, struck fire from a flint and lighted it. Then he moved along a close stone passage, adown which Marguerite could hear the great water rats scuttling from the light. Down a flight of steep, slippery steps, and along other passages she followed her guide, as it seemed to her, into the very depths of the earth; for she could hear the waters sweeping and lapsing, as it seemed, above her head, and great clammy drops fell down upon her as she walked. It was a weird sight, if any one could have witnessed it—that tall man with his lantern, and the pale, resolute girl, delicate as a lily, gliding on behind him with that basket of bright flowers on her arm.

Doudel sat down his lantern, took a great key from a bunch in his hand, and fastened it into the lock of a low iron-studded door, which swung backwards into the darkness.

Marguerite heard a faint murmur and a rustling of straw, then a sharp cry as Doudel lifted his lantern and threw its light into the cell he had opened. She went forward, shivering all over with excitement, and looked in.

A man was sitting upon some mouldy straw in a corner of the dungeon, holding two thin pallid hands before his eyes, shielding them from the sudden glare of the lantern. His beard, long and white, flowed down the garments that fell in mouldered and decaying tatters around him. His voice was feeble and broken, like that of an old, old man.

Marguerite stood at the door one moment, with this miserable picture before her—the grim, dripping walls, the reeking straw, and that shadowy man, sitting upon it in pathetic helplessness, uttering his feeble protest against the pain of so much light. Then she stole across the little space of rocky floor and sunk to her knees by his side.

“Father, father!”

The prisoner hushed his voice and seemed to listen, but still kept both hands over his eyes. Marguerite placed her basket on the straw, and the breath of her flowers arose to his nostrils. All at once a sob shook his bosom, and the thin hands dropped away from his eyes, from which great tears of delight were rolling. He looked down upon the blossoms and touched them cautiously, with strange gleams of mingled joy and distrust.

“They are yours, father,” said Marguerite in sweet, pathetic thankfulness, that she had given one ray of joy to that dreary man. “Will you not look at me now? I brought them for you.”

The prisoner turned his eyes slowly on the kneeling girl.

“That voice, sweet, like the flowers, comes from a great way off. I have dreamed such things before, but that is long ago. Even the dreams have left me at last. I suppose this drip, drip of water washed them from my brain. But they have come back to me now, and you, you! Why, you were my wife then. Don’t move. Don’t turn your eyes. I will not stir my hand. Don’t I know how such things fade away when one reaches out his arms.”

“Oh, my father, if you would but touch me, or look into my face. Indeed, indeed I am—not your wife—but your child, your own little Marguerite.”

The prisoner shook his head and a mournful smile crept over his wan face.

“Now I know what a sweet snare it is; with that name you seek to win me to move or cry out; then all would melt away. Why, do you think I have forgotten because I am a prisoner? The child, my little Marguerite, could just reach my knees. You are—yes, you _are_ like my wife; no change, not a whit, since I married her; but you know that cannot be; people must grow old; and it is a hundred years since I came here. You must understand I can reason. People do grow crazy here sometimes, but I can reason yet. That is why dreams do not cheat me; but this is very sweet, very, very sweet.”

Here the wretched man stooped forward and seemed to give himself up to the perfume of the flowers, weeping softly all the time.

Marguerite looked on in piteous helplessness. At last she reached out her arms, clasped them around that bowed neck, and kissed the pallid forehead.

A shudder ran through the prisoner. His feeble arms clasped themselves around the form that clung to him, and he murmured in a quiet, dreamy way:

“Yes, yes; we will not disturb it. This is not the first time you have been here, but never, I think, never did you seem so real. Why, I can hear your heart beat; your very breath stirs my beard; and there is my guard, my good, kind guard, looking on. Does this light come from his lantern? Are you a real breathing woman? Tell me, my guard. I know your voice. If you will speak to me, I shall believe.”

“My poor friend, it is your daughter; for years and years, she and her mother have been searching for you.”

“My daughter, my own little Marguerite!” said the prisoner, holding Marguerite back with both hands, that he might look on her face. After perusing it eagerly for awhile, he shook his head and sighed heavily.

“Is it her or her mother? I cannot tell them apart, and it wearies me to make it out. She was so little, you know.”

“But years have made me a woman, father. You will not love me the less for that.”

“Love you less! Why, what have I had to love but your shadow and hers, all these years—hundreds on hundreds, I think, only for awhile I lost the count.”

“And all these years we have been searching for you. The letter you sent us——”

“Hush! hush! we might do that good man harm; even my guard must not know of that.”

“He brought me here. He will permit me to come again and again. Now and then, I shall send you a little fruit, fresh out of the sunshine.”

The prisoner laughed, and patted her head like a thankful child.

“And a flower which the good Doudel can hide in his bosom. We—mamma and I—will think of nothing but you. Some day we shall come with the king’s order and take you home with us.”

The prisoner shook his head. The idea of freedom seemed to give him little pleasure. Nor did he question about his wife. His feeble memory could not disconnect the child in his arms from the woman who was most vividly on his mind, as a bride. Marguerite was, from that day, both mother and child to that solitary man.

After a while, Doudel went into the passage, and came back with some sodden black bread and a pitcher of water, which he placed on the dungeon floor, saying gently to Marguerite,

“It will be dangerous to stay longer.”

Marguerite cast her eyes on the repulsive food, and shuddered.

“Not that—not that,” she cried. “Oh God! make us thankful. There is something in the bottom of my basket. The good dame put it there, lest I should be hungry before my flowers were sold. See, here it is.”

Marguerite thrust her hand eagerly among the flowers, and drew forth a tiny loaf of white bread, and two purple figs.

“Take these—take these!” she said, tearing one of the figs apart, and holding its juicy pulp to the old man’s lips. “They are fresh; they are sweet. Oh! thank God that they were in my basket. See how he eats, how he loves them. Oh, my good kind Doudel, was there ever happiness like this?”

“I have tasted these before,” said the prisoner, earnestly, pausing a moment in his delicious repast, to examine the half devoured fig; “but the name—I cannot remember the name.”

“Must we go? Oh! for another ten minutes. It is such pleasure to see him eat; but we will come again. Oh, I will be so crafty, so cautious; but then it shall not be long now. I will find my way to the king, or be trampled to death under the hoofs of his horses.”

“Do not go near the king; he is a hard old man. It was he who put me here,” said the prisoner. “No wife or child of mine, shall go near enough to look in his evil face.”

“That king is dead long ago,” answered Marguerite. “I should have no hope if he was on the throne.”

“Dead! Is he dead, and I living here? Well, well; I cannot understand it. Louis the Fifteenth is gone. Then who rules in France?”

“His grandson, who was the Dauphin.”

“And the Queen?”

“Is Marie Antoinette of Austria.”

“Marie Antoinette of Austria?”

A look of wild inquiry, more vivid than anything the prisoner had expressed yet, flashed over his face; but Marguerite had no time for questions or answers.

Doudel would not give her another moment; so she left the dungeon so full of thankfulness, so resolved to set her father free, that the dark corridors and gloomy sounds had no terror for her. Her father was a reality now. She had seen him—felt his arms around her, fed him with her own hands. Yes and she would set him at liberty or die.