CHAPTER XLI.

THE COUNTESS AND HER VICTIM MEET.

The ruddy countenance of the governor lost its tone, and a cold whiteness crept over his lips. At last he turned a blanched and scared face upon the page. The great danger of his position had forced itself upon him.

“And the king has done this? I cannot believe it.”

“You may, for to-morrow will bring the proof. The order of Gosner’s release was signed this morning, and is now in Paris.”

The governor was on his feet at once.

“What is to be done? You came here for something more than this. Madame Du Berry has heard of Gosner’s pardon. She sent you here. What does she propose? This is a case that concerns us all, and may destroy us all.”

“Unless proper steps are taken,” said the page, in a low voice.

“But what steps can be taken?”

“You ask me that?” answered the page, with a strange smile on his lips; “you, who know all the mysteries of this prison, who receive men without record, and send them forth for burial with a number instead of a name?”

“Who told you these things?” demanded the governor, with a sudden panic.

“No matter; I know, also, that this man, Dr. Gosner, is not an inmate of this prison. He was buried within the month, and the number attached to his name is registered against it.”

“You know this?” cried the governor. “Rather you suggest it.”

“Yes, I suggest it. This man must not be let loose to prowl the streets of Paris, and drive the rabble wild with his stories of the Bastille, its cruelties, its dungeons, and its underground horrors. He was a man of wonderful eloquence, and freedom will touch his tongue with fire. His white hair, the wonderful pathos in his eyes, and that shadowy form, will excite the people to terrible wrath.”

The governor was trembling visibly throughout his entire frame. He leaned his hand so heavily on the table that the glasses, with the amber and ruby-tinted drops left in them, shook and rattled together beneath his pressure.

“Madame Du Berry was the person who cast this man into prison, the people hate her already,” continued the page, who was himself growing strangely pale. “This man will first assail her; as for yourself——”

The governor dropped into the chair he had left, and gazed upon the page with frightened eyes and parted lips, a remembrance of all he had done to the prisoner since his incarceration, of the neglect, starvation, the awful solitude in which he had been left, year after year, scarcely speaking to a human being, swept over him in all the blackness of its horrors.

“As for yourself,” continued the page, “all the enormous cruelties practiced in the Bastille, during the last twenty years, will be heaped upon your shoulders. This man has been an inmate of the lower-cells; he has been chained by the waist to your dank walls, over which reptiles were eternally dragging their slime across and around him; he has heard the perpetual lapping of fetid waters against the enormous walls, which were not thick enough to keep the poisonous drops from creeping down them and dropping on his hands, his hair, and his emaciated limbs——”

“Hold! hold!” cried the governor. “If this man says but half of these things to the people, they will seize upon me in the street and tear me limb from limb.”

“But the danger must be avoided. It is a question of life and death with you and the madame. The king in his clemency is flinging fire-brands among his own enemies, with which they will consume him.”

“When did you say the pardon would come?” inquired the governor.

“In the morning, very early.”

“We will be prepared!”

The color was coming back to that broad face. The governor had arrived at a conclusion—his prisoner should never go forth to the world to fire the hearts of men against him. He rang a little house-bell that stood upon the table with a sharpness that soon brought Christopher to the room.

“Bring me a light, Christopher, and lead the way to the office where our books are kept.”

Christopher lighted a lamp, and led the way into a dark stone chamber, which contained several oaken desks, on which lay ponderous books chained to staples driven deep into the wall. The governor opened one of these imposing volumes, and, after turning over several of its leaves, ran his finger down a column which bore a date that ran back to a period in which Louis the Fifteenth reigned in France.

“Only two entered at this period left,” he muttered; “and this delicate man one of them. How fearfully strong life is. It seems as if some men never would die.”

“Who are you seeking for—the man who died this morning?” inquired Christopher, who was greatly astonished that the governor should have entered that room, or thought of examining the books.

“Did a man die this morning?” demanded the governor, quickly. “What is his name? How long has he been here?”

“His name,” answered Christopher, with a grim smile, “has died out long ago; but we can trace it by the number, if you will give me time. As to the how long—I cannot remember when he was not here.”

Here the page stepped forward.

“You have seen the man who remains, I suppose—tell me, was he fair or dark, large or small, old or young?”

“He was fair, young, sir, when I first knew him, slender, too, and of most gentle bearing. As to age, men grow old here rapidly.”

“But he seems old?”

“Yes, a little, worn, old man.”

“That will do,” said the governor, promptly. “Now let us see this person. Get the keys, Christopher, I will go with you to the cells—there is the number.”

Christopher took the scrap of paper, on which a number was written, and selecting a bunch of keys from a heap that lay in one of the desks, took the lamp in his disengaged hand. The governor made a sign to the page, and all three plunged at once into the black labyrinth of passages which led into the stony heart of the prison. Through long, vault-like halls, down narrow chasms, that seemed hewn from the original rock, far into the very bowels of the earth, these three persons penetrated. After a time, they heard low, sobbing murmurs, indiscribably mournful, which came to them out of the darkness, as if the very stones were saturated with tears. Once the clank of a chain broke sharply through these murmurs, and the grinding sound of a curse broke across the blackness of their progress.

At last they stopped before an oaken door, studded heavily with great iron knobs, over which time and dampness had woven a coat of reddish rust. A great, clumsy lock of iron spread far out on the ponderous oak, into which Christopher thrust an equally clumsy key, which ground its way through the rasping rust, and was only turned by a vigorous wrench of both the keeper’s powerful hands.

At last the door was forced open, and there, sitting upon the bare, wet stones was a human being. He had just been aroused from a dreary sleep, and, supporting himself by the palms of both hands pressed upon the floor, was peering at them through a fall of snow-white hair, which drooped over the most mournfully white face that human eye ever gazed upon. When he saw the light, and more than one human face looking in upon his misery, this man, who scarcely knew what the presence of a fellow-creature was, began to tremble with strange apprehension, and crept half across the floor, whispering,

“Has she come—has she come?”

His eyes were bright as diamonds, his white face was full of piteous entreaty; his voice sounded like the heartbroken prayer of a dying man.

They did not speak to him, but drew back, and partly closed the door upon him. Then a wild shriek broke from the dungeon, a cry of anguish so terrible that the page covered his face with both hands, and went staggering through the dark passage like a drunken creature.

“Oh! if I could but take it back—if I could tear this one sin from my soul!”

The governor heard this cry of anguish, but did not comprehend the words. He had witnessed too many scenes like the one they had left to tremble at the sight.

“Have no apprehensions,” he said. “They will not find him here in the morning, rest content; not even the king knows all the secrets of the Bastille. There exist lower dungeons yet.”