CHAPTER LII.

MONSIEUR JACQUES TURNS BLACKSMITH AGAIN.

Monsieur Jacques went to his room and prepared, with more trepidation than he had ever felt in his life, for the enterprise which would give him the only object he asked for on earth, or throw him back into utter disappointment. Once more he flung off all the appearances of a gentleman, and put himself on a level with the rudest workmen of the city. The thick masses of his hair were dulled with powdered dust, his brows and lashes were darkened, and with a few touches of the pencil, dark circles under the eyes deepened them almost to blackness. Directly a stout, high-shouldered mechanic, in coarse workman’s clothes, and carrying a box of tools in his hand, came out of the room; a cap of faded cloth was on his head, and his hair fell in unkept locks over his forehead, half concealing his eyes. Marguerite saw him pass the door, and a faint smile stirred her lip. It was in this guise she had first seen him, and the memory of all his kindness since that day made the heart swell in her bosom. Monsieur Jacques cast one glance through the door, and went on his way, nerved by the look with which those beautiful eyes had followed him. He passed through several streets, nodding now and then to a fellow workman whom he chanced to encounter, and at last entered the shop of a gunsmith and general worker in iron, where he seemed to be well known.

“Is the master no better?” he inquired of an apprentice, who was working at a vise near one of the windows.

The boy looked up, blew some iron-filings from his fingers, and answered carelessly,

“No better, and cross-grained as a file. Step in yonder, you will find him there, I suppose.”

Monsieur Jacques went into the inner room to which the lad pointed, and found his friend in a great easy chair, with his night-cap on, nursing an unfortunate leg, which was cruelly tortured with the rheumatism.

“Ah! you have come at last; that young reprobate out yonder protested that he did not know where to find you. Can anything be more aggravating? Here is the governor wanting me at the Bastille. Some prisoner has nearly battered down one of the crazy doors, and so wrenched the lock, that they can neither get in or out of his cell. So there is a chance that the fellow may starve to death for his pains, for I could not walk a step to save my life.”

The locksmith gave a dash at his aching leg, as if violence could help the matter, and, settling back in his chair, waited for his visitor to speak.

“I heard that you were ill, and happened to remember that this was your usual day for service at the prison. Having represented you before, I suppose they will accept me again. If there are keys to be fitted, let me have them; and if you will write a line to the governor, saying that I am sent as the most trusty of your workmen, it will save all trouble about the admission.”

“You are kind, my friend. So good a craftsman is not often found ready to take a sick man’s place. Give me pen and paper, I will write a line to my friend Christopher—it is not necessary to trouble the governor; but you must put forth all your strength here, for they are getting terribly anxious about the safety of their prisoners. No wonder, the damps of those vaults are enough to corrode the best lock ever forged in a single month, and after that there is no key that will turn against the rust. Still I ought not to complain, it rolls up my bill handsomely at the end of the year; and there is no lack of good wine at the Bastille after the work is done.”

“I remember it,” said Jacques, with a relishing movement of the lip; “one does not readily forget such wine. I hope they will be as liberal to the man as they are to the master. Oh! you have finished the paper, and I have no time to lose.”

Monsieur Jacques took up his case of tools, put the paper in his pocket, and went out, smiling cheerfully. In half an hour he stood before the draw-bridge of the Bastille, presented his note to the guard, and was admitted to the interior of the prison. He found Christopher in a guard-room, where he was giving some extra orders to half a dozen of the prison-guards, who had done something to displease him. He looked around as Jacques entered, recognized him as a person who had done duty there before, and went on with his lecture, not considering a humble blacksmith worthy of his immediate attention.

Jacques sat down his tool-case, and seemed to be absorbed in the pompous reprimand Christopher was dealing out to the poor fellows who had been so unfortunate as to offend him. This attention touched the keeper’s vanity, and he launched out into more fervid eloquence for his especial benefit. At last he sent the delinquents away with a lofty wave of the hand, and bestowed his entire attention on the locksmith.

“So,” he said, reaching forth his hand for the paper which Jacques gave him, “the old locksmith is down again, chained by the leg as fast as any prisoner in the Bastille. It is no time for strange hands to be let into the fortress; but if he is so ill, there is no help for it. Wait a moment; if I remember rightly you have been here before?”

Monsieur Jacques would have betrayed himself by a sudden flush or pallor but for the brown hue which had been liberally imparted to his complexion that morning. As it was, a flickering light in the eye alone revealed the panic that seized upon him. It was needless. Christopher only alluded to the workman whom he remembered to have come on the same errand once before. He had not the remotest idea that he had so lately seen this man in another capacity, nor did he recognize the voice which was peculiarly rich and deep, for Jacques had put a leaden bullet under his tongue, which confused all the tones and vulgarized his speech.

“Shall I go to work now?” he asked, in an awkward, deprecating way. “It will need a light, I suppose.”

Christopher took a lantern from the wall and lighted the candle within.

“I will go with you myself,” he said. “In these times we trust but few of the keepers where you are going, not even our oldest guard Doudel, who is suspected of having fed a prisoner.”

Monsieur Jacques’ heart fell. He had hoped that a common guard would be sent with him, one whom it would be possible to evade for a moment; but Christopher took some keys from the drawer of a desk, and moved toward the interior of the prison.

Perhaps in his whole life that brave man had never felt such keen anxiety as stirred every nerve in his body during his descent into those gloomy corridors. How was he to prosecute the investigation he had come purposely to make? By what means was he to reach the particular cell, from which that cry came, with Christopher on the watch? There was not one chance in a hundred that it was the lock that poor prisoner had shaken, with so much violence, that wanted mending; yet a wild hope possessed him that he might be led there. No, he was conducted down a damp corridor that branched off in another direction, and shown into an empty cell, from whose wall the staples had been wrenched out by some desperate man, to whom suffering had given a giant’s strength.