The idiot boy somewhere upon the hills of Lake George, always in a world of fog which could not be discovered again, had often come to my mind during my journeys, like a self that I had shed and left behind. But Bellenger was a cipher. I forgot him even at the campfire. Now here was this poor crazy potter on my track with vindictive intelligence, the day I set foot in Paris. Time was not granted even to set the lodging in order. He must have crossed the ocean with as good speed as Doctor Chantry and Skenedonk and I. He may have spied upon us from the port, through the barriers, and even to our mansard. At any rate he had found me in a crowd, and made use of me to my downfall: and I could have knocked my stupid head on the curb as I was haled away. One glimpse of Skenedonk I caught while we marched along Rue St. Antoine, the gendarmes protecting me from the crowd. He thought I was going to the scaffold, where many a strapping fellow had gone in the Paris of his youth, and fought to reach me, laying about him with his loaf of bread. Skenedonk would certainly trail me, and find a way to be of use, unless he broke into trouble as readily as I had done. My guards crossed the river in the neighborhood of palaces, and came by many windings to a huge pile rearing its back near a garden place, and there I was turned over to jailers and darkness. The entrance was unwholesome. A man at a table opened a tome which might have contained all the names in Paris. He dipped his quill and wrote by candlelight. "Political offender or common criminal?" he inquired. "Political offender," the officer answered. "What is he charged with?" "Trying to assassinate the emperor in his post-chaise." "La, la, la!" the recorder grunted. "Another attempt! And gunpowder put in the street to blow the emperor up only last week. Good luck attends him:--only a few windows broken and some common people killed. Taken in the act, was this fellow?" "With the knife in his hand." "What name?" the recorder inquired. I had thought on the answer, and told him merely that my name was Williams. "Eh, bien, Monsieur Veeleeum. Take him to the east side among the political offenders," said the master-jailer to an assistant or turnkey. "But it's full," responded the turnkey. "Shove him in some place." They searched me, and the turnkey lighted another candle. The meagerness of my output was beneath remark. When he had led me up a flight of stone steps he paused and inquired, "Have you any money?" "No." "So much the worse for you." "What is the name of this prison?" I asked. "Ste. Pelagie," he answered. "If you have no money, and expect to eat here, you better give me some trinket to sell for you." "I have no trinkets to give you." He laughed. "Your shirt or breeches will do." "Are men shut up here to starve?" The jailer shrugged. "The bread is very bad, and the beans too hard to eat. We do not furnish the rations; it is not our fault. The rule here is nothing buys nothing. But sleep in your breeches while you can. You will soon be ready enough to eat them." I was ready enough to eat them then, but forbore to let him know it. The whole place was damp and foul. We passed along a corridor less than four feet wide, and he unlocked a cell from which a revolting odor came. There was no light except what strained through a loophole under the ceiling. He turned the key upon me, and I held my nose. Oh, for a deep draught of the wilderness! There seemed to be an iron bed at one side, with a heap of rags on top. I resolved to stand up all night before trusting myself to that couch. The cell was soon explored. Two strides in each direction measured it. The stone walls were marked or cut with names I could dimly see. I braced my back against the door and watched the loophole where a gray hint of daylight told that the sun must be still shining. This faded to a blotch in the thick stone, and became obliterated. Tired by the day's march, and with a taste of clean outdoor air still in my lungs, I chose one of the two corners not occupied by the ill odored bed, sat down, and fell asleep, dropping my cares. A grating of the lock disturbed me. The jailer pushed a jug of water into the room, and replaced his bolts. Afterwards I do not remember anything except that the stone was not warm, and my stomach craved, until a groan in my ear stabbed sleep. I sat up awake in every nerve. There was nobody in the cell with me. Perhaps the groan had come from a neighboring prisoner. Then a faint stir of covering could be heard upon the bed. I rose and pressed as far as I could into my corner. No beast of the wilderness ever had such terror for me as the unknown thing that had been my cell-mate half a night without my knowledge. Was a vampire--a demon--a witch--a ghost locked in there with me? It moaned again, so faintly, that compassion instantly got the better of superstition. "Who is there?" I demanded; as if the knowledge of a name would cure terror of the suffering thing naming itself. I got no answer, and taking my resolution in hand, moved toward the bed, determined to know what housed with me. The jug of water stood in the way, and I lifted it with instinctive answer to the groan. The creature heard the splash, and I knew by its mutter what it wanted. Groping darkly, to poise the jug for an unseen mouth, I realized that something helpless to the verge of extinction lay on the bed, and I would have to find the mouth myself or risk drowning it. I held the water on the bed-rail with my right hand, groped with the other, and found a clammy, death-cold forehead, a nose and cavernous cheeks, an open and fever roughened mouth. I poured water on my handkerchief and bathed the face. That would have been my first desire in extreme moments. The poor wretch gave a reviving moan, so I felt emboldened to steady the jug and let drop by drop gurgle down its throat. Forgetting the horror of the bed I sat there, repeating at intervals this poor ministration until the porthole again dawned, and blackness became the twilight of day. My cell-mate could not see me. I doubt if he ever knew that a hand gave him water. His eyes were meaningless, and he was so gaunt that his body scarcely made a ridge on the bed. Some beans and mouldy bread were put in for my rations. The turnkey asked me how I intended to wash myself without basin or ewer or towels, and inquired further if he could be of service in disposing of my shirt or breeches. "What ails this man?" He shrugged, and said the prisoner had been wasting with fever. "You get fever in Ste. Pelagie," he added, "especially when you eat the prison food. This man ought to be sent to the infirmary, but the infirmary is overflowing now." "Who is he?" "A journalist, or poet, or some miserable canaille of that sort. He will soon be out of your way." Our guard craned over to look at him. "Oui--da! He is a dying man! A priest must be sent to him soon. I remember he demanded one several days ago." But that day and another dragged through before the priest appeared. I sent out my waistcoat, and got a wretched meal, and a few spoonfuls of wine that I used to moisten the dying man's lips. His life may or may not have been prolonged; but out of collapse he opened his mouth repeatedly and took the drops. He was more my blessing than I was his. For I had an experience which has ever since given me to know the souls of prisoners. The first day, in spite of the cell's foulness, I laughed secretly at jailers and felt at peace, holding the world at bay. I did not then know that Ste. Pelagie was the tomb of the accused, where more than one prisoner dragged out years without learning why he was put there. I was not brought to any trial or examination. But gradually an uneasiness which cannot be imagined by one who has not felt it, grew upon me. I wanted light. The absence of it was torture! Light--to vivify the stifling air, which died as this man was dying--as I should die--in blinding mirk! Moisture broke out all over my body, and cold dew stood on my forehead. How could human lungs breathe the midnight of blackening walls? The place was hot with the hell of confinement. I said over and over--"O God, Thou art Light!--in Thee is no darkness at all!" This anguish seemed a repetition of something I had endured once before. The body and spirit remembered, though the mind had no register. I clawed at the walls. If I slept, it was to wake gasping, fighting upward with both hands. The most singular phase was that I reproached myself for not soaking up more sun in the past. Oh, how much light was going to waste over wide fields and sparkling seas! The green woods, the green grass--they had their fill of sun, while we two perished! I remembered creeping out of glare under the shadow of rocks, and wondered how I could have done it! If I ever came to the sun again I would stretch myself and roll from side to side, to let it burn me well! How blessed was the tan we got in summer from steeping in light! Looking at my cell-mate I could have rent the walls. "We are robbed," I told his deaf ears. "The light, poured freely all over the city, the light that belongs to you and me as much as to anybody, would save you! I wish I could pick you up and carry you out where the sun would shine through your bones! But let us be glad, you and I, that there is a woman who is not buried like a whitening sprout under this weight of stone! She is free, to walk around and take the light in her gray eyes and the wind in her brown hair. I swear to God if I ever come out of this I will never pass so much as a little plant prostrate in darkness, without helping it to the light." It was night by the loophole when our turnkey threw the door open. I heard the priest and his sacristan joking in the corridor before they entered carrying their sacred parcels. The priest was a doddering old fellow, almost deaf, for the turnkey shouted at his ear, and dim of sight, for he stooped close to look at the dying man, who was beyond confession. "Bring us something for a temporary altar," he commanded the turnkey, who stood candle in hand. The turnkey gave his light to the sacristan, and taking care to lock us in, hurried to obey. I measured the lank, ill-strung assistant, more an overgrown boy than a man of brawn, but expanded around his upper part by the fullness of a short white surplice. He had a face cheerful to silliness. The turnkey brought a board supported by crosspieces; and withdrew, taking his own candle, as soon as the church's tapers were lighted. The sacristan placed the temporary altar beside the foot of the bed, arrayed it, and recited the Confiteor. Then the priest mumbled the Misereatur and Indulgentiam. I had seen extreme unction administered as I had seen many another office of the church in my dim days, with scarcely any attention. Now the words were terribly living. I knew every one before it rolled off the celebrant's lips. Yet under that vivid surface knowledge I carried on as vivid a sequence of thought. The priest elevated the ciborium, repeating, "Ecce Agnus Dei." Then three times--"Domine, non sum dignus." I heard and saw with exquisite keenness, yet I was thinking, "If I do not get out of here he will have to say those words over me." He put the host in the parted mouth of the dying, and spoke-- "Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vetam aeternam." I thought how easy it would be to strip the loose surplice over the sacristan's head. There was a swift clip of the arm around your opponent's neck which I had learned in wrestling, that cut the breath off and dropped him as limp as a cloth. It was an Indian trick. I said to myself it would be impossible to use that trick on the sacristan if he left the cell behind the deaf old priest. I did not want to hurt him. Still, he would have a better chance to live after I had squeezed his neck, than I should have if I did not squeeze it. The priest took out of a silver case a vessel of oil, and a branch. He sprinkled holy water with the branch, upon the bed, the walls, the sacristan and me, repeating, "Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor." While I bent my head to the drops, I knew it was impossible to choke down the sacristan, strip off his surplice, invest myself with it and get out of the cell before priest or turnkey looked back. The sacrilege of such an attack would take all the strength out of me. The priest said the Exaudi nos, exhorted the insensible figure, then recited the Credo and the Litany, the sacristan responding. Silence followed. I knew the end was approaching. My hands were as cold as the nerveless one which would soon receive the candle. I told myself I should be a fool to attempt it. There was not one chance in a hundred. I should not squeeze hard enough. The man would yell. If I were swift as lightning and silent as force, they would take me in the act. It was impossible. But people who cannot do impossible things have to perish. The priest dipped his thumb in oil, and with it crossed the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hands of him who was leaving the use of these five senses and instruments of evil. Then he placed a lighted candle in the stiffened fingers, and ended with-- "Accipe lampadem ardentem custodi unctionem tuam." I said to myself--"I cannot do it! Nobody could! It is impossible!" The sacristan now began to strip the altar and pack all the sacred implements into their cases: preparing his load in the center of the room. The man was dead. The sacristan's last office was to fix the two lighted altar candles on the head and foot railing of the bed. They showed the corpse in its appalling stillness, and stood like two angels, with the pit between them. The sacristan rapped upon the door to let the turnkey know it was time to unlock. I drew the thick air to my lung depths. The man who would breathe no more was not as rigid as I stood. But there was no use in attempting such a thing! The turnkey opened a gap of doorway through which he could see the candles and the bed. He opened no wider than the breadth of the priest, who stepped out as the sacristan bent for the portables. There was lightning in my arm as it took the sacristan around the neck and let him limp upon the stones. The tail of the priest's cassock was scarcely through the door. "Eh bien! sacristan," called the turnkey. "Make haste with your load. I have this death to report. He is not so pretty that you must stand gazing at him all night!" I had the surplice over the sacristan's head and over mine, and backed out with my load, facing the room. If my jailer had thrust his candle at me, if the priest had turned to speak, if the man in the cell had got his breath before the bolt was turned, if my white surplice had not appeared the principal part of me in that black place--. It was impossible!--but I had done it.