One prisoner of fifteen years had scratched verses
upon his walls, and brief prose sentences—brief,
but full of pathos. These spoke not of himself
and his hard estate, but only of the shrine where his
spirit fled the prison to worship—of home
and the idols that were templed there. He never
lived to see them.
The walls of these dungeons are as thick as some bed-chambers
at home are wide—fifteen feet. We
saw the damp, dismal cells in which two of Dumas’
heroes passed their confinement—heroes of
“Monte Cristo.” It was here that
the brave Abbe wrote a book with his own blood, with
a pen made of a piece of iron hoop, and by the light
of a lamp made out of shreds of cloth soaked in grease
obtained from his food; and then dug through the thick
wall with some trifling instrument which he wrought
himself out of a stray piece of iron or table cutlery
and freed Dantes from his chains. It was a pity
that so many weeks of dreary labor should have come
to naught at last.
They showed us the noisome cell where the celebrated
“Iron Mask”—that ill-starred
brother of a hardhearted king of France—was
confined for a season before he was sent to hide the
strange mystery of his life from the curious in the
dungeons of Ste. Marguerite. The place had
a far greater interest for us than it could have had
if we had known beyond all question who the Iron Mask
was, and what his history had been, and why this most
unusual punishment had been meted out to him.
Mystery! That was the charm. That speechless
tongue, those prisoned features, that heart so freighted
with unspoken troubles, and that breast so oppressed
with its piteous secret had been here. These
dank walls had known the man whose dolorous story
is a sealed book forever! There was fascination
in the spot.
We have come five hundred miles by rail through the
heart of France. What a bewitching land it is!
What a garden! Surely the leagues of bright
green lawns are swept and brushed and watered every
day and their grasses trimmed by the barber.
Surely the hedges are shaped and measured and their
symmetry preserved by the most architectural of gardeners.
Surely the long straight rows of stately poplars that
divide the beautiful landscape like the squares of
a checker-board are set with line and plummet, and
their uniform height determined with a spirit level.
Surely the straight, smooth, pure white turnpikes are
jack-planed and sandpapered every day. How else
are these marvels of symmetry, cleanliness, and order
attained? It is wonderful. There are no
unsightly stone walls and never a fence of any kind.
There is no dirt, no decay, no rubbish anywhere—nothing
that even hints at untidiness —nothing
that ever suggests neglect. All is orderly and
beautiful—every thing is charming to the
eye.
We had such glimpses of the Rhone gliding along between
its grassy banks; of cosy cottages buried in flowers
and shrubbery; of quaint old red-tiled villages with
mossy medieval cathedrals looming out of their midst;
of wooded hills with ivy-grown towers and turrets
of feudal castles projecting above the foliage; such
glimpses of Paradise, it seemed to us, such visions
of fabled fairyland!
