THE ARETHUSA. Well, sir, oblige me at least by looking at this book. Here, I open it with my eyes shut. Read one of these songs - read this one - and tell me, you who are a man of intelligence, if it would be possible to sing it at a fair?
THE COMMISSARY (CRITICALLY). MAIS OUI. TRES BIEN.
THE ARETHUSA. COMMENT, MONSIEUR! What! But do you not observe it is antique. It is difficult to understand, even for you and me;but for the audience at a fair, it would be meaningless.
THE COMMISSARY (TAKING A PEN). ENFIN, IL FAUI EN FINIR. What is your name?
THE ARETHUSA (SPEAKING WITH THE SWALLOWING VIVACITY OF THEENGLISH). Robert-Louis-Stev'ns'n.
THE COMMISSARY (AGHAST). HE! QUOI?
THE ARETHUSA (PERCEIVING AND IMPROVING HIS ADVANTAGE). Rob'rt-Lou's-Stev'ns'n.
THE COMMISSARY (AFTER SEVERAL CONFLICTS WITH HIS PEN). EH BIEN, ILFAUT SE PASSER DU NOM. CA NE S'ECRIT PAS. (Well, we must do without the name: it is unspellable.)The above is a rough summary of this momentous conversation, in which I have been chiefly careful to preserve the plums of the Commissary; but the remainder of the scene, perhaps because of his rising anger, has left but little definite in the memory of the Arethusa. The Commissary was not, I think, a practised literary man; no sooner, at least, had he taken pen in hand and embarked on the composition of the PROCES-VERBAL, than he became distinctly more uncivil and began to show a predilection for that simplest of all forms of repartee: "You lie!" Several times the Arethusa let it pass, and then suddenly flared up, refused to accept more insults or to answer further questions, defied the Commissary to do his worst, and promised him, if he did, that he should bitterly repent it. Perhaps if he had worn this proud front from the first, instead of beginning with a sense of entertainment and then going on to argue, the thing might have turned otherwise; for even at this eleventh hour the Commissary was visibly staggered. But it was too late; he had been challenged the PROCES-VERBAL was begun;and he again squared his elbows over his writing, and the Arethusa was led forth a prisoner.
A step or two down the hot road stood the gendarmerie. Thither was our unfortunate conducted, and there he was bidden to empty forth the contents of his pockets. A handkerchief, a pen, a pencil, a pipe and tobacco, matches, and some ten francs of change: that was all. Not a file, not a cipher, not a scrap of writing whether to identify or to condemn. The very gendarme was appalled before such destitution.
"I regret," he said, "that I arrested you, for I see that you are no VOYOU." And he promised him every indulgence.
The Arethusa, thus encouraged, asked for his pipe. That he was told was impossible, but if he chewed, he might have some tobacco.
He did not chew, however, and asked instead to have his handkerchief.
"NON," said the gendarme. "NOUS AVONS EU DES HISTOIRES DE GENS QUISE SONT PENDUS." (No, we have had histories of people who hanged themselves.)"What," cried the Arethusa. "And is it for that you refuse me my handkerchief? But see how much more easily I could hang myself in my trousers!"The man was struck by the novelty of the idea; but he stuck to his colours, and only continued to repeat vague offers of service.
"At least," said the Arethusa, "be sure that you arrest my comrade;he will follow me ere long on the same road, and you can tell him by the sack upon his shoulders."This promised, the prisoner was led round into the back court of the building, a cellar door was opened, he was motioned down the stair, and bolts grated and chains clanged behind his descending person.
The philosophic and still more the imaginative mind is apt to suppose itself prepared for any mortal accident. Prison, among other ills, was one that had been often faced by the undaunted Arethusa. Even as he went down the stairs, he was telling himself that here was a famous occasion for a roundel, and that like the committed linnets of the tuneful cavalier, he too would make his prison musical. I will tell the truth at once: the roundel was never written, or it should be printed in this place, to raise a smile. Two reasons interfered: the first moral, the second physical.
It is one of the curiosities of human nature, that although all men are liars, they can none of them bear to be told so of themselves.
To get and take the lie with equanimity is a stretch beyond the stoic; and the Arethusa, who had been surfeited upon that insult, was blazing inwardly with a white heat of smothered wrath. But the physical had also its part. The cellar in which he was confined was some feet underground, and it was only lighted by an unglazed, narrow aperture high up in the wall and smothered in the leaves of a green vine. The walls were of naked masonry, the floor of bare earth; by way of furniture there was an earthenware basin, a water-jug, and a wooden bedstead with a blue-gray cloak for bedding. To be taken from the hot air of a summer's afternoon, the reverberation of the road and the stir of rapid exercise, and plunged into the gloom and damp of this receptacle for vagabonds, struck an instant chill upon the Arethusa's blood. Now see in how small a matter a hardship may consist: the floor was exceedingly uneven underfoot, with the very spade-marks, I suppose, of the labourers who dug the foundations of the barrack; and what with the poor twilight and the irregular surface, walking was impossible.
The caged author resisted for a good while; but the chill of the place struck deeper and deeper; and at length, with such reluctance as you may fancy, he was driven to climb upon the bed and wrap himself in the public covering. There, then, he lay upon the verge of shivering, plunged in semi-darkness, wound in a garment whose touch he dreaded like the plague, and (in a spirit far removed from resignation) telling the roll of the insults he had just received.
These are not circumstances favourable to the muse.
