I could not find in my heart to
torture La Fleur’s with a serious look upon the subject of
my embarrassment, which was the reason I had treated it so
cavalierly: and to show him how light it lay upon my mind, I
dropt the subject entirely; and whilst he waited upon me at
supper, talk’d to him with more than usual gaiety about
Paris, and of the Opéra Comique.—La Fleur had been
there himself, and had followed me through the streets as far as
the bookseller’s shop; but seeing me come out with
the young fille de chambre, and that we walk’d down
the Quai de Conti together, La Fleur deem’d it unnecessary
to follow me a step further;—so making his own reflections
upon it, he took a shorter cut,—and got to the hotel in
time to be inform’d of the affair of the police against my
arrival.
As soon as the honest creature had taken away, and gone down
to sup himself, I then began to think a little seriously about my
situation.—
—And here, I know, Eugenius, thou wilt smile at the
remembrance of a short dialogue which passed betwixt us the
moment I was going to set out:—I must tell it here.
Eugenius, knowing that I was as little subject to be
overburden’d with money as thought, had drawn me aside to
interrogate me how much I had taken care for. Upon telling
him the exact sum, Eugenius shook his head, and said it would not
do; so pull’d out his purse in order to empty it into
mine.—I’ve enough in conscience, Eugenius, said
I.—Indeed, Yorick, you have not, replied Eugenius; I know
France and Italy better than you.—But you don’t
consider, Eugenius, said I, refusing his offer, that before I
have been three days in Paris, I shall take care to say or do
something or other for which I shall get clapp’d up into
the Bastile, and that I shall live there a couple of months
entirely at the king of France’s expense.—I beg
pardon, said Eugenius drily: really I had forgot that
resource.
Now the event I treated gaily came seriously to my door.
Is it folly, or nonchalance, or philosophy, or
pertinacity—or what is it in me, that, after all, when La
Fleur had gone down stairs, and I was quite alone, I could not
bring down my mind to think of it otherwise than I had then
spoken of it to Eugenius?
—And as for the Bastile; the terror is in the
word.—Make the most of it you can, said I to myself, the
Bastile is but another word for a tower;—and a tower is but
another word for a house you can’t get out of.—Mercy
on the gouty! for they are in it twice a year.—But with
nine livres a day, and pen and ink, and paper, and patience,
albeit a man can’t get out, he may do very well
within,—at least for a month or six weeks; at the end of
which, if he is a harmless fellow, his innocence appears, and he
comes out a better and wiser man than he went in.
I had some occasion (I forget what) to step into the
court-yard, as I settled this account; and remember I
walk’d down stairs in no small triumph with the conceit of
my reasoning.—Beshrew the sombre pencil! said I,
vauntingly—for I envy not its powers, which paints the
evils of life with so hard and deadly a colouring. The mind
sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself, and
blackened: reduce them to their proper size and hue, she
overlooks them.—’Tis true, said I, correcting the
proposition,—the Bastile is not an evil to be
despised;—but strip it of its towers—fill up the
fosse,—unbarricade the doors—call it simply a
confinement, and suppose ’tis some tyrant of a
distemper—and not of a man, which holds you in
it,—the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without
complaint.
I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy, with a
voice which I took to be of a child, which complained “it
could not get out.”—I look’d up and down the
passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out
without farther attention.
In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words
repeated twice over; and, looking up, I saw it was a starling
hung in a little cage.—“I can’t get
out,—I can’t get out,” said the starling.
I stood looking at the bird: and to every person who came
through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards which
they approach’d it, with the same lamentation of its
captivity. “I can’t get out,” said the
starling.—God help thee! said I, but I’ll let thee
out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage to get to the
door: it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there
was no getting it open without pulling the cage to
pieces.—I took both hands to it.
The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his
deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis pressed
his breast against it as if impatient.—I fear, poor
creature! said I, I cannot set thee at
liberty.—“No,” said the starling,—
“I can’t get out—I can’t get out,”
said the starling.
I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; nor do I
remember an incident in my life, where the dissipated spirits, to
which my reason had been a bubble, were so suddenly call’d
home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to
nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew all
my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I heavily walked
upstairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.
Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! said
I,—still thou art a bitter draught! and though thousands in
all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter
on that account.—’Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious
goddess, addressing myself to Liberty, whom all in public or in
private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so,
till Nature herself shall change.—No tint of words
can spot thy snowy mantle, or chymic power turn thy sceptre into
iron:—with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the
swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art
exiled!—Gracious Heaven! cried I, kneeling down upon the
last step but one in my ascent, grant me but health, thou great
Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my
companion,—and shower down thy mitres, if it seems good
unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are aching for
them!
