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Placing it on his own bed, he covered it with the rags he wore himself. Then he sewed himself in the sack with one of the abbé's needles. In his hand he held the dead man's knife, and with palpitating heart awaited events. Slowly the hours dragged on, until at length he heard the heavy footsteps of the gaolers descending to the cell.
But how I mourned for those vanished goddesses! Dec. 1878. A prisoner, condemned to confinement for life, broke out of his prison and took to head-long flight.... After him, just on his heels flew his gaolers in pursuit. He ran with all his might.... His pursuers began to be left behind. But behold, before him was a river with precipitous banks, a narrow, but deep river.... And he could not swim!
That is not all; abundance of game attracts trespassers; I shall soon have poachers to punish; I shall require prisons, gaolers, guards, and galleys; all this strikes me as cruel. The wives of those miserable creatures will besiege my door and disturb me with their crying; they must either be driven away or roughly handled.
When Howard passed from Belgium to Holland he found the same care, though here the rules respecting the gaolers were stricter, because they were responsible for the orderly state of the prison and the conduct of the prisoners.
The lights of Princes Street sometimes disappeared, sometimes blinked across at us no brighter than the eyes of cats; and five steps from one of the lanterns on the ramparts it was already groping dark. We made haste to lie down. Had our gaolers been upon the watch they must have observed our conversation to die out unusually soon. Yet I doubt if any of us slept.
At Exeter he found two sailors in gaol, having been fined one shilling each for some trifling offence, and owing £1 15s. 8d. for fees to the gaolers and clerk of the peace. When he visited Cardiff he heard a man had just died in prison after having been there ten years for a debt of seven pounds.
Their torches, round which the bats whirled and flapped their wings, and twinkled their small eyes, threw a ghastly glare over the nearer walls of the dungeon, the extremity of which defied the vision of the prisoner; and, when the gaolers retired, Alroy was in complete darkness. The image of the past came back to him. He tried in vain to penetrate the surrounding gloom.
Unfortunately Samuel, always timid, and at this time almost dead with fright, as he did not know whether chains were not in reserve for him also, declined to interpret, and simply sent the ordinary compliments instead. When our gaolers had withdrawn, we looked at one another, and the sight was so ridiculous, so absurd, that for all our sorrow we could not help laughing heartily.
He despised extravagance in dress. French foppery was so hateful to him that he clothed the prison gaolers in Parisian style, trusting that this would bring contempt on foreign fashions. The Potsdam Guards were under the strictest discipline, and the Prussian soldiers won battles by sheer mechanical obedience to orders when they took the field.
He penetrated it after Dantès had been solitary six years. The prisoners met every day between the visits of their gaolers.
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