United States or Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I have often read," said Cologne, with a smile, "pathetic accounts of prisoners, who in extreme loneliness carved their names over and over again on stone as hard as the jailer's heart, but your Highness seems rather to have enjoyed yourself while so cruelly interned.
I offered to come up with a party some night, break open the jail, and carry him off to New York in the Storm King." "Well?" "Oh, you know the better people are not in the jail, but in the jailer's house having given their promise to Keeper Arnold that they will not try to escape, if thus kindly treated.
It is built against the old presidial, or ancient court of appeal, and people still call it the maison de justice. It boasts the conventional prison gateway, the solid-looking, nail-studded door, the low, worn archway which the better deserves the qualification "cyclopean," because the jailer's peephole or judas looks out like a single eye from the front of the building.
It was a favorable time for doing so, for there happened to be a man confined there, a circumstance which seemed to increase the keeper's feeling of responsibility in his office. The edifice had four rooms on the ground-floor, and an attic sleeping-room above. Three of these rooms, which were perhaps twelve feet by fifteen feet, were cells; the third was occupied by the jailer's family.
He came in briskly, and looked rather surprised at seeing Mrs. Costello. She only bowed, however, and drew back as he came towards the bedside. He was followed into the room by the jailer's wife, who had compassionately tended the prisoner ever since his illness increased. Christian seemed to wake from his stupor, or dream, at the sound of the doctor's voice.
The door of the dungeon opened and a tall, stately woman entered, slipping a purse of gold into the jailer's hand as he left it ajar behind her. She was clad in a heavy silk himation, fastened on the shoulders by diamond mounted fibulas; a costly anadem confined her wealth of curls, and the golden veil hanging below, in spite of the delicacy of its texture, completely shrouded her features.
Have you visited every prisoner in his or her cell once a month?" "Certainly not!" "I am sorry to hear it. Of course, at each visit, you have closely examined this the jailer's book, a record of his acts and the events of the jail?" "Portions of it are read to us; this is a form which I believe is never omitted is it, Mr. Hawes?" "Never, gentlemen!"
Yet in that prison, where blood flows profusely, and the limbs of those human beings are subjected to perpetual torture, the frightful, the nauseous, the disgusting except that all other feelings are lost in pity towards the victim and indignation against the oppressor sight was presented of a leper, scarred from the eruptions of disease on his legs and previous mistreatment, whaled again and again, and his blood again made to flow from the jailer's lash.
He philosophically submitted to the decree of the House, occupying the jailer's sitting-room a cheerful apartment, with a good fire, bright sunshine coming in at the windows. He had numerous visitors, his meals were sent him from a restaurant, and he certainly did not appear to suffer seriously from his martyrdom.
These were to the effect that the Sioux nation did not desire Toussaint to be killed by the white man, that Toussaint's mother was the sister of Red Cloud, and that many friends of Toussaint often passed the jailer's house. Perhaps he did get such messages. They are not a nice sort to receive. However all this may have been, the prisoner was gone.
Word Of The Day