sand. I had to pass through that part, to get at the other. My

memory is circumstantial and unshaken. I try it with these details,

and I see them all, in this my cell in the Bastille, near the close of

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

the tenth year of my captivity, as I saw them all that night.

“On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown under his

head, lay a handsome peasant boya boy of not more than

seventeen at the most. He lay on his back, with his teeth set, his

right hand clenched on his breast, and his glaring eyes looking

straight upward. I could not see where his wound was, as I

kneeled on one knee over him; but, I could see that he was dying

of a wound from a sharp point.

“‘I am a doctor, my poor fellow,’ said I. ‘Let me examine it.’

“‘I do not want it examined,’ he answered; ‘let it be.’ “It was

under his hand, and I soothed him to let me move his hand away.

The wound was a sword-thrust, received from twenty to twentyfour

hours before, but no skill could have saved him if it had been

looked to without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned my

eyes to the elder brother, I saw him looking down at this

handsome boy whose life was ebbing out, as if he were a wounded

bird, or hare, or rabbit; not at all as if he were a fellow-creature.

“‘How has this been done, monsieur?’ said I.

“‘A crazed young common dog! A serf! Forced my brother to

draw upon him, and has fallen by my brother’s swordlike a

gentleman.’

“There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred humanity in

this answer. The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was

inconvenient to have that different order of creature dying there,

and that it would have been better if he had died in the usual

obscure routine of his vermin kind. He was quite incapable of any

compassionate feeling about the boy, or about his fate.

“The boy’s eyes had slowly moved to him as he had spoken, and

they now slowly moved to me.

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

“‘Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we common

dogs are proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, outrage us, beat

us, kill us; but we have a little pride left, sometimes. Shehave

you seen her, Doctor?’

“The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though subdued

by the distance. He referred to them, as if she were lying in our

presence.

“I said, ‘I have seen her.’

“‘She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their shameful rights,

these Nobles. in the modesty and virtue of our sisters, many years,

but we have had good girls among us. I know it, and have heard

my father say so. She was a good girl. She was betrothed to a good

young man, too: a tenant of his. We were all tenants of histhat

man’s who stands there. The other is his brother, the worst of a

bad race.’

“It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily