Little Dorrit | Page 8

to all that?'
'It's ugly,' returned the little man, who had risen, and was brightening
his knife upon his shoe, as he leaned an arm against the wall.
'What do you mean?' John Baptist polished his knife in silence.
'Do you mean that I have not represented the case correctly?'
'Al-tro!' returned John Baptist. The word was an apology now, and
stood for 'Oh, by no means!'
'What then?'
'Presidents and tribunals are so prejudiced.'
'Well,' cried the other, uneasily flinging the end of his cloak over his
shoulder with an oath, 'let them do their worst!'
'Truly I think they will,' murmured John Baptist to himself, as he bent
his head to put his knife in his sash.
Nothing more was said on either side, though they both began walking
to and fro, and necessarily crossed at every turn. Monsieur Rigaud
sometimes stopped, as if he were going to put his case in a new light, or
make some irate remonstrance; but Signor Cavalletto continuing to go
slowly to and fro at a grotesque kind of jog-trot pace with his eyes
turned downward, nothing came of these inclinings.
By-and-by the noise of the key in the lock arrested them both. The
sound of voices succeeded, and the tread of feet. The door clashed, the
voices and the feet came on, and the prison-keeper slowly ascended the
stairs, followed by a guard of soldiers.
'Now, Monsieur Rigaud,' said he, pausing for a moment at the grate,
with his keys in his hands, 'have the goodness to come out.'

'I am to depart in state, I see?' 'Why, unless you did,' returned the jailer,
'you might depart in so many pieces that it would be difficult to get you
together again. There's a crowd, Monsieur Rigaud, and it doesn't love
you.'
He passed on out of sight, and unlocked and unbarred a low door in the
corner of the chamber. 'Now,' said he, as he opened it and appeared
within, 'come out.'
There is no sort of whiteness in all the hues under the sun at all like the
whiteness of Monsieur Rigaud's face as it was then. Neither is there any
expression of the human countenance at all like that expression in every
little line of which the frightened heart is seen to beat. Both are
conventionally compared with death; but the difference is the whole
deep gulf between the struggle done, and the fight at its most desperate
extremity.
He lighted another of his paper cigars at his companion's; put it tightly
between his teeth; covered his head with a soft slouched hat; threw the
end of his cloak over his shoulder again; and walked out into the side
gallery on which the door opened, without taking any further notice of
Signor Cavalletto. As to that little man himself, his whole attention had
become absorbed in getting near the door and looking out at it.
Precisely as a beast might approach the opened gate of his den and eye
the freedom beyond, he passed those few moments in watching and
peering, until the door was closed upon him.
There was an officer in command of the soldiers; a stout, serviceable,
profoundly calm man, with his drawn sword in his hand, smoking a
cigar. He very briefly directed the placing of Monsieur Rigaud in the
midst of the party, put himself with consummate indifference at their
head, gave the word 'march!' and so they all went jingling down the
staircase. The door clashed--the key turned--and a ray of unusual light,
and a breath of unusual air, seemed to have passed through the jail,
vanishing in a tiny wreath of smoke from the cigar.
Still, in his captivity, like a lower animal--like some impatient ape, or
roused bear of the smaller species--the prisoner, now left solitary, had

jumped upon the ledge, to lose no glimpse of this departure. As he yet
stood clasping the grate with both hands, an uproar broke upon his
hearing; yells, shrieks, oaths, threats, execrations, all comprehended in
it, though (as in a storm) nothing but a raging swell of sound distinctly
heard.
Excited into a still greater resemblance to a caged wild animal by his
anxiety to know more, the prisoner leaped nimbly down, ran round the
chamber, leaped nimbly up again, clasped the grate and tried to shake it,
leaped down and ran, leaped up and listened, and never rested until the
noise, becoming more and more distant, had died away. How many
better prisoners have worn their noble hearts out so; no man thinking of
it; not even the beloved of their souls realising it; great kings and
governors, who had made them captive, careering in the sunlight
jauntily, and men cheering them on. Even the said great personages
dying in bed, making exemplary ends and