St Ives

St Ives

The Project Gutenberg EBook of St Ives, by Robert Louis Stevenson
(#6 in our series by Robert Louis Stevenson)
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Title: St Ives
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Release Date: September, 1995 [EBook #322] [This file was first
posted on December 30, 1995]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ST IVES
***

Transcribed 1898 William Heinemann edition by David Price, email
[email protected]

ST. IVES BEING THE ADVENTURES OF A FRENCH PRISONER
IN ENGLAND

CHAPTER I
--A TALE OF A LION RAMPANT

It was in the month of May 1813 that I was so unlucky as to fall at last
into the hands of the enemy. My knowledge of the English language
had marked me out for a certain employment. Though I cannot
conceive a soldier refusing to incur the risk, yet to be hanged for a spy
is a disgusting business; and I was relieved to be held a prisoner of war.
Into the Castle of Edinburgh, standing in the midst of that city on the
summit of an extraordinary rock, I was cast with several hundred
fellow-sufferers, all privates like myself, and the more part of them, by
an accident, very ignorant, plain fellows. My English, which had
brought me into that scrape, now helped me very materially to bear it. I
had a thousand advantages. I was often called to play the part of an
interpreter, whether of orders or complaints, and thus brought in
relations, sometimes of mirth, sometimes almost of friendship, with the
officers in charge. A young lieutenant singled me out to be his
adversary at chess, a game in which I was extremely proficient, and
would reward me for my gambits with excellent cigars. The major of
the battalion took lessons of French from me while at breakfast, and
was sometimes so obliging as to have me join him at the meal.
Chevenix was his name. He was stiff as a drum-major and selfish as an

Englishman, but a fairly conscientious pupil and a fairly upright man.
Little did I suppose that his ramrod body and frozen face would, in the
end, step in between me and all my dearest wishes; that upon this
precise, regular, icy soldier-man my fortunes should so nearly
shipwreck! I never liked, but yet I trusted him; and though it may seem
but a trifle, I found his snuff-box with the bean in it come very
welcome.
For it is strange how grown men and seasoned soldiers can go back in
life; so that after but a little while in prison, which is after all the next
thing to being in the nursery, they grow absorbed in the most pitiful,
childish interests, and a sugar biscuit or a pinch of snuff become things
to follow after and scheme for!
We made but a poor show of prisoners. The officers had been all
offered their parole, and had taken it. They lived mostly in suburbs of
the city, lodging with modest families, and enjoyed their freedom and
supported the almost continual evil tidings of the Emperor as best they
might. It chanced I was the only gentleman among the privates who
remained. A great part were ignorant Italians, of a regiment that had
suffered heavily in Catalonia. The rest were mere diggers of the soil,
treaders of grapes or hewers of wood, who had been suddenly and
violently preferred to the glorious state of soldiers. We had but the one
interest in common: each of us who had any skill with his fingers
passed the hours of his captivity in the making of little toys and articles
of Paris; and the prison was daily visited at certain hours by a
concourse of people of the country, come to exult over our distress,
or--it is more tolerant to suppose--their own vicarious triumph. Some
moved among us with a decency of shame or sympathy. Others were
the