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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

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