Bohemian Days: Three American TalesTownsend, George Alfred
General
Bohemian Days: Three American Tales
Townsend, George Alfred
Fiction; Poetry
The catastrophe of the Colony and the episode having been attained, we
have only to leave Mr. Pisgah in Algiers, whither court-martial
consigned him, with the penalty of hard labor, and Mr. Risque on the
stage route he was so eminently fitted to adorn. The unhappy Freckle
continued in the prison of Clichy, and, having nothing else to do,
commenced the novel process of thinking. The prison stood high up on
Clichy Hill, walled and barred and guarded, like other jails, but within
it a fair margin of liberty was allowed the bankrupts, just sufficient
to make their fate terrible by temptation. Some good soul had endowed it
with a library; newspapers came every day; a cafe was attached to it,
where spirituous liquors were prohibited, to the wrath of the dry
throats and raging thirsts of the captives; there was a garden behind
it, and a billiard saloon, but these luxuries were not gratuitous; poor
Freckle could not even pay his one sou per diem to cook his rations, so
that the Prisoners' Relief Association had to make him a present of it.
He spent his time between his bare, cheerless bedroom and the public
hall. There were many Americans in the place; but none of them were
friendly with him when he was found to have no cash. Yet he heard them
speak together of their countrymen who had lain in the same jail years
before. Yonder was the room of Horace Greeley, incarcerated for a debt
which was not his own; here the blood-stains of the Pennsylvania youth
who looked out of the window, heedless of warning, and was shot dead by
the guard; there the ancient chair, in which Hallidore, the Creole, sat
so often, possessor of a million francs, but too obstinate to pay his
tailor's bill and go free. While Freckle thought of these, it was
suggested to him that he was a very wicked man. The tuitions of his
patriarchal father came to mind; he was seen on his knees, to the
infinite amusement of the other debtors, who were, however, quite too
polite to laugh in his face, and he no longer staked his ration of wine
at cards, whereby he had commonly lost it, but held long conversations
with an ardent old priest who visited the jail. The priest gave Freckle
_breviaries_ and catechisms, and told him that there was no peace of
mind outside of the apostolic fold.
So Freckle diligently embraced the ancient Romish faith, renounced the
tenets of his plain old sire as false and heretical, and earnestly
prepared himself to enter the priesthood.
In this frame of mind he was found by Mr. Simp, who had unexpectedly
returned to Paris, and, finding himself again prosperous, came to
release Freckle from the toils of Clichy.
The latter waved him away. "I wish to know none of you," he said. "I
shall serve out this term, and never again speak to an American abroad."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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