The stranger laid his hand in gentle compassion on the old man’s arm. There was something so sweet and kind in his lunacy, that he could not resist the pitying impulse which possessed him. What if this gentle old man had, indeed, been a prisoner of the Bastille—a terrible place, which the nobility had used with such fearful recklessness, without pausing to understand what awful sins they were committing against human rights. “Sit down,” he said, “you tremble, and seem very old; while I rest here, tell me something of that prison—of your life there. Was it, indeed, so horrible as the people say?” The old man sat down as bidden, for he had learned to obey until submission had become an impulse. The stranger leaned against the trunk of a willow that drooped over him a perfect cataract of leaves, and prepared to listen. “What would you have me say?” asked the old man, lifting his meek eyes to the thoughtful face of his questioner. “There is much suffering in twenty years—where shall I begin?” “Tell me everything. It is well that I should know how far men can suffer and live.” The old man shook his head. “Ah! it is all a dream now, a dull, heavy dream of darkness, and hunger, and awful rest. At first I yearned and struggled for the freedom which despotism, not crime, had torn from me. I raved in my cell; I beat my hands against the great oaken door, which answered me with the mockery of hollow noises; I beat my head upon the stone flags of my cell, hoping thus to end the torment of my longing. I cried aloud for my wife and child. Oh, my God! my God! how I suffered then—I, who had done nothing that was evil, but always sought out the right; I, who had kept myself humble, and loved the poor with affectionate brotherhood, who had nothing on earth but my sweet young wife and her little child! “At first I said this outrage against an innocent man cannot last. In a few weeks they will let me out, and I shall flee on the wings of love to find my wife and child; they will have suffered, but my coming will bring back all the old joy into their lives. Monsieur, do you know what it is to have such dreams die out of the soul?” The old man clasped his hands, bowed his face down to his bosom, over which the white beard flowed, and began to sob. The tenderness of a most affectionate nature had come back to him so far that a swell of self-pity heaved his breast when he remembered the pangs of anguish with which he had given up all the hopes of his youth. “Go on,” said the stranger, in a broken voice; “it is well that I should hear this.”