"'I don't know how long it was after, but they moved me to another berth, where a man had shot himself through the head, for we actually met his body being carried along the passage; and more than that, sir, they hadn't taken the trouble to wash his brains off the wall they were scattered on. There I sat one day after another, watching the spot marked by them turn dry, guessing at everything that had gone through them as long as he was alive in the place, till my own got perfectly stupid; I was as helpless as a child, and used to cry at other times when the jailer didn't bring me my food in time. I fancied they'd forget all about me in England; and as for time, I never counted it, except by the notion I had been two or three years in. "'At last the turnkey got so used to me, thinking me no doubt such a harmless sort of a poor man, that he would sit by and talk to me, giving accounts of the Emperor's battles and victories, and such matters. I must say I began to feel as if he was some sort of a god upon earth there was no use to strive against, just as the turnkey seemed to do, more especially when I heard of Nelson's death; so when he told me one time it wouldn't do for Fouché or the Emperor to let me out yet, I said nothing more. "Will the Emperor not let me out _now_?" asked I, a long time after. "_Diable!_" said the man, "do you think His Majesty has time to think of such a poor fellow as you, among such great matters? No, no, _pauvr' homme_!" continued he; "you're comfortable here, and wouldn't know what to do if you were out! No fear of your doing as your Capitaine _Ourite_ did, since you've lived here so long, monsieur." "How long is it now, good Pierre?" asked I, with a sigh, as he was going out at the door; and the turnkey counted on his fingers. "Ulm--Austerlitz--Jena," said he slowly; "_oui, oui_--I scarcely thought it so much--it wants only six or seven months of ten years!" and he shut-to the door. I sprang up off the bed I was sitting on, wild at the thought--I may say, for a day or two I was mad--ten years! ten years!--and all this time where was my poor innocent Mary, and the child she expected to bear when I left Exeter--where was my old father? But I couldn't bear to dwell on it. Yes, Aldridge, by the God above, they had kept me actually _ten years_ there, in that cursed Temple while _he_ was going on all the time with his victories, and his shows, and his high-flown bulletins! Yet he wasn't too high, it seems, to stoop to give out, through his tools, how Wright and I had both killed ourselves for fear of bringing in the British Government--not to offer me a seventy-four in a dungeon--_me_, a man used to wind and water, that loved a breeze at sea like life. 'Twas the very devil's temptation, sir; but I'll tell you what, both Captain Wright and myself had been with Sir Sidney Smith at Acre, when _he_ was baffled for the first time in his days--_that_ was the thing, I believe from my soul, that he hated us for.