In this narrow prison, then, Raoul passed the night and morning. It
would be representing him as more stoical than the truth, if we said he
was unmoved. So far from this, his moments were bitter, and his anguish
would have been extreme, were it not for a high resolution which
prompted him to die, as he fancied it, like _un Français_. The numerous
executions by the guillotine had brought fortitude under such
circumstances into a sort of fashion, and there were few who did not
meet death with decorum. With our prisoner, however, it was still
different; for, sustained by a dauntless spirit, he would have faced the
great tyrant of the race, even in his most ruthless mood, with firmness,
if not with disdain. But, to a young man and a lover, the last great
change could not well approach without bringing with it a feeling of
hopelessness that, in the case of Raoul, was unrelieved by any cheering
expectations of the future. He fully believed his doom to be sealed, and
that less on account of his imaginary offence as a spy than on account
of the known and extensive injuries he had done to the English commerce.
Raoul was a good hater; and, according to the fashion of past times,
which we apprehend, in spite of a vast deal of equivocal philanthropy
that now circulates freely from mouth to mouth, and from pen to pen,
will continue to be the fashion of times to come, he heartily disliked
the people with whom he was at war, and consequently was ready to
believe anything to their prejudice that political rivalry might invent;
a frame of mind that led him to think his life would be viewed as a
trifle, when put in the scales against English ascendency or English
profit. He was accustomed to think of the people of Great Britain as a
"nation of shopkeepers," and, while engaged himself in a calling that
bears the brand of rapacity on its very brow, he looked upon his own
pursuit as comparatively martial and honorable; qualities, in sooth, it
was far from being without, as he himself had exercised its functions.
In a word, Raoul understood Cuffe as little as Cuffe understood him;
facts that will sufficiently appear in the interview which it has now
become our office to relate.
The prisoner received one or two friendly visits in the course of the
morning; Griffin, in particular, conceiving it to be his duty to try to
cheer the condemned man, on account of his own knowledge of foreign
tongues. On these occasions the conversation was prevented from falling
into anything like the sombre, by the firmness of the prisoner's manner.
With a view to do the thing handsomely, Winchester had caused the canvas
bulkhead to include the guns on each side, which of course gave more air
and light within the narrow apartment, as it brought both ports into the
little room. Raoul adverted to this circumstance as, seated on one
stool, he invited Griffin, in the last of his visits, to take another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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