THE "PILGRIM" BIRD.

101

carmine hair-a very gorgeous monkey he was-a hippopot amus from the Nile, and a sort of tall, long-legged bird with s beak like a powder-horn, and close-fitting wings like the tails of a dress coat. This fellow stood up with his eyes shut and his shoulders stooped forward a little, and looked as if he had his hands under his coat tails. Such tranquil stupidity, such supernatural gravity, such self-righteousness, and such ineffable self-complacency as were in the countenance and attitude of that gray-bodied, dark-winged, bald-headed, and preposterously uncomely bird! He was so ungainly, so pimply about the head, so scaly about the legs; yet so serene, so unspeakably satisfied! He was the most comical looking creature that can be imagined. It

was good to hear Dan and the doctor laugh such natural and such enjoyable laughter had not been heard among our excursionists since our ship sailed away from America. This bird was a god-send to us, and I should be an ingrate if I forgot to make honorable mention of him in these pages. Ours was a pleasare excursion; therefore we stayed with that bird an hour, and made the most of him. We stirred him up occasionally, but he only unclosed an eye and slowly elosed it again, abating no jot of his stately piety of demeanor or his tremendous

seriousness. He only seemed to say, "Defile not Heaven's anointed with unsanctified hands." We did not know his name, and so we called him "The Pilgrim." Dan said:

102

STRANGE COMPANIONSHIP.

"All he wants now is a Plymouth Collection."

The boon companion of the colossal elephant was a mon cat! This cat had a fashion of climbing up th phant's hind legs, and roosting on his back. She wou up there, with her paws curved under her breast, and sle the sun half the afternoon. It used to annoy the elepha first, and he would reach up and take her down, but she go aft and climb up again. She persisted until she f conquered the elephant's prejudices, and now they are arable friends. The cat plays about her comrade's forefe his trunk often, until dogs approach, and then she goes out of danger. The elephant has annihilated several lately, that pressed his companion too closely.

We hired a sail-boat and a guide and made an excursi one of the small islands in the harbor to visit the Castle This ancient fortress has a melancholy history. It has used as a prison for political offenders for two or three dred years, and its dungeon walls are scarred with the r carved names of many and many a captive who fretted life away here, and left no record of himself but these epitaphs wrought with his own hands. How thick the n were! And their long-departed owners seemed to throng gloomy cells and corridors with their phantom shapes. loitered through dungeon after dungeon, away down into living rock below the level of the sea, it seemed. N every where! some plebeian, some noble, some even prin Plebeian, prince, and noble, had one solicitude in commonwould not be forgotten! They could suffer solitude, tivity, and the horrors of a silence that no sound ever turbed; but they could not bear the thought of being utt forgotten by the world. Hence the carved names. In cell, where a little light penetrated, a man had lived twe seven years without seeing the face of a human being-li in filth and wretchedness, with no companionship but his thoughts, and they were sorrowful enough, and hope enough, no doubt. Whatever his jailers considered that needed was conveyed to his cell by night, through a wic

A LONG CAPTIVITY.

108

This man carved the walls of his prison-house from floor to roof with all manner of figures of men and animals, grouped

in intricate designs. He had toiled there year after year, at his self-appointed task, while

infants grew to boyhood-to vigorous youth-idled through school and college-acquired a profession-claimed man's mature estate-married and looked back to infancy as to a thing

104

DUNGEON OF THE "IRON MASK."

of some vague, ancient time, almost. But who shall tell how many ages it seemed to this prisoner? With the one, time flew sometimes; with the other, never-it crawled always. To the one, nights spent in dancing had seemed made of minutes instead of hours; to the other, those self-same nights had been like all other nights of dungeon life, and seemed made of slow, dragging weeks, instead of hours and minutes. One prisoner of fifteen years had scratched verses upon his walls, and brief prose sentences-brief, but full of pathos. These spoke not of himself and his hard estate; but only of the shrine where his spirit fled the prison to worship-of home and the idols that were templed there. He never lived to see them.

The walls of these dungeons are as thick as some bed-chambers at home are wide-fifteen feet. We saw the damp, dismal cells in which two of Dumas' heroes passed their confine ment-heroes of "Monte Christo." It was here that the brave Abbé wrote a book with his own blood; with a pen made of a piece of iron hoop, and by the light of a lamp made out of shreds of cloth soaked in grease obtained from his food; and then dug through the thick wall with some trifling instrument which he wrought himself out of a stray piece of iron or table cutlery, and freed Dantés from his chains. It was a pity that so many weeks of dreary labor should have come to naught at last.

They showed us the noisome cell where the celebrated "Iron Mask "that ill-starred brother of a hard-hearted king of France was confined for a season, before he was sent to hide the strange mystery of his life from the curious in the dungeons of St. Marguerite. The place had a far greater interest for us than it could have had if we had known be yond all question who the Iron Mask was, and what his history had been, and why this most unusual punishment had been meted out to him. Mystery! That was the charm. That speechless tongue, those prisoned features, that heart so freighted with unspoken troubles, and that breast so oppressed with its piteous secret, had been here. These dank walls had known the man whose dolorous story is a sealed book forever! There was fascination in the spot.

WE

CHAPTER XII.

E have come five hundred miles by rail through the heart of France. What a bewitching land it is!— What a garden! Surely the leagues of bright green lawns are swept and brushed and watered every day and their grasses trimmed by the barber. Surely the hedges are shaped and measured and their symmetry preserved by the most architectural of gardeners. Surely the long straight rows of stately poplars that divide the beautiful landscape like the squares of a checker-board are set with line and plummet, and their uniform height determined with a spirit level. Surely the straight, smooth, pure white turnpikes are jack-planed and sandpapered every day. How else are these marvels of symmetry, cleanliness and order attained? It is wonderful. There are no unsightly stone walls, and never a fence of any kind. There is no dirt, no decay, no rubbish any where-nothing that even hints at untidiness-nothing that ever suggests neglect. All is orderly and beautiful-every thing is charming to the eye.

We had such glimpses of the Rhone gliding along between its grassy banks; of cosy cottages buried in flowers and shrubbery; of quaint old red-tiled villages with mossy mediæval cathedrals looming out of their midst; of wooded hills with ivy-grown towers and turrets of feudal castles projecting above the foliage; such glimpses of Paradise, it seemed to us, such visions of fabled fairy-land!

We knew, then, what the poet meant, when he sang of"-thy cornfields green, and sunny vines. O pleasant land of France!"