My comrades, if they were not all so ready,
were none of them less staunch; and I may say here at once that the
inquiry came to nothing at the time, and the death of Goguelat
remained a mystery of the prison. Such were the veterans of
France! And yet I should be disingenuous if I did not own this was
a case apart; in ordinary circumstances, some one might have
stumbled or been intimidated into an admission; and what bound us
together with a closeness beyond that of mere comrades was a secret
to which we were all committed and a design in which all were
equally engaged. No need to inquire as to its nature: there is
only one desire, and only one kind of design, that blooms in
prisons. And the fact that our tunnel was near done supported and
inspired us.
I came off in public, as I have said, with flying colours; the
sittings of the court of inquiry died away like a tune that no one
listens to; and yet I was unmasked--I, whom my very adversary
defended, as good as confessed, as good as told the nature of the
quarrel, and by so doing prepared for myself in the future a most
anxious, disagreeable adventure. It was the third morning after
the duel, and Goguelat was still in life, when the time came round
for me to give Major Chevenix a lesson. I was fond of this
occupation; not that he paid me much--no more, indeed, than
eighteenpence a month, the customary figure, being a miser in the
grain; but because I liked his breakfasts and (to some extent)
himself.
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