fell clanking into the courtyard below. He shouted with increasing
hoarseness, "The governor, the governor!" This excess lasted fully an
hour, during which time he was in a burning fever. With his hair in
disorder and matted on his forehead, his dress torn and covered with
dust and plaster, his linen in shreds, the king never rested until
his strength was utterly exhausted, and it was not until then that he
clearly understood the pitiless thickness of the walls, the impenetrable
nature of the cement, invincible to every influence but that of time,
and that he possessed no other weapon but despair. He leaned his
forehead against the door, and let the feverish throbbings of his heart
calm by degrees; it had seemed as if one single additional pulsation
would have made it burst.

"A moment will come when the food which is given to the prisoners will
be brought to me. I shall then see some one, I shall speak to him, and
get an answer."

And the king tried to remember at what hour the first repast of the
prisoners was served at the Bastile; he was ignorant even of this
detail. The feeling of remorse at this remembrance smote him like the
thrust of a dagger, that he should have lived for five and twenty years
a king, and in the enjoyment of every happiness, without having bestowed
a moment's thought on the misery of those who had been unjustly deprived
of their liberty. The king blushed for very shame. He felt that Heaven,
in permitting this fearful humiliation, did no more than render to the
man the same torture as had been inflicted by that man upon so many
others. Nothing could be more efficacious for reawakening his mind to
religious influences than the prostration of his heart and mind and soul
beneath the feeling of such acute wretchedness. But Louis dared not even
kneel in prayer to God to entreat him to terminate his bitter trial.

"Heaven is right," he said; "Heaven acts wisely. It would be cowardly
to pray to Heaven for that which I have so often refused my own
fellow-creatures."

He had reached this stage of his reflections, that is, of his agony of
mind, when a similar noise was again heard behind his door, followed
this time by the sound of the key in the lock, and of the bolts being
withdrawn from their staples. The king bounded forward to be nearer to
the person who was about to enter, but, suddenly reflecting that it was
a movement unworthy of a sovereign, he paused, assumed a noble and calm
expression, w