As the apartment rented by us from the jailer was the only one in the prison he had a right to dispose of for his own benefit, several other culprits, able to pay for comfortable lodgings, were from time to time locked up in it. These occasional visitors afforded considerable entertainment for our seclusion, as they were often persons of quality arrested for petty misdemeanors or political opinions, and sometimes chevaliers d’industrie, whose professional careers were rich with anecdote and adventure.

It was probably a month after we began our intimacy with this “government boarding-house” that our number was increased by a gentleman of cultivated manners and foppish costume. He was, perhaps, a little too much over-dressed with chains, trinkets, and perfumed locks, to be perfectly comme il faut, yet there was an intellectual power about his forehead and eyes, and a bewitching smile on his lips, that insinuated themselves into my heart the moment I beheld him. He was precisely the sort of man who is considered by nine tenths of the world as a very “fascinating individual.”

Accordingly, I welcomed the stranger most cordially in French, and was still more bewitched by the retiring shyness of his modest demeanor. As the jailer retired, a wink signified his desire to commune with me apart in his office, where I learned that the new comer had been arrested under a charge of counterfeiting, but on account of his genteel appearance and blood, was placed in our apartment. I had no doubt that neither appearance nor blood had been the springs of sympathy in the jailer’s heart, but that the artificial money-maker had judiciously used certain lawful coins to insure better quarters. Nevertheless, I did not hesitate to approve the turnkey’s disposal of the suspected felon, and begged him to make no apologies or give himself concern as to the quality of the article that could afford us a moment’s amusement in our dreary den.

I next proceeded to initiate my gentleman into the mysteries of the chateau; and as dinner was about serving, I suggested that the most important of our domestic rites on such occasions, imperatively required three or four bottles of first-rate claret.

By this time we had acquired a tolerable knack of “slaughtering the evening.” Our Spanish girls supplied us with guitars and violins, which my comrades touched with some skill. We were thus enabled to give an occasional soiree dansante, assisted by la Vivandière, her companions Dolorescita, Concha, Madame Sorret, and an old maid who passed for her sister. The arrival of the counterfeiter enabled us to make up a full cotillon without the musicians. Our soirees, enlivened by private contributions and a bottle or two of wine, took place on Thursdays and Sundays, while the rest of the week was passed in playing cards, reading romances, writing petitions, flirting with the girls, and cursing our fate and the French government. Fits of wrath against the majesty of Gaul were more frequent in the early morning, when the pleasant sleeper would be suddenly roused from happy dreams by the tramp of soldiers and grating bolts, which announced the unceremonious entrance of our inspector to count his cattle and sound our window gratings.

But time wastes one’s cash as well as one’s patience in prison. The more we grumbled, danced, drank, and eat, the more we spent or lavished, so that my funds looked very like a thin sediment at the bottom of the purse, when I began to reflect upon means of replenishing. I could not beg; I was master of no handicraft; nor was I willing to descend among the vermin of the common chain-gang. Shame prevented an application to my relatives in France or Italy; and when I addressed my old partner or former friends in Cuba, I was not even favored with a reply. At last, my little trinkets and gold chronometer were sacrificed to pay the lawyer for a final memorial and to liquidate a week’s lodging in advance.

“Now, mon enfant,” said Madame Sorret, as she took my money, trimming her cap, and looking at me with that thrifty interest that a Frenchwoman always knows how to turn to the best account; “now, mon enfant, this is your last franc and your last week in my apartment, you say; your last week in a room where you and I, and Babette, Dolorescita, and Concha, and Monsieur, have had such good times! Mais pourquoi, mon cher? why shall it be your last week? Come let us think a bit. Won’t it be a thousand times better; won’t it do you a vast deal more good, if instead of sacre-ing le bon Louis Philippe, paying lawyers for memorials that are never read, hoping for letters from the Spanish envoy which never come, and eating your heart up in spite and bitterness you look the matter plump in the face like a man, and not like a polisson, and turn to account those talents which it has pleased le bon Dieu to give you? Voyez vous, Capitaine Teodore, you speak foreign languages like a native; and it was no longer than yesterday that Monsieur Randanne, your advocate, as he came down from the last interview with you, stopped at my bureau, and ’Ah! Madame Sorret,’ said he, ’what a linguist poor Canot is, how delightfully he speaks English, and how glad I should be if he had any place in which he could teach my sons the noble tongue of the great SKATSPEER!’

“Now, mon capitaine,” continued she, “what the good Randanne said, has been growing in my mind ever since, like the salad seed in the box that is sunned in our prison yard. In fact, I have fixed the matter perfectly. You shall have my bed-room for a schoolhouse; and, if you will, you may begin to-morrow with my two sons for pupils, at fifteen francs a month!”

Did I not bless the wit and heart of woman again and again in my joy of industrial deliverance! The heart of woman that noble heart! burn it in the fire of Africa; steep it in the snow of Sweden; lap it in the listless elysium of Indian tropics; cage it in the centre of dungeons, as the palpitating core of that stony rind, yet every where and always, throughout my wild career, has it been the last sought but surest, sweetest, and truest of devoted friends!

Aide toi, et Dieu t’aidera! was my motto from that moment. For years it was the first lesson of intellectual power and self-reliance that had checkered a life of outlawry, in which adventurous impatience preferred the gambling risks of fortune to the slow accretions of regular toil. I was a schoolmaster!

Madame Sorret’s plan was perfectly successful. In less than a week I was installed in her chamber, with a class formed of my lady’s lads, a son and friend of my lawyer, and a couple of sons of officers in the chateau; the whole producing a monthly income of fifty francs. As I assumed my vocation with the spirit of a needy professor, I gained the good will of all the parents by assiduous instruction of their children. Gradually I extended the sphere of my usefulness, by adding penmanship to my other branches of tuition; and so well did I please the parents, that they volunteered a stipend of eighteen francs more.

I would not dare affirm, that my pupils made extraordinary progress; yet I am sure the children not only acquired cleverly, but loved me as a companion. My scheme of instruction was not modelled upon that of other pedagogues; for I simply contented myself, in the small class, with reasoning out each lesson thoroughly, and never allowing the boys to depart till they comprehended every part of their task. After this, it was my habit to engage their interest in language, by familiar dialogues, which taught them the names of furniture, apparel, instruments, implements, animals, occupations, trades; and thus I led them insensibly from the most simple nomenclature to the most abstract. I deprived the interview, as much as I could, of task-like formality; and invariably closed the school with a story from my travels or adventures. I may not have ripened my scholars into classical Anglo-Saxons, but I have the happiness to know that I earned an honest living, supported my companions, and obtained the regard of my pupils to such a degree, that the little band accompanied me with tears to the ship, when, long afterwards, I was sent a happy exile from France.