Page:The Career of a Nihilist.djvu/34

Yet the current of thought which passed listlessly through his mind, as he sat there lost in contemplation, did not tend to harmony with the calm of the scenery.

There is a certain pleasure in thinking of afflictions when they have lost their sting and become things of the past.

Audrey passed in review his exile life, and it was exactly its darkest side which his memory sought and dwelt upon with strange persistency.

He had not shared with his kith and kin the cup of bitterness which they had been forced to drink; and yet, somehow, he felt as if he had tasted its bitterest dregs. Thrown out of active life himself, he had only to look with folded hands—upon what? Not even upon the struggle of his friends, but upon the cold-blooded massacre of the best of them. The first onslaught of the revolution was repelled with enormous losses. A deep discouragement crept over the classes that furnished its chief contingent. The scattered remnant of once formidable forces, faithful to their banner, fought to the end. Very few of them left their country to seek refuge abroad. They were dying at their posts by scores, by hundreds, men and women, far better than he.

But why, then, was he alive?

How many times, overwhelmed with pain, had he asked himself that question!

A terrible vision rose suddenly before his memory.

It is night. A dimly lighted cell in one of the southern prisons. Its inmate—a young student—is stretched upon the straw mattress. His hands and feet are tightly bound with ropes. His head and body are covered with bruises. He has just been shamefully beaten by the gaolers, because he did not show himself sufficiently submissive. Smarting under the brutal insult, he is meditating the only revenge left him—that of a frightful suicide. Fire shall be his instrument. In the dead of the night he rises with effort from his bed. He takes off with his mouth the hot lamp glass, which scorches his lips; he unscrews with his teeth the burner, and upsets the oil over his mattress. When it has saturated the straw, he drops upon the mattress the burning wick, and stretches himself once more upon this bed of fire. There he lies, without a groan, whilst the fire licks and burns his flesh. When the gaolers, attracted by the smoke, rush into the cell, they find him half charred and dying.