“Then don’t go for to ax silly questions,” retorted Nell. “Can us go in, Roche?”
“Ay, my honies,” returned Roche, the turnkey, whom we had now reached. “Leastwise you and Fan can, in the coorse of natur; but who be this young crut?” { 209}
“Oh, missus’ nevvy he be, as wants to see the Frenchers at work. ’Tis only a young boy, but we’d just as lief let him stay if you’d liefer not let him in.”
I did not feel grateful to my young friend for this suggestion, which, however, was probably dictated by the wiliness of woman.
“Oh, take him in there, and leave him if you’ve a mind, my beauty. I reckon one more won’t make no odds in there.”
This he seemed to consider a first-class joke, for he guffawed till we were out of hearing.
After passing through a guard-room, in which there were several soldiers smoking and lounging about, who offered no opposition to our passing, Fan and Nell being of course well known in the prison, we found ourselves in a large and very dreary hall, paved with flag-stones and almost devoid of furniture. The inmates, however, seemed pretty cheery on the whole; there were apparently about a couple of hundred of them, of whom some were working, some singing, some playing cards or dominoes—_all_ talking. Yes, even the singing ones talked between the verses. The spring sunshine came through the iron-barred, skied-up windows, and, in spite of other discouraging circumstances, these children of the South were (what we never are) gay as larks.
They clustered around my companions with every mark of respect and admiration. I naturally didn’t understand their jabber, but one remark which was, I rather think, meant for English, caught my ear. “Zay are—some angels out of—ciel!”
“They say you’re angels out of the ceiling. What on earth do they mean?” I inquired.
“We knows what they mean well enough, don’t you trouble, my honey,” answered Nell, who was more friendly to me than her sister was.
I don’t think Fan had got over her annoyance about the bone; she still carried the bundle of straw with her apron thrown over it.
We now went to the part of the room where the men were busy with their manufactures, and here I had really cause for astonishment. With no tools except some wretched little penknives, these skilful-fingered fellows were turning out most lovely work in bone, wood, and slate. Some of them executed beautiful mosaic work by letting-in pieces of various coloured stones on a bed of slate; they afterwards ground and polished the whole till it resembled the far-famed Florentine mosaic. I perceived a grindstone in the corner of the room, which the leniency of the authorities permitted them to have and to use.