prompt:
Chapter: On our way to town Ernest broached his plans for spending the next year
or two.  I wanted him to try and get more into society again, but he
brushed this aside at once as the very last thing he had a fancy for.  For
society indeed of all sorts, except of course that of a few intimate
friends, he had an unconquerable aversion.  "I always did hate those
people," he said, "and they always have hated and always will hate me.  I
am an Ishmael by instinct as much as by accident of circumstances, but if
I keep out of society I shall be less vulnerable than Ishmaels generally
are.  The moment a man goes into society, he becomes vulnerable all
round."

I was very sorry to hear him talk in this way; for whatever strength a
man may have he should surely be able to make more of it if he act in
concert than alone.  I said this.

"I don't care," he answered, "whether I make the most of my strength or
not; I don't know whether I have any strength, but if I have I dare say
it will find some way of exerting itself.  I will live as I like living,
not as other people would like me to live; thanks to my aunt and you I
can afford the luxury of a quiet unobtrusive life of self-indulgence,"
said he laughing, "and I mean to have it.  You know I like writing," he
added after a pause of some minutes, "I have been a scribbler for years.
If I am to come to the fore at all it must be by writing."

I had already long since come to that conclusion myself.

"Well," he continued, "there are a lot of things that want saying which
no one dares to say, a lot of shams which want attacking, and yet no one
attacks them.  It seems to me that I can say things which not another man
in England except myself will venture to say, and yet which are crying to
be said."

I said: "But who will listen?  If you say things which nobody else would
dare to say is not this much the same as saying what everyone except
yourself knows to be better left unsaid just now?"

"Perhaps," said he, "but I don't know it; I am bursting with these
things, and it is my fate to say them."

I knew there would be no stopping him, so I gave in and asked what
question he felt a special desire to burn his fingers with in the first
instance.

"Marriage," he rejoined promptly, "and the power of disposing of his
property after a man is dead.  The question of Christianity is virtually
settled, or if not settled there is no lack of those engaged in settling
it.  The question of the day now is marriage and the family system."

"That," said I drily, "is a hornet's nest indeed."

"Yes," said he no less drily, "but hornet's nests are exactly what I
happen to like.  Before, however, I begin to stir up this particular one
I propose to travel for a few years, with the especial object of finding
out what nations now existing are the best, comeliest and most lovable,
and also what nations have been so in times past.  I want to find out how
these people live, and have lived, and what their customs are.

"I have very vague notions upon the subject as yet, but the general
impression I have formed is that, putting ourselves on one side, the most
vigorous and amiable of known nations are the modern Italians, the old
Greeks and Romans, and the South Sea Islanders.  I believe that these
nice peoples have not as a general rule been purists, but I want to see
those of them who can yet be seen; they are the practical authorities on
the question--What is best for man? and I should like to see them and
find out what they do.  Let us settle the fact first and fight about the
moral tendencies afterwards."

"In fact," said I laughingly, "you mean to have high old times."

"Neither higher nor lower," was the answer, "than those people whom I can
find to have been the best in all ages.  But let us change the subject."
He put his hand into his pocket and brought out a letter.  "My father,"
he said, "gave me this letter this morning with the seal already broken."
He passed it over to me, and I found it to be the one which Christina had
written before the birth of her last child, and which I have given in an
earlier chapter.

"And you do not find this letter," said I, "affect the conclusion which
you have just told me you have come to concerning your present plans?"

He smiled, and answered: "No.  But if you do what you have sometimes
talked about and turn the adventures of my unworthy self into a novel,
mind you print this letter."

"Why so?" said I, feeling as though such a letter as this should have
been held sacred from the public gaze.

"Because my mother would have wished it published; if she had known you
were writing about me and had this letter in your possession, she would
above all things have desired that you should publish it.  Therefore
publish it if you write at all."

This is why I have done so.

Within a month Ernest carried his intention into effect, and having made
all the arrangements necessary for his children's welfare left England
before Christmas.

I heard from him now and again and learnt that he was visiting almost all
parts of the world, but only staying in those places where he found the
inhabitants unusually good-looking and agreeable.  He said he had filled
an immense quantity of note-books, and I have no doubt he had.  At last
in the spring of 1867 he returned, his luggage stained with the variation
of each hotel advertisement 'twixt here and Japan.  He looked very brown
and strong, and so well favoured that it almost seemed as if he must have
caught some good looks from the people among whom he had been living.  He
came back to his old rooms in the Temple, and settled down as easily as
if he had never been away a day.

One of the first things we did was to go and see the children; we took
the train to Gravesend, and walked thence for a few miles along the
riverside till we came to the solitary house where the good people lived
with whom Ernest had placed them.  It was a lovely April morning, but
with a fresh air blowing from off the sea; the tide was high, and the
river was alive with shipping coming up with wind and tide.  Sea-gulls
wheeled around us overhead, sea-weed clung everywhere to the banks which
the advancing tide had not yet covered, everything was of the sea sea-ey,
and the fine bracing air which blew over the water made me feel more
hungry than I had done for many a day; I did not see how children could
live in a better physical atmosphere than this, and applauded the
selection which Ernest had made on behalf of his youngsters.

While we were still a quarter of a mile off we heard shouts and
children's laughter, and could see a lot of boys and girls romping
together and running after one another.  We could not distinguish our own
two, but when we got near they were soon made out, for the other children
were blue-eyed, flaxen-pated little folks, whereas ours were dark and
straight-haired.

We had written to say that we were coming, but had desired that nothing
should be said to the children, so these paid no more attention to us
than they would have done to any other stranger, who happened to visit a
spot so unfrequented except by sea-faring folk, which we plainly were
not.  The interest, however, in us was much quickened when it was
discovered that we had got our pockets full of oranges and sweeties, to
an extent greater than it had entered into their small imaginations to
conceive as possible.  At first we had great difficulty in making them
come near us.  They were like a lot of wild young colts, very
inquisitive, but very coy and not to be cajoled easily.  The children
were nine in all--five boys and two girls belonging to Mr and Mrs
Rollings, and two to Ernest.  I never saw a finer lot of children than
the young Rollings, the boys were hardy, robust, fearless little fellows
with eyes as clear as hawks; the elder girl was exquisitely pretty, but
the younger one was a mere baby.  I felt as I looked at them, that if I
had had children of my own I could have wished no better home for them,
nor better companions.

Georgie and Alice, Ernest's two children, were evidently quite as one
family with the others, and called Mr and Mrs Rollings uncle and aunt.
They had been so young when they were first brought to the house that
they had been looked upon in the light of new babies who had been born
into the family.  They knew nothing about Mr and Mrs Rollings being paid
so much a week to look after them.  Ernest asked them all what they
wanted to be.  They had only one idea; one and all, Georgie among the
rest, wanted to be bargemen.  Young ducks could hardly have a more
evident hankering after the water.

"And what do you want, Alice?" said Ernest.

"Oh," she said, "I'm going to marry Jack here, and be a bargeman's wife."

Jack was the eldest boy, now nearly twelve, a sturdy little fellow, the
image of what Mr Rollings must have been at his age.  As we looked at
him, so straight and well grown and well done all round, I could see it
was in Ernest's mind as much as in mine that she could hardly do much
better.

"Come here, Jack, my boy," said Ernest, "here's a shilling for you."  The
boy blushed and could hardly be got to come in spite of our previous
blandishments; he had had pennies given him before, but shillings never.
His father caught him good-naturedly by the ear and lugged him to us.

"He's a good boy, Jack is," said Ernest to Mr Rollings, "I'm sure of
that."

"Yes," said Mr Rollings, "he's a werry good boy, only that I can't get
him to learn his reading and writing.  He don't like going to school,
that's the only complaint I have against him.  I don't know what's the
matter with all my children, and yours, Mr Pontifex, is just as bad, but
they none of 'em likes book learning, though they learn anything else
fast enough.  Why, as for Jack here, he's almost as good a bargeman as I
am."  And he looked fondly and patronisingly towards his offspring.

"I think," said Ernest to Mr Rollings, "if he wants to marry Alice when
he gets older he had better do so, and he shall have as many barges as he
likes.  In the meantime, Mr Rollings, say in what way money can be of use
to you, and whatever you can make useful is at your disposal."

I need hardly say that Ernest made matters easy for this good couple; one
stipulation, however, he insisted on, namely, there was to be no more
smuggling, and that the young people were to be kept out of this; for a
little bird had told Ernest that smuggling in a quiet way was one of the
resources of the Rollings family.  Mr Rollings was not sorry to assent to
this, and I believe it is now many years since the coastguard people have
suspected any of the Rollings family as offenders against the revenue
law.

"Why should I take them from where they are," said Ernest to me in the
train as we went home, "to send them to schools where they will not be
one half so happy, and where their illegitimacy will very likely be a
worry to them?  Georgie wants to be a bargeman, let him begin as one, the
sooner the better; he may as well begin with this as with anything else;
then if he shows developments I can be on the look-out to encourage them
and make things easy for him; while if he shows no desire to go ahead,
what on earth is the good of trying to shove him forward?"

Ernest, I believe, went on with a homily upon education generally, and
upon the way in which young people should go through the embryonic stages
with their money as much as with their limbs, beginning life in a much
lower social position than that in which their parents were, and a lot
more, which he has since published; but I was getting on in years, and
the walk and the bracing air had made me sleepy, so ere we had got past
Greenhithe Station on our return journey I had sunk into a refreshing
sleep.

Ernest being about two and thirty years old and having had his fling for
the last three or four years, now settled down in London, and began to
write steadily.  Up to this time he had given abundant promise, but had
produced nothing, nor indeed did he come before the public for another
three or four years yet.

He lived as I have said very quietly, seeing hardly anyone but myself,
and the three or four old friends with whom I had been intimate for
years.  Ernest and we formed our little set, and outside of this my
godson was hardly known at all.

His main expense was travelling, which he indulged in at frequent
intervals, but for short times only.  Do what he would he could not get
through more than about fifteen hundred a year; the rest of his income he
gave away if he happened to find a case where he thought money would be
well bestowed, or put by until some opportunity arose of getting rid of
it with advantage.

I knew he was writing, but we had had so many little differences of
opinion upon this head that by a tacit understanding the subject was
seldom referred to between us, and I did not know that he was actually
publishing till one day he brought me a book and told me flat it was his
own.  I opened it and found it to be a series of semi-theological, semi-
social essays, purporting to have been written by six or seven different
people, and viewing the same class of subjects from different
standpoints.

People had not yet forgotten the famous "Essays and Reviews," and Ernest
had wickedly given a few touches to at least two of the essays which
suggested vaguely that they had been written by a bishop.  The essays
were all of them in support of the Church of England, and appeared both
by internal suggestion, and their prima facie purport to be the work of
some half-dozen men of experience and high position who had determined to
face the difficult questions of the day no less boldly from within the
bosom of the Church than the Church's enemies had faced them from without
her pale.

There was an essay on the external evidences of the Resurrection; another
on the marriage laws of the most eminent nations of the world in times
past and present; another was devoted to a consideration of the many
questions which must be reopened and reconsidered on their merits if the
teaching of the Church of England were to cease to carry moral authority
with it; another dealt with the more purely social subject of middle
class destitution; another with the authenticity or rather the
unauthenticity of the fourth gospel--another was headed "Irrational
Rationalism," and there were two or three more.

They were all written vigorously and fearlessly as though by people used
to authority; all granted that the Church professed to enjoin belief in
much which no one could accept who had been accustomed to weigh evidence;
but it was contended that so much valuable truth had got so closely mixed
up with these mistakes, that the mistakes had better not be meddled with.
To lay great stress on these was like cavilling at the Queen's right to
reign, on the ground that William the Conqueror was illegitimate.

One article maintained that though it would be inconvenient to change the
words of our prayer book and articles, it would not be inconvenient to
change in a quiet way the meanings which we put upon those words.  This,
it was argued, was what was actually done in the case of law; this had
been the law's mode of growth and adaptation, and had in all ages been
found a righteous and convenient method of effecting change.  It was
suggested that the Church should adopt it.

In another essay it was boldly denied that the Church rested upon reason.
It was proved incontestably that its ultimate foundation was and ought to
be faith, there being indeed no other ultimate foundation than this for
any of man's beliefs.  If so, the writer claimed that the Church could
not be upset by reason.  It was founded, like everything else, on initial
assumptions, that is to say on faith, and if it was to be upset it was to
be upset by faith, by the faith of those who in their lives appeared more
graceful, more lovable, better bred, in fact, and better able to overcome
difficulties.  Any sect which showed its superiority in these respects
might carry all before it, but none other would make much headway for
long together.  Christianity was true in so far as it had fostered
beauty, and it had fostered much beauty.  It was false in so far as it
fostered ugliness, and it had fostered much ugliness.  It was therefore
not a little true and not a little false; on the whole one might go
farther and fare worse; the wisest course would be to live with it, and
make the best and not the worst of it.  The writer urged that we become
persecutors as a matter of course as soon as we begin to feel very
strongly upon any subject; we ought not therefore to do this; we ought
not to feel very strongly--even upon that institution which was dearer to
the writer than any other--the Church of England.  We should be
churchmen, but somewhat lukewarm churchmen, inasmuch as those who care
very much about either religion or irreligion are seldom observed to be
very well bred or agreeable people.  The Church herself should approach
as nearly to that of Laodicea as was compatible with her continuing to be
a Church at all, and each individual member should only be hot in
striving to be as lukewarm as possible.

The book rang with the courage alike of conviction and of an entire
absence of conviction; it appeared to be the work of men who had a rule-
of-thumb way of steering between iconoclasm on the one hand and credulity
on the other; who cut Gordian knots as a matter of course when it suited
their convenience; who shrank from no conclusion in theory, nor from any
want of logic in practice so long as they were illogical of malice
prepense, and for what they held to be sufficient reason.  The
conclusions were conservative, quietistic, comforting.  The arguments by
which they were reached were taken from the most advanced writers of the
day.  All that these people contended for was granted them, but the
fruits of victory were for the most part handed over to those already in
possession.

Perhaps the passage which attracted most attention in the book was one
from the essay on the various marriage systems of the world.  It ran:--

"If people require us to construct," exclaimed the writer, "we set good
breeding as the corner-stone of our edifice.  We would have it ever
present consciously or unconsciously in the minds of all as the central
faith in which they should live and move and have their being, as the
touchstone of all things whereby they may be known as good or evil
according as they make for good breeding or against it."

"That a man should have been bred well and breed others well; that his
figure, head, hands, feet, voice, manner and clothes should carry
conviction upon this point, so that no one can look at him without seeing
that he has come of good stock and is likely to throw good stock himself,
this is the _desiderandum_.  And the same with a woman.  The greatest
number of these well-bred men and women, and the greatest happiness of
these well-bred men and women, this is the highest good; towards this all
government, all social conventions, all art, literature and science
should directly or indirectly tend.  Holy men and holy women are those
who keep this unconsciously in view at all times whether of work or
pastime."

If Ernest had published this work in his own name I should think it would
have fallen stillborn from the press, but the form he had chosen was
calculated at that time to arouse curiosity, and as I have said he had
wickedly dropped a few hints which the reviewers did not think anyone
would have been impudent enough to do if he were not a bishop, or at any
rate some one in authority.  A well-known judge was spoken of as being
another of the writers, and the idea spread ere long that six or seven of
the leading bishops and judges had laid their heads together to produce a
volume, which should at once outbid "Essays and Reviews" and counteract
the influence of that then still famous work.

Reviewers are men of like passions with ourselves, and with them as with
everyone else _omne ignotum pro magnifico_.  The book was really an able
one and abounded with humour, just satire, and good sense.  It struck a
new note and the speculation which for some time was rife concerning its
authorship made many turn to it who would never have looked at it
otherwise.  One of the most gushing weeklies had a fit over it, and
declared it to be the finest thing that had been done since the
"Provincial Letters" of Pascal.  Once a month or so that weekly always
found some picture which was the finest that had been done since the old
masters, or some satire that was the finest that had appeared since Swift
or some something which was incomparably the finest that had appeared
since something else.  If Ernest had put his name to the book, and the
writer had known that it was by a nobody, he would doubtless have written
in a very different strain.  Reviewers like to think that for aught they
know they are patting a Duke or even a Prince of the blood upon the back,
and lay it on thick till they find they have been only praising Brown,
Jones or Robinson.  Then they are disappointed, and as a general rule
will pay Brown, Jones or Robinson out.

Ernest was not so much up to the ropes of the literary world as I was,
and I am afraid his head was a little turned when he woke up one morning
to find himself famous.  He was Christina's son, and perhaps would not
have been able to do what he had done if he was not capable of occasional
undue elation.  Ere long, however, he found out all about it, and settled
quietly down to write a series of books, in which he insisted on saying
things which no one else would say even if they could, or could even if
they would.

He has got himself a bad literary character.  I said to him laughingly
one day that he was like the man in the last century of whom it was said
that nothing but such a character could keep down such parts.

He laughed and said he would rather be like that than like a modern
writer or two whom he could name, whose parts were so poor that they
could be kept up by nothing but by such a character.

I remember soon after one of these books was published I happened to meet
Mrs Jupp to whom, by the way, Ernest made a small weekly allowance.  It
was at Ernest's chambers, and for some reason we were left alone for a
few minutes.  I said to her: "Mr Pontifex has written another book, Mrs
Jupp."

"Lor' now," said she, "has he really?  Dear gentleman!  Is it about
love?"  And the old sinner threw up a wicked sheep's eye glance at me
from under her aged eyelids.  I forget what there was in my reply which
provoked it--probably nothing--but she went rattling on at full speed to
the effect that Bell had given her a ticket for the opera, "So, of
course," she said, "I went.  I didn't understand one word of it, for it
was all French, but I saw their legs.  Oh dear, oh dear!  I'm afraid I
shan't be here much longer, and when dear Mr Pontifex sees me in my
coffin he'll say, 'Poor old Jupp, she'll never talk broad any more'; but
bless you I'm not so old as all that, and I'm taking lessons in dancing."

At this moment Ernest came in and the conversation was changed.  Mrs Jupp
asked if he was still going on writing more books now that this one was
done.  "Of course I am," he answered, "I'm always writing books; here is
the manuscript of my next;" and he showed her a heap of paper.

"Well now," she exclaimed, "dear, dear me, and is that manuscript?  I've
often heard talk about manuscripts, but I never thought I should live to
see some myself.  Well! well!  So that is really manuscript?"

There were a few geraniums in the window and they did not look well.
Ernest asked Mrs Jupp if she understood flowers.  "I understand the
language of flowers," she said, with one of her most bewitching leers,
and on this we sent her off till she should choose to honour us with
another visit, which she knows she is privileged from time to time to do,
for Ernest likes her.

And now I must bring my story to a close.

The preceding chapter was written soon after the events it records--that
is to say in the spring of 1867.  By that time my story had been written
up to this point; but it has been altered here and there from time to
time occasionally.  It is now the autumn of 1882, and if I am to say more
I should do so quickly, for I am eighty years old and though well in
health cannot conceal from myself that I am no longer young.  Ernest
himself is forty-seven, though he hardly looks it.

He is richer than ever, for he has never married and his London and North-
Western shares have nearly doubled themselves.  Through sheer inability
to spend his income he has been obliged to hoard in self-defence.  He
still lives in the Temple in the same rooms I took for him when he gave
up his shop, for no one has been able to induce him to take a house.  His
house, he says, is wherever there is a good hotel.  When he is in town he
likes to work and to be quiet.  When out of town he feels that he has
left little behind him that can go wrong, and he would not like to be
tied to a single locality.  "I know no exception," he says, "to the rule
that it is cheaper to buy milk than to keep a cow."

As I have mentioned Mrs Jupp, I may as well say here the little that
remains to be said about her.  She is a very old woman now, but no one
now living, as she says triumphantly, can say how old, for the woman in
the Old Kent Road is dead, and presumably has carried her secret to the
grave.  Old, however, though she is, she lives in the same house, and
finds it hard work to make the two ends meet, but I do not know that she
minds this very much, and it has prevented her from getting more to drink
than would be good for her.  It is no use trying to do anything for her
beyond paying her allowance weekly, and absolutely refusing to let her
anticipate it.  She pawns her flat iron every Saturday for 4d., and takes
it out every Monday morning for 4.5d. when she gets her allowance, and
has done this for the last ten years as regularly as the week comes
round.  As long as she does not let the flat iron actually go we know
that she can still worry out her financial problems in her own hugger-
mugger way and had better be left to do so.  If the flat iron were to go
beyond redemption, we should know that it was time to interfere.  I do
not know why, but there is something about her which always reminds me of
a woman who was as unlike her as one person can be to another--I mean
Ernest's mother.

The last time I had a long gossip with her was about two years ago when
she came to me instead of to Ernest.  She said she had seen a cab drive
up just as she was going to enter the staircase, and had seen Mr
Pontifex's pa put his Beelzebub old head out of the window, so she had
come on to me, for she hadn't greased her sides for no curtsey, not for
the likes of him.  She professed to be very much down on her luck.  Her
lodgers did use her so dreadful, going away without paying and leaving
not so much as a stick behind, but to-day she was as pleased as a penny
carrot.  She had had such a lovely dinner--a cushion of ham and green
peas.  She had had a good cry over it, but then she was so silly, she
was.

"And there's that Bell," she continued, though I could not detect any
appearance of connection, "it's enough to give anyone the hump to see him
now that he's taken to chapel-going, and his mother's prepared to meet
Jesus and all that to me, and now she ain't a-going to die, and drinks
half a bottle of champagne a day, and then Grigg, him as preaches, you
know, asked Bell if I really was too gay, not but what when I was young
I'd snap my fingers at any 'fly by night' in Holborn, and if I was togged
out and had my teeth I'd do it now.  I lost my poor dear Watkins, but of
course that couldn't be helped, and then I lost my dear Rose.  Silly
faggot to go and ride on a cart and catch the bronchitics.  I never
thought when I kissed my dear Rose in Pullen's Passage and she gave me
the chop, that I should never see her again, and her gentleman friend was
fond of her too, though he was a married man.  I daresay she's gone to
bits by now.  If she could rise and see me with my bad finger, she would
cry, and I should say, 'Never mind, ducky, I'm all right.'  Oh! dear,
it's coming on to rain.  I do hate a wet Saturday night--poor women with
their nice white stockings and their living to get," etc., etc.

And yet age does not wither this godless old sinner, as people would say
it ought to do.  Whatever life she has led, it has agreed with her very
sufficiently.  At times she gives us to understand that she is still much
solicited; at others she takes quite a different tone.  She has not
allowed even Joe King so much as to put his lips to hers this ten years.
She would rather have a mutton chop any day.  "But ah! you should have
seen me when I was sweet seventeen.  I was the very moral of my poor dear
mother, and she was a pretty woman, though I say it that shouldn't.  She
had such a splendid mouth of teeth.  It was a sin to bury her in her
teeth."

I only knew of one thing at which she professes to be shocked.  It is
that her son Tom and his wife Topsy are teaching the baby to swear.  "Oh!
it's too dreadful awful," she exclaimed, "I don't know the meaning of the
words, but I tell him he's a drunken sot."  I believe the old woman in
reality rather likes it.

"But surely, Mrs Jupp," said I, "Tom's wife used not to be Topsy.  You
used to speak of her as Pheeb."

"Ah! yes," she answered, "but Pheeb behaved bad, and it's Topsy now."

Ernest's daughter Alice married the boy who had been her playmate more
than a year ago.  Ernest gave them all they said they wanted and a good
deal more.  They have already presented him with a grandson, and I doubt
not, will do so with many more.  Georgie though only twenty-one is owner
of a fine steamer which his father has bought for him.  He began when
about thirteen going with old Rollings and Jack in the barge from
Rochester to the upper Thames with bricks; then his father bought him and
Jack barges of their own, and then he bought them both ships, and then
steamers.  I do not exactly know how people make money by having a
steamer, but he does whatever is usual, and from all I can gather makes
it pay extremely well.  He is a good deal like his father in the face,
but without a spark--so far as I have been able to observe--any literary
ability; he has a fair sense of humour and abundance of common sense, but
his instinct is clearly a practical one.  I am not sure that he does not
put me in mind almost more of what Theobald would have been if he had
been a sailor, than of Ernest.  Ernest used to go down to Battersby and
stay with his father for a few days twice a year until Theobald's death,
and the pair continued on excellent terms, in spite of what the
neighbouring clergy call "the atrocious books which Mr Ernest Pontifex"
has written.  Perhaps the harmony, or rather absence of discord which
subsisted between the pair was due to the fact that Theobald had never
looked into the inside of one of his son's works, and Ernest, of course,
never alluded to them in his father's presence.  The pair, as I have
said, got on excellently, but it was doubtless as well that Ernest's
visits were short and not too frequent.  Once Theobald wanted Ernest to
bring his children, but Ernest knew they would not like it, so this was
not done.

Sometimes Theobald came up to town on small business matters and paid a
visit to Ernest's chambers; he generally brought with him a couple of
lettuces, or a cabbage, or half-a-dozen turnips done up in a piece of
brown paper, and told Ernest that he knew fresh vegetables were rather
hard to get in London, and he had brought him some.  Ernest had often
explained to him that the vegetables were of no use to him, and that he
had rather he would not bring them; but Theobald persisted, I believe
through sheer love of doing something which his son did not like, but
which was too small to take notice of.

He lived until about twelve months ago, when he was found dead in his bed
on the morning after having written the following letter to his son:--

   "Dear Ernest,--I've nothing particular to write about, but your letter
   has been lying for some days in the limbo of unanswered letters, to
   wit my pocket, and it's time it was answered.

   "I keep wonderfully well and am able to walk my five or six miles with
   comfort, but at my age there's no knowing how long it will last, and
   time flies quickly.  I have been busy potting plants all the morning,
   but this afternoon is wet.

   "What is this horrid Government going to do with Ireland?  I don't
   exactly wish they'd blow up Mr Gladstone, but if a mad bull would
   chivy him there, and he would never come back any more, I should not
   be sorry.  Lord Hartington is not exactly the man I should like to set
   in his place, but he would be immeasurably better than Gladstone.

   "I miss your sister Charlotte more than I can express.  She kept my
   household accounts, and I could pour out to her all little worries,
   and now that Joey is married too, I don't know what I should do if one
   or other of them did not come sometimes and take care of me.  My only
   comfort is that Charlotte will make her husband happy, and that he is
   as nearly worthy of her as a husband can well be.--Believe me, Your
   affectionate father,

   "THEOBALD PONTIFEX."

I may say in passing that though Theobald speaks of Charlotte's marriage
as though it were recent, it had really taken place some six years
previously, she being then about thirty-eight years old, and her husband
about seven years younger.

There was no doubt that Theobald passed peacefully away during his sleep.
Can a man who died thus be said to have died at all?  He has presented
the phenomena of death to other people, but in respect of himself he has
not only not died, but has not even thought that he was going to die.
This is not more than half dying, but then neither was his life more than
half living.  He presented so many of the phenomena of living that I
suppose on the whole it would be less trouble to think of him as having
been alive than as never having been born at all, but this is only
possible because association does not stick to the strict letter of its
bond.

This, however, was not the general verdict concerning him, and the
general verdict is often the truest.

Ernest was overwhelmed with expressions of condolence and respect for his
father's memory.  "He never," said Dr Martin, the old doctor who brought
Ernest into the world, "spoke an ill word against anyone.  He was not
only liked, he was beloved by all who had anything to do with him."

"A more perfectly just and righteously dealing man," said the family
solicitor, "I have never had anything to do with--nor one more punctual
in the discharge of every business obligation."

"We shall miss him sadly," the bishop wrote to Joey in the very warmest
terms.  The poor were in consternation.  "The well's never missed," said
one old woman, "till it's dry," and she only said what everyone else
felt.  Ernest knew that the general regret was unaffected as for a loss
which could not be easily repaired.  He felt that there were only three
people in the world who joined insincerely in the tribute of applause,
and these were the very three who could least show their want of
sympathy.  I mean Joey, Charlotte, and himself.  He felt bitter against
himself for being of a mind with either Joey or Charlotte upon any
subject, and thankful that he must conceal his being so as far as
possible, not because of anything his father had done to him--these
grievances were too old to be remembered now--but because he would never
allow him to feel towards him as he was always trying to feel.  As long
as communication was confined to the merest commonplace all went well,
but if these were departed from ever such a little he invariably felt
that his father's instincts showed themselves in immediate opposition to
his own.  When he was attacked his father laid whatever stress was
possible on everything which his opponents said.  If he met with any
check his father was clearly pleased.  What the old doctor had said about
Theobald's speaking ill of no man was perfectly true as regards others
than himself, but he knew very well that no one had injured his
reputation in a quiet way, so far as he dared to do, more than his own
father.  This is a very common case and a very natural one.  It often
happens that if the son is right, the father is wrong, and the father is
not going to have this if he can help it.

It was very hard, however, to say what was the true root of the mischief
in the present case.  It was not Ernest's having been imprisoned.
Theobald forgot all about that much sooner than nine fathers out of ten
would have done.  Partly, no doubt, it was due to incompatibility of
temperament, but I believe the main ground of complaint lay in the fact
that he had been so independent and so rich while still very young, and
that thus the old gentleman had been robbed of his power to tease and
scratch in the way which he felt he was entitled to do.  The love of
teasing in a small way when he felt safe in doing so had remained part of
his nature from the days when he told his nurse that he would keep her on
purpose to torment her.  I suppose it is so with all of us.  At any rate
I am sure that most fathers, especially if they are clergymen, are like
Theobald.

He did not in reality, I am convinced, like Joey or Charlotte one whit
better than he liked Ernest.  He did not like anyone or anything, or if
he liked anyone at all it was his butler, who looked after him when he
was not well, and took great care of him and believed him to be the best
and ablest man in the whole world.  Whether this faithful and attached
servant continued to think this after Theobald's will was opened and it
was found what kind of legacy had been left him I know not.  Of his
children, the baby who had died at a day old was the only one whom he
held to have treated him quite filially.  As for Christina he hardly ever
pretended to miss her and never mentioned her name; but this was taken as
a proof that he felt her loss too keenly to be able ever to speak of her.
It may have been so, but I do not think it.

Theobald's effects were sold by auction, and among them the Harmony of
the Old and New Testaments which he had compiled during many years with
such exquisite neatness and a huge collection of MS. sermons--being all
in fact that he had ever written.  These and the Harmony fetched
ninepence a barrow load.  I was surprised to hear that Joey had not given
the three or four shillings which would have bought the whole lot, but
Ernest tells me that Joey was far fiercer in his dislike of his father
than ever he had been himself, and wished to get rid of everything that
reminded him of him.

It has already appeared that both Joey and Charlotte are married.  Joey
has a family, but he and Ernest very rarely have any intercourse.  Of
course, Ernest took nothing under his father's will; this had long been
understood, so that the other two are both well provided for.

Charlotte is as clever as ever, and sometimes asks Ernest to come and
stay with her and her husband near Dover, I suppose because she knows
that the invitation will not be agreeable to him.  There is a _de haut en
bas_ tone in all her letters; it is rather hard to lay one's finger upon
it but Ernest never gets a letter from her without feeling that he is
being written to by one who has had direct communication with an angel.
"What an awful creature," he once said to me, "that angel must have been
if it had anything to do with making Charlotte what she is."

"Could you like," she wrote to him not long ago, "the thoughts of a
little sea change here?  The top of the cliffs will soon be bright with
heather: the gorse must be out already, and the heather I should think
begun, to judge by the state of the hill at Ewell, and heather or no
heather--the cliffs are always beautiful, and if you come your room shall
be cosy so that you may have a resting corner to yourself.  Nineteen and
sixpence is the price of a return-ticket which covers a month.  Would you
decide just as you would yourself like, only if you come we would hope to
try and make it bright for you; but you must not feel it a burden on your
mind if you feel disinclined to come in this direction."

"When I have a bad nightmare," said Ernest to me, laughing as he showed
me this letter, "I dream that I have got to stay with Charlotte."

Her letters are supposed to be unusually well written, and I believe it
is said among the family that Charlotte has far more real literary power
than Ernest has.  Sometimes we think that she is writing at him as much
as to say, "There now--don't you think you are the only one of us who can
write; read this!  And if you want a telling bit of descriptive writing
for your next book, you can make what use of it you like."  I daresay she
writes very well, but she has fallen under the dominion of the words
"hope," "think," "feel," "try," "bright," and "little," and can hardly
write a page without introducing all these words and some of them more
than once.  All this has the effect of making her style monotonous.

Ernest is as fond of music as ever, perhaps more so, and of late years
has added musical composition to the other irons in his fire.  He finds
it still a little difficult, and is in constant trouble through getting
into the key of C sharp after beginning in the key of C and being unable
to get back again.

"Getting into the key of C sharp," he said, "is like an unprotected
female travelling on the Metropolitan Railway, and finding herself at
Shepherd's Bush, without quite knowing where she wants to go to.  How is
she ever to get safe back to Clapham Junction?  And Clapham Junction
won't quite do either, for Clapham Junction is like the diminished
seventh--susceptible of such enharmonic change, that you can resolve it
into all the possible termini of music."

Talking of music reminds me of a little passage that took place between
Ernest and Miss Skinner, Dr Skinner's eldest daughter, not so very long
ago.  Dr Skinner had long left Roughborough, and had become Dean of a
Cathedral in one of our Midland counties--a position which exactly suited
him.  Finding himself once in the neighbourhood Ernest called, for old
acquaintance sake, and was hospitably entertained at lunch.

Thirty years had whitened the Doctor's bushy eyebrows--his hair they
could not whiten.  I believe that but for that wig he would have been
made a bishop.

His voice and manner were unchanged, and when Ernest remarking upon a
plan of Rome which hung in the hall, spoke inadvertently of the Quirinal,
he replied with all his wonted pomp: "Yes, the QuirInal--or as I myself
prefer to call it, the QuirInal."  After this triumph he inhaled a long
breath through the corners of his mouth, and flung it back again into the
face of Heaven, as in his finest form during his head-mastership.  At
lunch he did indeed once say, "next to impossible to think of anything
else," but he immediately corrected himself and substituted the words,
"next to impossible to entertain irrelevant ideas," after which he seemed
to feel a good deal more comfortable.  Ernest saw the familiar volumes of
Dr Skinner's works upon the bookshelves in the Deanery dining-room, but
he saw no copy of "Rome or the Bible--Which?"

"And are you still as fond of music as ever, Mr Pontifex?" said Miss
Skinner to Ernest during the course of lunch.

"Of some kinds of music, yes, Miss Skinner, but you know I never did like
modern music."

"Isn't that rather dreadful?--Don't you think you rather"--she was going
to have added, "ought to?" but she left it unsaid, feeling doubtless that
she had sufficiently conveyed her meaning.

"I would like modern music, if I could; I have been trying all my life to
like it, but I succeed less and less the older I grow."

"And pray, where do you consider modern music to begin?"

"With Sebastian Bach."

"And don't you like Beethoven?"

"No, I used to think I did, when I was younger, but I know now that I
never really liked him."

"Ah! how can you say so?  You cannot understand him, you never could say
this if you understood him.  For me a simple chord of Beethoven is
enough.  This is happiness."

Ernest was amused at her strong family likeness to her father--a likeness
which had grown upon her as she had become older, and which extended even
to voice and manner of speaking.  He remembered how he had heard me
describe the game of chess I had played with the doctor in days gone by,
and with his mind's ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner saying, as though it
were an epitaph:--

   "Stay:
   I may presently take
   A simple chord of Beethoven,
   Or a small semiquaver
   From one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words."

After luncheon when Ernest was left alone for half an hour or so with the
Dean he plied him so well with compliments that the old gentleman was
pleased and flattered beyond his wont.  He rose and bowed.  "These
expressions," he said, _voce sua_, "are very valuable to me."  "They are
but a small part, Sir," rejoined Ernest, "of what anyone of your old
pupils must feel towards you," and the pair danced as it were a minuet at
the end of the dining-room table in front of the old bay window that
looked upon the smooth shaven lawn.  On this Ernest departed; but a few
days afterwards, the Doctor wrote him a letter and told him that his
critics were a [Greek text], and at the same time [Greek text].  Ernest
remembered [Greek text], and knew that the other words were something of
like nature, so it was all right.  A month or two afterwards, Dr Skinner
was gathered to his fathers.

"He was an old fool, Ernest," said I, "and you should not relent towards
him."

"I could not help it," he replied, "he was so old that it was almost like
playing with a child."

Sometimes, like all whose minds are active, Ernest overworks himself, and
then occasionally he has fierce and reproachful encounters with Dr
Skinner or Theobald in his sleep--but beyond this neither of these two
worthies can now molest him further.

To myself he has been a son and more than a son; at times I am half
afraid--as for example when I talk to him about his books--that I may
have been to him more like a father than I ought; if I have, I trust he
has forgiven me.  His books are the only bone of contention between us.  I
want him to write like other people, and not to offend so many of his
readers; he says he can no more change his manner of writing than the
colour of his hair, and that he must write as he does or not at all.

With the public generally he is not a favourite.  He is admitted to have
talent, but it is considered generally to be of a queer unpractical kind,
and no matter how serious he is, he is always accused of being in jest.
His first book was a success for reasons which I have already explained,
but none of his others have been more than creditable failures.  He is
one of those unfortunate men, each one of whose books is sneered at by
literary critics as soon as it comes out, but becomes "excellent reading"
as soon as it has been followed by a later work which may in its turn be
condemned.

He never asked a reviewer to dinner in his life.  I have told him over
and over again that this is madness, and find that this is the only thing
I can say to him which makes him angry with me.

"What can it matter to me," he says, "whether people read my books or
not?  It may matter to them--but I have too much money to want more, and
if the books have any stuff in them it will work by-and-by.  I do not
know nor greatly care whether they are good or not.  What opinion can any
sane man form about his own work?  Some people must write stupid books
just as there must be junior ops and third class poll men.  Why should I
complain of being among the mediocrities?  If a man is not absolutely
below mediocrity let him be thankful--besides, the books will have to
stand by themselves some day, so the sooner they begin the better."

I spoke to his publisher about him not long since.  "Mr Pontifex," he
said, "is a _homo unius libri_, but it doesn't do to tell him so."

I could see the publisher, who ought to know, had lost all faith in
Ernest's literary position, and looked upon him as a man whose failure
was all the more hopeless for the fact of his having once made a _coup_.
"He is in a very solitary position, Mr Overton," continued the publisher.
"He has formed no alliances, and has made enemies not only of the
religious world but of the literary and scientific brotherhood as well.
This will not do nowadays.  If a man wishes to get on he must belong to a
set, and Mr Pontifex belongs to no set--not even to a club."

I replied, "Mr Pontifex is the exact likeness of Othello, but with a
difference--he hates not wisely but too well.  He would dislike the
literary and scientific swells if he were to come to know them and they
him; there is no natural solidarity between him and them, and if he were
brought into contact with them his last state would be worse than his
first.  His instinct tells him this, so he keeps clear of them, and
attacks them whenever he thinks they deserve it--in the hope, perhaps,
that a younger generation will listen to him more willingly than the
present."

"Can anything,"' said the publisher, "be conceived more impracticable and
imprudent?"

To all this Ernest replies with one word only--"Wait."

Such is my friend's latest development.  He would not, it is true, run
much chance at present of trying to found a College of Spiritual
Pathology, but I must leave the reader to determine whether there is not
a strong family likeness between the Ernest of the College of Spiritual
Pathology and the Ernest who will insist on addressing the next
generation rather than his own.  He says he trusts that there is not, and
takes the sacrament duly once a year as a sop to Nemesis lest he should
again feel strongly upon any subject.  It rather fatigues him, but "no
man's opinions," he sometimes says, "can be worth holding unless he knows
how to deny them easily and gracefully upon occasion in the cause of
charity."  In politics he is a Conservative so far as his vote and
interest are concerned.  In all other respects he is an advanced Radical.
His father and grandfather could probably no more understand his state of
mind than they could understand Chinese, but those who know him
intimately do not know that they wish him greatly different from what he
actually is.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Upon returning to London from Battersby, Ernest decides to go abroad in search of those societies which have the "best, comeliest and most lovable" people. At the end of three years of globetrotting, he resumes life in England well supplied with notes from which to fuel his literary ambitions. His first book is a collection of essays on a variety of topics, ostensibly written by separate authors and published anonymously. The subject matter and ironical nature of these essays are reminiscent of Butler's own earlier literary efforts. The book is received well by the public and critics alike, and when the name of the author is made known, Ernest becomes famous overnight. Unfortunately, however, his subsequent writings meet with much less success because of their controversial nature. When Theobald dies at an advanced age, a surprising number of people express their sorrow, an emotion not shared by his children. Ernest's own children, Georgie and Alice, prosper from being placed with foster parents who treat them as their own. They grow up to be handsome, healthy, and responsible adults unencumbered by a formal education. Mrs. Jupp produces strong evidence that Ernest may have sired a third child by another union, but Overton refrains from asking Ernest to confirm or deny this possibility. Even when Overton has passed his eightieth birthday, however, he continues to urge his godson to write with the general public in mind, but Ernest, like the author whom he resembles, goes his own way, heedless of others' opinions in the belief that a later generation of readers will give him the readership he lacks during his own lifetime.


prompt:
Chapter: I have been occupied with this story, during many working hours of two
years. I must have been very ill employed, if I could not leave its
merits and demerits as a whole, to express themselves on its being read
as a whole. But, as it is not unreasonable to suppose that I may have
held its threads with a more continuous attention than anyone else can
have given them during its desultory publication, it is not unreasonable
to ask that the weaving may be looked at in its completed state, and
with the pattern finished.

If I might offer any apology for so exaggerated a fiction as the
Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office, I would seek it in the
common experience of an Englishman, without presuming to mention the
unimportant fact of my having done that violence to good manners, in the
days of a Russian war, and of a Court of Inquiry at Chelsea. If I might
make so bold as to defend that extravagant conception, Mr Merdle, I
would hint that it originated after the Railroad-share epoch, in the
times of a certain Irish bank, and of one or two other equally
laudable enterprises. If I were to plead anything in mitigation of the
preposterous fancy that a bad design will sometimes claim to be a good
and an expressly religious design, it would be the curious coincidence
that it has been brought to its climax in these pages, in the days of
the public examination of late Directors of a Royal British Bank. But,
    I submit myself to suffer judgment to go by default on all these counts,
    if need be, and to accept the assurance (on good authority) that nothing
    like them was ever known in this land.

    Some of my readers may have an interest in being informed whether or no
    any portions of the Marshalsea Prison are yet standing. I did not know,
    myself, until the sixth of this present month, when I went to look. I
    found the outer front courtyard, often mentioned here, metamorphosed
    into a butter shop; and I then almost gave up every brick of the jail
    for lost. Wandering, however, down a certain adjacent 'Angel Court,
    leading to Bermondsey', I came to 'Marshalsea Place:' the houses in
    which I recognised, not only as the great block of the former prison,
    but as preserving the rooms that arose in my mind's-eye when I became
    Little Dorrit's biographer. The smallest boy I ever conversed with,
    carrying the largest baby I ever saw, offered a supernaturally
    intelligent explanation of the locality in its old uses, and was very
    nearly correct. How this young Newton (for such I judge him to be) came
    by his information, I don't know; he was a quarter of a century too
    young to know anything about it of himself. I pointed to the window of
    the room where Little Dorrit was born, and where her father lived so
    long, and asked him what was the name of the lodger who tenanted that
    apartment at present? He said, 'Tom Pythick.' I asked him who was Tom
    Pythick? and he said, 'Joe Pythick's uncle.'

    A little further on, I found the older and smaller wall, which used
    to enclose the pent-up inner prison where nobody was put, except for
    ceremony. But, whosoever goes into Marshalsea Place, turning out of
    Angel Court, leading to Bermondsey, will find his feet on the very
    paving-stones of the extinct Marshalsea jail; will see its narrow yard
    to the right and to the left, very little altered if at all, except that
    the walls were lowered when the place got free; will look upon rooms
    in which the debtors lived; and will stand among the crowding ghosts of
    many miserable years.

    In the Preface to Bleak House I remarked that I had never had so many
    readers. In the Preface to its next successor, Little Dorrit, I have
    still to repeat the same words. Deeply sensible of the affection and
    confidence that have grown up between us, I add to this Preface, as I
    added to that, May we meet again!

    London May 1857

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Dickens basically tells his critics to kiss his rear end. Which, honestly, is business as usual as far as his prefaces are concerned. Dickens declares that he knows what he's talking about, and however viciously he mocks the government or the supermoguls of his time - well, if anything, it's not nearly viciously enough. Oh, and also, the Marshalsea prison doesn't exist anymore.


prompt:
Chapter: Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.

A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was no greater rarity in southern
France then, than at any other time, before or since. Everything in
Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at the fervid sky, and been
stared at in return, until a staring habit had become universal there.
Strangers were stared out of countenance by staring white houses,
          staring white walls, staring white streets, staring tracts of arid road,
          staring hills from which verdure was burnt away. The only things to be
          seen not fixedly staring and glaring were the vines drooping under their
          load of grapes. These did occasionally wink a little, as the hot air
          barely moved their faint leaves.

          There was no wind to make a ripple on the foul water within the harbour,
          or on the beautiful sea without. The line of demarcation between the two
          colours, black and blue, showed the point which the pure sea would not
          pass; but it lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which it never
          mixed. Boats without awnings were too hot to touch; ships blistered at
          their moorings; the stones of the quays had not cooled, night or
          day, for months. Hindoos, Russians, Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese,
          Englishmen, Frenchmen, Genoese, Neapolitans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks,
          descendants from all the builders of Babel, come to trade at Marseilles,
          sought the shade alike--taking refuge in any hiding-place from a sea too
          intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of purple, set with one great
          flaming jewel of fire.

          The universal stare made the eyes ache. Towards the distant line of
          Italian coast, indeed, it was a little relieved by light clouds of mist,
          slowly rising from the evaporation of the sea, but it softened nowhere
          else. Far away the staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the
          hill-side, stared from the hollow, stared from the interminable
          plain. Far away the dusty vines overhanging wayside cottages, and the
          monotonous wayside avenues of parched trees without shade, drooped
          beneath the stare of earth and sky. So did the horses with drowsy bells,
          in long files of carts, creeping slowly towards the interior; so did
          their recumbent drivers, when they were awake, which rarely happened;
          so did the exhausted labourers in the fields. Everything that lived or
          grew, was oppressed by the glare; except the lizard, passing swiftly
          over rough stone walls, and the cicala, chirping his dry hot chirp, like
          a rattle. The very dust was scorched brown, and something quivered in
          the atmosphere as if the air itself were panting.

          Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all closed and drawn to keep
          out the stare. Grant it but a chink or keyhole, and it shot in like a
          white-hot arrow. The churches were the freest from it. To come out of
          the twilight of pillars and arches--dreamily dotted with winking lamps,
          dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows piously dozing, spitting, and
          begging--was to plunge into a fiery river, and swim for life to the
          nearest strip of shade. So, with people lounging and lying wherever
          shade was, with but little hum of tongues or barking of dogs, with
          occasional jangling of discordant church bells and rattling of vicious
          drums, Marseilles, a fact to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broiling
          in the sun one day.

          In Marseilles that day there was a villainous prison. In one of its
          chambers, so repulsive a place that even the obtrusive stare blinked at
          it, and left it to such refuse of reflected light as it could find for
          itself, were two men. Besides the two men, a notched and disfigured
          bench, immovable from the wall, with a draught-board rudely hacked upon
          it with a knife, a set of draughts, made of old buttons and soup bones,
          a set of dominoes, two mats, and two or three wine bottles. That was all
          the chamber held, exclusive of rats and other unseen vermin, in addition
          to the seen vermin, the two men.

          It received such light as it got through a grating of iron bars
          fashioned like a pretty large window, by means of which it could be
          always inspected from the gloomy staircase on which the grating gave.
          There was a broad strong ledge of stone to this grating where the bottom
          of it was let into the masonry, three or four feet above the ground.
          Upon it, one of the two men lolled, half sitting and half lying, with
          his knees drawn up, and his feet and shoulders planted against the
          opposite sides of the aperture. The bars were wide enough apart to
          admit of his thrusting his arm through to the elbow; and so he held on
          negligently, for his greater ease.

          A prison taint was on everything there. The imprisoned air, the
          imprisoned light, the imprisoned damps, the imprisoned men, were all
          deteriorated by confinement. As the captive men were faded and haggard,
          so the iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, the air
          was faint, the light was dim. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb,
          the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside, and would have
          kept its polluted atmosphere intact in one of the spice islands of the
          Indian ocean.

          The man who lay on the ledge of the grating was even chilled. He jerked
          his great cloak more heavily upon him by an impatient movement of one
          shoulder, and growled, 'To the devil with this Brigand of a Sun that
          never shines in here!'

          He was waiting to be fed, looking sideways through the bars that he
          might see the further down the stairs, with much of the expression of
          a wild beast in similar expectation. But his eyes, too close together,
          were not so nobly set in his head as those of the king of beasts are in
          his, and they were sharp rather than bright--pointed weapons with little
          surface to betray them. They had no depth or change; they glittered,
          and they opened and shut. So far, and waiving their use to himself, a
          clockmaker could have made a better pair. He had a hook nose, handsome
          after its kind, but too high between the eyes by probably just as much
          as his eyes were too near to one another. For the rest, he was large and
          tall in frame, had thin lips, where his thick moustache showed them at
          all, and a quantity of dry hair, of no definable colour, in its shaggy
          state, but shot with red. The hand with which he held the grating
          (seamed all over the back with ugly scratches newly healed), was
          unusually small and plump; would have been unusually white but for the
          prison grime.

          The other man was lying on the stone floor, covered with a coarse brown
          coat.

          'Get up, pig!' growled the first. 'Don't sleep when I am hungry.'

          'It's all one, master,' said the pig, in a submissive manner, and not
          without cheerfulness; 'I can wake when I will, I can sleep when I will.
          It's all the same.'

          As he said it, he rose, shook himself, scratched himself, tied his brown
          coat loosely round his neck by the sleeves (he had previously used it
                  as a coverlet), and sat down upon the pavement yawning, with his back
          against the wall opposite to the grating.

          'Say what the hour is,' grumbled the first man.

          'The mid-day bells will ring--in forty minutes.' When he made the
          little pause, he had looked round the prison-room, as if for certain
          information.

          'You are a clock. How is it that you always know?'

          'How can I say? I always know what the hour is, and where I am. I was
          brought in here at night, and out of a boat, but I know where I am. See
          here! Marseilles harbour;' on his knees on the pavement, mapping it all
          out with a swarthy forefinger; 'Toulon (where the galleys are), Spain
          over there, Algiers over _there_. Creeping away to the left here, Nice.
          Round by the Cornice to Genoa. Genoa Mole and Harbour. Quarantine
          Ground. City there; terrace gardens blushing with the bella donna. Here,
          Porto Fino. Stand out for Leghorn. Out again for Civita Vecchia, so away
          to--hey! there's no room for Naples;' he had got to the wall by this
          time; 'but it's all one; it's in there!'

          He remained on his knees, looking up at his fellow-prisoner with a
          lively look for a prison. A sunburnt, quick, lithe, little man, though
          rather thickset. Earrings in his brown ears, white teeth lighting up his
          grotesque brown face, intensely black hair clustering about his brown
          throat, a ragged red shirt open at his brown breast. Loose, seaman-like
          trousers, decent shoes, a long red cap, a red sash round his waist, and
          a knife in it.

          'Judge if I come back from Naples as I went! See here, my master! Civita
          Vecchia, Leghorn, Porto Fino, Genoa, Cornice, Off Nice (which is in
                  there), Marseilles, you and me. The apartment of the jailer and his keys
          is where I put this thumb; and here at my wrist they keep the national
          razor in its case--the guillotine locked up.'

          The other man spat suddenly on the pavement, and gurgled in his throat.

          Some lock below gurgled in _its_ throat immediately afterwards, and then
          a door crashed. Slow steps began ascending the stairs; the prattle of
          a sweet little voice mingled with the noise they made; and the
          prison-keeper appeared carrying his daughter, three or four years old,
          and a basket.

          'How goes the world this forenoon, gentlemen? My little one, you see,
          going round with me to have a peep at her father's birds. Fie, then!
          Look at the birds, my pretty, look at the birds.'

          He looked sharply at the birds himself, as he held the child up at
          the grate, especially at the little bird, whose activity he seemed to
          mistrust. 'I have brought your bread, Signor John Baptist,' said he
          (they all spoke in French, but the little man was an Italian); 'and if I
          might recommend you not to game--'

          'You don't recommend the master!' said John Baptist, showing his teeth
          as he smiled.

          'Oh! but the master wins,' returned the jailer, with a passing look of
          no particular liking at the other man, 'and you lose. It's quite another
          thing. You get husky bread and sour drink by it; and he gets sausage of
          Lyons, veal in savoury jelly, white bread, strachino cheese, and good
          wine by it. Look at the birds, my pretty!'

          'Poor birds!' said the child.

          The fair little face, touched with divine compassion, as it peeped
          shrinkingly through the grate, was like an angel's in the prison. John
          Baptist rose and moved towards it, as if it had a good attraction for
          him. The other bird remained as before, except for an impatient glance
          at the basket.

          'Stay!' said the jailer, putting his little daughter on the outer ledge
          of the grate, 'she shall feed the birds. This big loaf is for Signor
          John Baptist. We must break it to get it through into the cage. So,
          there's a tame bird to kiss the little hand! This sausage in a vine
          leaf is for Monsieur Rigaud. Again--this veal in savoury jelly is for
          Monsieur Rigaud. Again--these three white little loaves are for Monsieur
          Rigaud. Again, this cheese--again, this wine--again, this tobacco--all
          for Monsieur Rigaud. Lucky bird!'

          The child put all these things between the bars into the soft, Smooth,
          well-shaped hand, with evident dread--more than once drawing back
          her own and looking at the man with her fair brow roughened into an
          expression half of fright and half of anger. Whereas she had put the
          lump of coarse bread into the swart, scaled, knotted hands of John
          Baptist (who had scarcely as much nail on his eight fingers and two
                  thumbs as would have made out one for Monsieur Rigaud), with ready
          confidence; and, when he kissed her hand, had herself passed it
          caressingly over his face. Monsieur Rigaud, indifferent to this
          distinction, propitiated the father by laughing and nodding at the
          daughter as often as she gave him anything; and, so soon as he had
          all his viands about him in convenient nooks of the ledge on which he
          rested, began to eat with an appetite.

          When Monsieur Rigaud laughed, a change took place in his face, that
          was more remarkable than prepossessing. His moustache went up under his
          nose, and his nose came down over his moustache, in a very sinister and
          cruel manner.

          'There!' said the jailer, turning his basket upside down to beat the
          crumbs out, 'I have expended all the money I received; here is the note
          of it, and _that's_ a thing accomplished. Monsieur Rigaud, as I expected
          yesterday, the President will look for the pleasure of your society at
          an hour after mid-day, to-day.'

          'To try me, eh?' said Rigaud, pausing, knife in hand and morsel in
          mouth.

          'You have said it. To try you.'

          'There is no news for me?' asked John Baptist, who had begun,
          contentedly, to munch his bread.

          The jailer shrugged his shoulders.

          'Lady of mine! Am I to lie here all my life, my father?'

          'What do I know!' cried the jailer, turning upon him with southern
          quickness, and gesticulating with both his hands and all his fingers,
          as if he were threatening to tear him to pieces. 'My friend, how is it
          possible for me to tell how long you are to lie here? What do I know,
          John Baptist Cavalletto? Death of my life! There are prisoners here
          sometimes, who are not in such a devil of a hurry to be tried.'

          He seemed to glance obliquely at Monsieur Rigaud in this remark; but
          Monsieur Rigaud had already resumed his meal, though not with quite so
          quick an appetite as before.

          'Adieu, my birds!' said the keeper of the prison, taking his pretty
          child in his arms, and dictating the words with a kiss.

          'Adieu, my birds!' the pretty child repeated.

          Her innocent face looked back so brightly over his shoulder, as he
          walked away with her, singing her the song of the child's game:

          'Who passes by this road so late?
          Compagnon de la Majolaine!
          Who passes by this road so late?
          Always gay!'

          that John Baptist felt it a point of honour to reply at the grate, and
          in good time and tune, though a little hoarsely:

          'Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,
          Compagnon de la Majolaine!
          Of all the king's knights 'tis the flower,
          Always gay!'

          Which accompanied them so far down the few steep stairs, that the
          prison-keeper had to stop at last for his little daughter to hear the
          song out, and repeat the Refrain while they were yet in sight. Then the
          child's head disappeared, and the prison-keeper's head disappeared, but
          the little voice prolonged the strain until the door clashed.

          Monsieur Rigaud, finding the listening John Baptist in his way before
          the echoes had ceased (even the echoes were the weaker for imprisonment,
                  and seemed to lag), reminded him with a push of his foot that he had
          better resume his own darker place. The little man sat down again
          upon the pavement with the negligent ease of one who was thoroughly
          accustomed to pavements; and placing three hunks of coarse bread before
          himself, and falling to upon a fourth, began contentedly to work his way
          through them as if to clear them off were a sort of game.

          Perhaps he glanced at the Lyons sausage, and perhaps he glanced at the
          veal in savoury jelly, but they were not there long, to make his mouth
          water; Monsieur Rigaud soon dispatched them, in spite of the president
          and tribunal, and proceeded to suck his fingers as clean as he could,
          and to wipe them on his vine leaves. Then, as he paused in his drink
          to contemplate his fellow-prisoner, his moustache went up, and his nose
          came down.

          'How do you find the bread?'

          'A little dry, but I have my old sauce here,' returned John Baptist,
          holding up his knife.

          'How sauce?'

          'I can cut my bread so--like a melon. Or so--like an omelette. Or
          so--like a fried fish. Or so--like Lyons sausage,' said John Baptist,
          demonstrating the various cuts on the bread he held, and soberly chewing
          what he had in his mouth.

          'Here!' cried Monsieur Rigaud. 'You may drink. You may finish this.'

          It was no great gift, for there was mighty little wine left; but Signor
          Cavalletto, jumping to his feet, received the bottle gratefully, turned
          it upside down at his mouth, and smacked his lips.

          'Put the bottle by with the rest,' said Rigaud.

          The little man obeyed his orders, and stood ready to give him a lighted
          match; for he was now rolling his tobacco into cigarettes by the aid of
          little squares of paper which had been brought in with it.

          'Here! You may have one.'

          'A thousand thanks, my master!' John Baptist said in his own language,
          and with the quick conciliatory manner of his own countrymen.

          Monsieur Rigaud arose, lighted a cigarette, put the rest of his stock
          into a breast-pocket, and stretched himself out at full length upon the
          bench. Cavalletto sat down on the pavement, holding one of his ankles in
          each hand, and smoking peacefully. There seemed to be some uncomfortable
          attraction of Monsieur Rigaud's eyes to the immediate neighbourhood of
          that part of the pavement where the thumb had been in the plan. They
          were so drawn in that direction, that the Italian more than once
          followed them to and back from the pavement in some surprise.

          'What an infernal hole this is!' said Monsieur Rigaud, breaking a long
          pause. 'Look at the light of day. Day? the light of yesterday week, the
          light of six months ago, the light of six years ago. So slack and dead!'

          It came languishing down a square funnel that blinded a window in the
          staircase wall, through which the sky was never seen--nor anything else.

          'Cavalletto,' said Monsieur Rigaud, suddenly withdrawing his gaze from
          this funnel to which they had both involuntarily turned their eyes, 'you
          know me for a gentleman?'

          'Surely, surely!'

          'How long have we been here?'

          'I, eleven weeks, to-morrow night at midnight. You, nine weeks and three
          days, at five this afternoon.'

          'Have I ever done anything here? Ever touched the broom, or spread
          the mats, or rolled them up, or found the draughts, or collected the
          dominoes, or put my hand to any kind of work?'

          'Never!'

          'Have you ever thought of looking to me to do any kind of work?'

          John Baptist answered with that peculiar back-handed shake of the
          right forefinger which is the most expressive negative in the Italian
          language.

          'No! You knew from the first moment when you saw me here, that I was a
          gentleman?'

          'ALTRO!' returned John Baptist, closing his eyes and giving his head a
          most vehement toss. The word being, according to its Genoese emphasis,
          a confirmation, a contradiction, an assertion, a denial, a taunt,
          a compliment, a joke, and fifty other things, became in the present
          instance, with a significance beyond all power of written expression,
          our familiar English 'I believe you!'

          'Haha! You are right! A gentleman I am! And a gentleman I'll live, and
          a gentleman I'll die! It's my intent to be a gentleman. It's my game.
          Death of my soul, I play it out wherever I go!'

          He changed his posture to a sitting one, crying with a triumphant air:

          'Here I am! See me! Shaken out of destiny's dice-box into the company
          of a mere smuggler;--shut up with a poor little contraband trader, whose
          papers are wrong, and whom the police lay hold of besides, for placing
          his boat (as a means of getting beyond the frontier) at the disposition
          of other little people whose papers are wrong; and he instinctively
          recognises my position, even by this light and in this place. It's well
          done! By Heaven! I win, however the game goes.'

          Again his moustache went up, and his nose came down.

          'What's the hour now?' he asked, with a dry hot pallor upon him, rather
          difficult of association with merriment.

          'A little half-hour after mid-day.'

          'Good! The President will have a gentleman before him soon. Come!
          Shall I tell you on what accusation? It must be now, or never, for I
          shall not return here. Either I shall go free, or I shall go to be made
          ready for shaving. You know where they keep the razor.'

          Signor Cavalletto took his cigarette from between his parted lips, and
          showed more momentary discomfiture than might have been expected.

          'I am a'--Monsieur Rigaud stood up to say it--'I am a cosmopolitan
          gentleman. I own no particular country. My father was Swiss--Canton de
          Vaud. My mother was French by blood, English by birth. I myself was born
          in Belgium. I am a citizen of the world.'

          His theatrical air, as he stood with one arm on his hip within the folds
          of his cloak, together with his manner of disregarding his companion
          and addressing the opposite wall instead, seemed to intimate that he
          was rehearsing for the President, whose examination he was shortly to
          undergo, rather than troubling himself merely to enlighten so small a
          person as John Baptist Cavalletto.

          'Call me five-and-thirty years of age. I have seen the world. I have
          lived here, and lived there, and lived like a gentleman everywhere. I
          have been treated and respected as a gentleman universally. If you try
          to prejudice me by making out that I have lived by my wits--how do
          your lawyers live--your politicians--your intriguers--your men of the
          Exchange?'

          He kept his small smooth hand in constant requisition, as if it were a
          witness to his gentility that had often done him good service before.

          'Two years ago I came to Marseilles. I admit that I was poor; I had been
          ill. When your lawyers, your politicians, your intriguers, your men of
          the Exchange fall ill, and have not scraped money together, _they_ become
          poor. I put up at the Cross of Gold,--kept then by Monsieur Henri
          Barronneau--sixty-five at least, and in a failing state of health. I had
          lived in the house some four months when Monsieur Henri Barronneau had
          the misfortune to die;--at any rate, not a rare misfortune, that. It
          happens without any aid of mine, pretty often.'

          John Baptist having smoked his cigarette down to his fingers' ends,
          Monsieur Rigaud had the magnanimity to throw him another. He lighted the
          second at the ashes of the first, and smoked on, looking sideways at his
          companion, who, preoccupied with his own case, hardly looked at him.

          'Monsieur Barronneau left a widow. She was two-and-twenty. She had
          gained a reputation for beauty, and (which is often another thing) was
          beautiful. I continued to live at the Cross of Gold. I married Madame
          Barronneau. It is not for me to say whether there was any great
          disparity in such a match. Here I stand, with the contamination of a
          jail upon me; but it is possible that you may think me better suited to
          her than her former husband was.'

          He had a certain air of being a handsome man--which he was not; and
          a certain air of being a well-bred man--which he was not. It was mere
          swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others,
          blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.

          'Be it as it may, Madame Barronneau approved of me. _That_ is not to
          prejudice me, I hope?'

          His eye happening to light upon John Baptist with this inquiry, that
          little man briskly shook his head in the negative, and repeated in an
          argumentative tone under his breath, altro, altro, altro, altro--an
          infinite number of times.

          'Now came the difficulties of our position. I am proud. I say nothing
          in defence of pride, but I am proud. It is also my character to govern.
          I can't submit; I must govern. Unfortunately, the property of Madame
          Rigaud was settled upon herself. Such was the insane act of her late
          husband. More unfortunately still, she had relations. When a wife's
          relations interpose against a husband who is a gentleman, who is proud,
          and who must govern, the consequences are inimical to peace. There
          was yet another source of difference between us. Madame Rigaud was
          unfortunately a little vulgar. I sought to improve her manners and
          ameliorate her general tone; she (supported in this likewise by her
                  relations) resented my endeavours. Quarrels began to arise between us;
          and, propagated and exaggerated by the slanders of the relations of
          Madame Rigaud, to become notorious to the neighbours. It has been said
          that I treated Madame Rigaud with cruelty. I may have been seen to slap
          her face--nothing more. I have a light hand; and if I have been seen
          apparently to correct Madame Rigaud in that manner, I have done it
          almost playfully.'

          If the playfulness of Monsieur Rigaud were at all expressed by his smile
          at this point, the relations of Madame Rigaud might have said that
          they would have much preferred his correcting that unfortunate woman
          seriously.

          'I am sensitive and brave. I do not advance it as a merit to be
          sensitive and brave, but it is my character. If the male relations of
          Madame Rigaud had put themselves forward openly, I should have known how
          to deal with them. They knew that, and their machinations were conducted
          in secret; consequently, Madame Rigaud and I were brought into frequent
          and unfortunate collision. Even when I wanted any little sum of money
          for my personal expenses, I could not obtain it without collision--and
          I, too, a man whose character it is to govern! One night, Madame Rigaud
          and myself were walking amicably--I may say like lovers--on a height
          overhanging the sea. An evil star occasioned Madame Rigaud to advert to
          her relations; I reasoned with her on that subject, and remonstrated on
          the want of duty and devotion manifested in her allowing herself to be
          influenced by their jealous animosity towards her husband. Madame Rigaud
          retorted; I retorted; Madame Rigaud grew warm; I grew warm, and provoked
          her. I admit it. Frankness is a part of my character. At length, Madame
          Rigaud, in an access of fury that I must ever deplore, threw herself
          upon me with screams of passion (no doubt those that were overheard
                  at some distance), tore my clothes, tore my hair, lacerated my hands,
          trampled and trod the dust, and finally leaped over, dashing herself to
          death upon the rocks below. Such is the train of incidents which
          malice has perverted into my endeavouring to force from Madame Rigaud
          a relinquishment of her rights; and, on her persistence in a refusal to
          make the concession I required, struggling with her--assassinating her!'

          He stepped aside to the ledge where the vine leaves yet lay strewn
          about, collected two or three, and stood wiping his hands upon them,
          with his back to the light.

          'Well,' he demanded after a silence, 'have you nothing to say to all
          that?'

          'It's ugly,' returned the little man, who had risen, and was brightening
          his knife upon his shoe, as he leaned an arm against the wall.

          'What do you mean?'

          John Baptist polished his knife in silence.

          'Do you mean that I have not represented the case correctly?'

          'Al-tro!' returned John Baptist. The word was an apology now, and stood
          for 'Oh, by no means!'

          'What then?'

          'Presidents and tribunals are so prejudiced.'

          'Well,' cried the other, uneasily flinging the end of his cloak over his
          shoulder with an oath, 'let them do their worst!'

          'Truly I think they will,' murmured John Baptist to himself, as he bent
          his head to put his knife in his sash.

          Nothing more was said on either side, though they both began walking
          to and fro, and necessarily crossed at every turn. Monsieur Rigaud
          sometimes stopped, as if he were going to put his case in a new light,
          or make some irate remonstrance; but Signor Cavalletto continuing to
          go slowly to and fro at a grotesque kind of jog-trot pace with his eyes
          turned downward, nothing came of these inclinings.

          By-and-by the noise of the key in the lock arrested them both. The sound
          of voices succeeded, and the tread of feet. The door clashed, the voices
          and the feet came on, and the prison-keeper slowly ascended the stairs,
          followed by a guard of soldiers.

          'Now, Monsieur Rigaud,' said he, pausing for a moment at the grate, with
          his keys in his hands, 'have the goodness to come out.'

          'I am to depart in state, I see?'

          'Why, unless you did,' returned the jailer, 'you might depart in so many
          pieces that it would be difficult to get you together again. There's a
          crowd, Monsieur Rigaud, and it doesn't love you.'

          He passed on out of sight, and unlocked and unbarred a low door in the
          corner of the chamber. 'Now,' said he, as he opened it and appeared
          within, 'come out.'

          There is no sort of whiteness in all the hues under the sun at all like
          the whiteness of Monsieur Rigaud's face as it was then. Neither is there
          any expression of the human countenance at all like that expression in
          every little line of which the frightened heart is seen to beat. Both
          are conventionally compared with death; but the difference is the whole
          deep gulf between the struggle done, and the fight at its most desperate
          extremity.

          He lighted another of his paper cigars at his companion's; put it
          tightly between his teeth; covered his head with a soft slouched hat;
          threw the end of his cloak over his shoulder again; and walked out into
          the side gallery on which the door opened, without taking any further
          notice of Signor Cavalletto. As to that little man himself, his whole
          attention had become absorbed in getting near the door and looking out
          at it. Precisely as a beast might approach the opened gate of his den
          and eye the freedom beyond, he passed those few moments in watching and
          peering, until the door was closed upon him.

          There was an officer in command of the soldiers; a stout, serviceable,
          profoundly calm man, with his drawn sword in his hand, smoking a cigar.
          He very briefly directed the placing of Monsieur Rigaud in the midst of
          the party, put himself with consummate indifference at their head, gave
          the word 'march!' and so they all went jingling down the staircase. The
          door clashed--the key turned--and a ray of unusual light, and a breath
          of unusual air, seemed to have passed through the jail, vanishing in a
          tiny wreath of smoke from the cigar.

          Still, in his captivity, like a lower animal--like some impatient ape,
          or roused bear of the smaller species--the prisoner, now left solitary,
          had jumped upon the ledge, to lose no glimpse of this departure. As he
          yet stood clasping the grate with both hands, an uproar broke upon his
          hearing; yells, shrieks, oaths, threats, execrations, all comprehended
          in it, though (as in a storm) nothing but a raging swell of sound
          distinctly heard.

          Excited into a still greater resemblance to a caged wild animal by his
          anxiety to know more, the prisoner leaped nimbly down, ran round the
          chamber, leaped nimbly up again, clasped the grate and tried to shake
          it, leaped down and ran, leaped up and listened, and never rested until
          the noise, becoming more and more distant, had died away. How many
          better prisoners have worn their noble hearts out so; no man thinking
          of it; not even the beloved of their souls realising it; great kings
          and governors, who had made them captive, careering in the sunlight
          jauntily, and men cheering them on. Even the said great personages dying
          in bed, making exemplary ends and sounding speeches; and polite history,
          more servile than their instruments, embalming them!

          At last, John Baptist, now able to choose his own spot within the
          compass of those walls for the exercise of his faculty of going to sleep
          when he would, lay down upon the bench, with his face turned over on his
          crossed arms, and slumbered. In his submission, in his lightness, in his
          good humour, in his short-lived passion, in his easy contentment with
          hard bread and hard stones, in his ready sleep, in his fits and starts,
          altogether a true son of the land that gave him birth.

          The wide stare stared itself out for one while; the Sun went down in
          a red, green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the
          fire-flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate
          the goodness of a better order of beings; the long dusty roads and the
          interminable plains were in repose--and so deep a hush was on the sea,
          that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its dead.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: It's 30 years ago. That means that novel is set in the 1820s, rather than Dickens's present-day of the 1850s - mainly because that is when Dickens's own father was imprisoned in Marshalsea prison for debt and little boy Dickens was forced to work in a factory instead of going to school. It was traumatic for him, and he never really got over it. So it's a summer day in Marseilles. It's crazy hot and the sun is horrible. The only place it doesn't reach is a jail cell in a prison. The cell is gross and dirty and generally dungeon-y. Monsieur Rigaud is fancy-looking. He is nervous and keeps waiting for the jailer to bring food. He wakes up Cavalletto, who has been sleeping on the floor calmly. Cavalletto somehow always knows what time it is and has a great sense of direction. He draws a little map of Marseilles and another little map of the prison on the dirt floor. Finally the jailer comes. But not alone, since it's apparently Bring Your Daughter to Your Incredibly Inappropriate Work day, and his four-year-old daughter is with him. She helps him feed the prisoners. Rigaud gets all sorts of fancy gourmet treats. Cavalletto gets some old bread and water. The jailer says Rigaud's trial will be this afternoon. Cavalletto is all, what about me? But the jailer has no info on that. Jailer and daughter leave, and the prisoners eat. Cavalletto waits on Rigaud, rolling him a cigarette and dealing with his wine bottle. Rigaud then starts his nervous pacing again. He asks Cavalletto to yet again tell him that he is clearly a gentleman. Since Cavalletto has just been waiting on him hand and foot, he obviously thinks so. They met in the cell nine weeks ago, and from the first moment they'd naturally fallen into a master and servant relationship. Rigaud is psyched to be declared a gentleman and busts out his story. Turns out, he married the rich and beautiful young widow of an innkeeper. But her money was legally tied up with her family, so he couldn't get to it without going through her. This was irritating, so he beat her up several times, and then one day ... well, he says that one day they went for a walk on the cliffs, and she got really mad and jumped to her death. He's in jail, though, because maybe she didn't so much jump as he pushed her. Rigaud is immediately portrayed as evil and unpleasant as can be, so we're going with the he-killed-his-wife version on this one. Cavalletto's crime is some low-level smuggling. Finally the guards come to get Rigaud. There are a bunch of them to guard him on the way to the court - there's a crowd outside calling for his head. Cavalletto is obviously psyched that the sociopath is gone. He finally relaxes in the cell and goes to sleep.