I awoke. Oh, broad and wide awake I was, although I did not open my eyes. And please know that in all that follows I knew no surprise whatever. Everything was the natural and the expected. I was I, be sure of that. BUT I WAS NOT DARRELL STANDING. Darrell Standing had no more to do with the being I was than did Darrell Standing's parchment-crinkled skin have aught to do with the cool, soft skin that was mine. Nor was I aware of any Darrell Standing--as I could not well be, considering that Darrell Standing was as yet unborn and would not be born for centuries. But you shall see.
I lay with closed eyes, lazily listening. From without came the clacking of many hoofs moving orderly on stone flags. From the accompanying jingle of metal bits of man-harness and steed-harness Iknew some cavalcade was passing by on the street beneath my windows.
Also, I wondered idly who it was. From somewhere--and I knew where, for I knew it was from the inn yard--came the ring and stamp of hoofs and an impatient neigh that I recognized as belonging to my waiting horse.
Came steps and movements--steps openly advertised as suppressed with the intent of silence and that yet were deliberately noisy with the secret intent of rousing me if I still slept. I smiled inwardly at the rascal's trick.
"Pons," I ordered, without opening my eyes, "water, cold water, quick, a deluge. I drank over long last night, and now my gullet scorches.""And slept over long to-day," he scolded, as he passed me the water, ready in his hand.
I sat up, opened my eyes, and carried the tankard to my lips with both my hands. And as I drank I looked at Pons.
Now note two things. I spoke in French; I was not conscious that Ispoke in French. Not until afterward, back in solitary, when Iremembered what I am narrating, did I know that I had spoken in French--ay, and spoken well. As for me, Darrell Standing, at present writing these lines in Murderers' Row of Folsom Prison, why, I know only high school French sufficient to enable me to read the language. As for my speaking it--impossible. I can scarcely intelligibly pronounce my way through a menu.
But to return. Pons was a little withered old man. He was born in our house--I know, for it chanced that mention was made of it this very day I am describing. Pons was all of sixty years. He was mostly toothless, and, despite a pronounced limp that compelled him to go slippity-hop, he was very alert and spry in all his movements.
Also, he was impudently familiar. This was because he had been in my house sixty years. He had been my father's servant before Icould toddle, and after my father's death (Pons and I talked of it this day) he became my servant. The limp he had acquired on a stricken field in Italy, when the horsemen charged across. He had just dragged my father clear of the hoofs when he was lanced through the thigh, overthrown, and trampled. My father, conscious but helpless from his own wounds, witnessed it all. And so, as I say, Pons had earned such a right to impudent familiarity that at least there was no gainsaying him by my father's son.
Pons shook his head as I drained the huge draught.
"Did you hear it boil?" I laughed, as I handed back the empty tankard.
"Like your father," he said hopelessly. "But your father lived to learn better, which I doubt you will do.""He got a stomach affliction," I devilled, "so that one mouthful of spirits turned it outside in. It were wisdom not to drink when one's tank will not hold the drink."While we talked Pons was gathering to my bedside my clothes for the day.
"Drink on, my master," he answered. "It won't hurt you. You'll die with a sound stomach.""You mean mine is an iron-lined stomach?" I wilfully misunderstood him.
"I mean--" he began with a quick peevishness, then broke off as he realized my teasing and with a pout of his withered lips draped my new sable cloak upon a chair-back. "Eight hundred ducats," he sneered. "A thousand goats and a hundred fat oxen in a coat to keep you warm. A score of farms on my gentleman's fine back.""And in that a hundred fine farms, with a castle or two thrown in, to say nothing, perhaps, of a palace," I said, reaching out my hand and touching the rapier which he was just in the act of depositing on the chair.
"So your father won with his good right arm," Pons retorted. "But what your father won he held."Here Pons paused to hold up to scorn my new scarlet satin doublet--a wondrous thing of which I had been extravagant.
"Sixty ducats for that," Pons indicted. "Your father'd have seen all the tailors and Jews of Christendom roasting in hell before he'd a-paid such a price."And while we dressed--that is, while Pons helped me to dress--Icontinued to quip with him.
"It is quite clear, Pons, that you have not heard the news," I said slyly.
Whereat up pricked his ears like the old gossip he was.
"Late news?" he queried. "Mayhap from the English Court?""Nay," I shook my head. "But news perhaps to you, but old news for all of that. Have you not heard? The philosophers of Greece were whispering it nigh two thousand years ago. It is because of that news that I put twenty fat farms on my back, live at Court, and am become a dandy. You see, Pons, the world is a most evil place, life is most sad, all men die, and, being dead . . . well, are dead.
Wherefore, to escape the evil and the sadness, men in these days, like me, seek amazement, insensibility, and the madnesses of dalliance.""But the news, master? What did the philosophers whisper about so long ago?""That God was dead, Pons," I replied solemnly. "Didn't you know that? God is dead, and I soon shall be, and I wear twenty fat farms on my back.""God lives," Pons asserted fervently. "God lives, and his kingdom is at hand. I tell you, master, it is at hand. It may be no later than to-morrow that the earth shall pass away.""So said they in old Rome, Pons, when Nero made torches of them to light his sports."Pons regarded me pityingly.
