Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/155

Rh tony. He has sometimes prayed that, looking up, he might see a great fire in the sky, and know that the world was at an end. How often he has prayed to die, it would be difficult to say. At one time it was his only prayer; at one time he did not pray at all. He has been permitted at intervals to see his mother; but her visits, though he has counted the days, hours, and even minutes between them, have only left him more despondent than ever. She brings so much with her into his lonely prison, so much memory of a joyous past, of freedom, of a happy home, whose happiness he did his best in his wild youth to destroy; the memory, too, of that careless youth, its boon companions, its devoted friends. She brings so much of all this back to him by the mere fact of her presence, that she leaves behind her the blackness of a despair far more terrible than the most terrible death. She represents to him the outer world; for she is the only creature belonging to it who ever crosses the threshold of his prison. The asylum chaplain, the asylum doctor, the keepers and the officials belonging to the asylum—all these are part and parcel of this great prison-house of stone, brick, and mortar and seem to be about as capable of feeling for him, listening to him, or understanding him, as the stones, bricks, and mortar themselves. Routine is the ruler of this great prison; and if this wretched insane criminal cannot live by rules and regulations, he must die according to them, and be buried by them, and so be done with, out of the way; and his little room, No. 35, will be ready for some one else, as wicked, as dangerous, and as unfortunate as he.

During the earlier part of his imprisonment the idea had pervaded the asylum that as he had been found guilty of committing one murder, he might, very likely, find it necessary to his peculiar state of mind to commit more murders, and would probably find it soothing to his feelings to assassinate anybody who might come in his way any morning before breakfast. The watch kept upon him was therefore for some time very strict. He was rather popular at first in the asylum, as a distinguished public character; and the keepers, though a little shy of attending upon him in their proper persons, were extremely fond of peering in at him through a little oval opening in the upper panel of the door of his cell. They also brought such visitors as came to improve their minds by going over the hospital for the insane to have a special and private view of this maniacal murderer; and they generally received an extra donation from the sight-seers thus gratified. Even the lunatics themselves were interested in the supposed assassin. A gentleman, who claimed to be the Emperor of the German Ocean and the Chelsea Waterworks, was very anxious to see him, as he had received a despatch from his minister of police