The irons had made sores upon my wrists and legs, my limbs now
trembled so beneath me that I could scarcely walk, and my head was
very light and dizzy at times. Presently Gabord ordered a new bed
of straw brought in; and from that hour we returned to our old
relations, as if there had not been between us a fight to the
death. Of what was going on abroad he would not tell me, and soon
I found myself in as ill a state as before. No Voban came to me,
no Doltaire, no one at all. I sank into a deep silence, dropped
out of a busy world, a morsel of earth slowly coming to Mother
Earth again.
A strange apathy began to settle on me. All those resources of
my first year's imprisonment had gone, and I was alone: my mouse
was dead; there was no history of my life to write, no incident to
break the pitiful monotony. There seemed only one hope: that our
army under Amherst would invest Quebec and take it. I had no news
of any movement, winter again was here, and it must be five or
six months before any action could successfully be taken; for the
St. Lawrence was frozen over in winter, and if the city was to be
seized it must be from the water, with simultaneous action by land.
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