Under Sentence of Death. Виктор Мари Гюго
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her with all the tenderness of which my heart is capable. Oh, my well-beloved little Marie, can it be true that you will ever hold me in shame and horror?
Wretch! what crime have I committed, and what crime have I made society commit?
Can it be true that I shall be dead before the end of to-day? Is this really me? That dull sound that I hear outside, the crowds of people that are flocking along the quay, the gendarmes paraded in their barracks, the priest in his black robe, the man with the red-stained hands! Is all this for me? Is it I that am going to die—I, who am sitting here at this table, who lives, who feels, who breathes? Yes, it is I. I know it by the sense of touch, and by the creases I can make on my clothes.
CHAPTER XXVI
I know something of it.
I was driving by the Place de Grêve once, about eleven o’clock in the morning. All of a sudden the carriage stopped.
There was a crowd in the square. I put my head out of the door. Many women and children were standing in the parapets of the quay. Above their heads I could see a species of red scaffold which some workmen were putting together.
A man was to be executed that day, and they were erecting the machine.
I turned away my head as this caught my eye. I heard a woman near me saying, “Look! the knife does not slide well, they are greasing the groove with a bit of candle!”
Probably they are doing that now. Eleven o’clock is just striking. No doubt they are greasing the groove.
Ah! miserable wretch, this time I shall not turn away my head!
CHAPTER XXVII
Oh, my pardon, my pardon! perhaps I shall be reprieved. The king may interfere. Let them run and fetch my counsel to me; quick, my counsel! I choose the galleys; five years should settle it; or twenty years; or a brand with the red-hot iron: but let me have my life! A convict lives, moves, goes and comes, and sees the bright sun in the heavens.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The priest has come back to me.
He has white hair, a gentle manner, and a benevolent face. Indeed, I have heard that he is a really good and charitable man. This morning I saw him distribute the contents of his purse amongst the prisoners. But his exhortations have no effect on me. I was callous to all that he could say, his words slided from my mind as cold rain from a frozen window-pane.
However, his reappearance gave me pleasure. Amongst all those who surround me, he is the only one who still looks upon me as a man, and I am thirsting for kind and cheering words.
We sat down, he on my chair, I on the bed.
“My son,” commenced he. These words went at once straight to my heart. He continued, “Do you believe in God?”
“Yes, father,” I replied.
“Do you believe in the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church?”
“Certainly,” answered I.
“My son,” observed he, “I fear that you are a waverer.” Then he began to speak again. He talked for a long time; then when he fancied that he had said enough, he for the first time raised his eyes to mine as if to question me mutely.
“Well?” asked he.
I declare that I had listened to him first with eagerness, then with attention, and lastly with reverence.
I got up from my seat.
“Sir,” said I, “leave me alone, I entreat of you.”
“When shall I return?” asked he.
“I will let you know.”
Then he left me without another word, shaking his head, as though he were saying to himself:
“An infidel!”
No, low as I have fallen, I am not an infidel. My God is my witness that I believe in Him. But what has this old man been able to say to me? Nothing that I have felt, nothing that has touched me, nothing that has drawn tears from my eyes, nothing which goes from his soul direct to mine. On the contrary, what he has said to me he might say to any one else, emphasizing his words when his argument had need of depth, full of platitudes when it should have been most simple, a kind of sentimental sermon and theological elegy. Here and there he put in a Latin quotation from Saint Gregory, Saint Austin, or some one else. He had the air of a man who repeats a lesson that he has said many times before, and which, though half forgotten and obliterated from his memory, returns again to him from the fact of his having known it long years before. There is no expression in his eye, no emphasis in his voice; nor do his features add to the power of his oratory.
And how could it be otherwise? This priest is the prison chaplain. His duty is to console and to exhort; he lives by that. He has grown old in preparing men for the scaffold. For many years he has made others tremble, whilst his white hairs never bristle at the horrors that he is a witness of. For him the scaffold and the galley are matters of every-day life. They bore him. Probably he keeps a book of sermons—such and such a page for those sentenced to death, and another for those in penal servitude. To-day he was warned that some one would require the consolations of religion. He asked whether it was a condemned criminal or a galley-slave, and, upon receiving the reply, turned to the necessary page, refreshed his memory, and came here.
Oh! if instead of sending for him they had sought out some young vicar, some old priest from a remote parish sitting in his chimney corner reading his book, and not expecting the summons; and saying to him: “There is a man about to die, come and console him. You will have to be with him when they bind his hands and cut his hair; you must ride in the cart with him, and with the crucifix hide the headsman from his sight; you will be jolting against him on the road to La Grêve; you will pass with him through the terrible crowd thirsting for his blood; you will take leave of him at the foot of the scaffold, and will remain in waiting until his head is in one place and his body in another.”
Then when they bring me into his presence trembling from head to foot, when I embrace him and clasp his knees, he will weep; we shall mingle our tears together; he will wax eloquent, and I shall be consoled; my heart will soften to his words, he will take charge of my soul, and I shall rely on his God.
But this old man, what is he to me? What am I to him? A man of the lowest class, a shadow many of which he has seen, a mere unit added to the figures in the list of executions.
I was wrong, perhaps, to send him away as I did; it was he who behaved well, whilst I acted wrongly. It is my breath, that destroys and blasts everything around me.
They have brought me refreshment, fancying that I must be in need of it; a nice enough luncheon—a fowl, and something else, but after the first mouthful I have been unable to eat—everything tasted full of bitterness and corruption.
CHAPTER XXIX
A man has just come in with his hat on; he produced a foot-rule from his pocket, and commenced measuring the stonework of the wall, murmuring to himself, “It is so;” and again, “No, that will not do.”
I asked the gendarme who this was. It appears that he is a sort of assistant architect employed in the prison.
He seemed to feel some curiosity about me, for he whispered a few inquiries to the turnkey who accompanied him; then he fixed his eyes upon me, and, shaking his head in a careless manner, began to talk in a loud voice, and continued his measurements.
When his work was over he approached me, and said in a strident voice—
“My good friend, in six months this prison will be greatly improved.”
But his manner seemed to imply, “It is a pity you will be unable to enjoy it.”
He smiled blandly, and I really thought that he was going to rally me, as you might a young bride on her nuptial morning.
The gendarme in charge of me, an old soldier with several good-conduct stripes, took upon himself to reply.
“Sir,” said he, “you must not talk so loud