Mysteries of Paris Volume III Part 66

"Would not one say that this was one of the families pursued by a fatality?

The father died upon the scaffold; one son is in the galleys; another, also condemned to death, has lately escaped. The eldest son, and two younger children only, have escaped this frightful contagion. However, this woman has sent for the eldest son, the sole honest man of this detestable race, to come to-morrow morning to receive her last wishes! What an interview!"

"Are you not curious to be present?"

"Frankly, no. You know my opinion concerning punishment by death, and I have no need of such a spectacle to confirm this opinion. If this horrible woman carries her unwavering firmness and a.s.surance to the scaffold, what a sight for the people! what a deplorable example!"

"There is something singular in this double execution--the day has been fixed."

"How?"

"To-day is Mid-Lent."

"Well?"

"To-morrow the execution takes place at seven o'clock. Now the crowd of maskers, who will pa.s.s the night at the b.a.l.l.s, will necessarily meet the mournful procession on their return to Paris; without speaking of the place of execution, the Barriere Saint Jacques, where will be heard, in the distance, the music at the surrounding taverns; for, to celebrate the last day of the carnival, they dance in the wine-shops until ten or eleven in the morning."

The next morning the sun rose clear and glorious. At four o'clock several pickets of infantry and cavalry surrounded and guarded the approaches of Bicetre. We will conduct the reader to the cell where we will find the widow and her daughter Calabash.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE TOILET.

At Bicetre, a gloomy corridor, lighted at intervals by grated windows, or kind of air-holes just above the level of the courtyard, leads to the condemned cell. This dungeon received its light only from a large wicket in the upper part of the door, which opened into the dark pa.s.sage spoken of above. In this cell, with its damp and moldy walls, its floor paved with stones as cold as those of the sepulcher, were confined Widow Martial and her daughter Calabash. The sharp face of the convict's widow, stern and immovable, stood out in bold relief, like a marble mask, from the midst of the obscurity which existed in the dungeon.

Deprived of the use of her hands, for under her black dress she wore a strait-jacket, she asked that her cap might be taken off, complaining of great heat in the head. Her gray hair fell disheveled upon her shoulders.

Seated on the edge of the bed, her feet on the ground, she looked fixedly on her daughter, Calabash, who was separated from her by the width of the dungeon. She, half reclining, and also wearing a strait-jacket had her back against the wall. Her head was hanging on her breast, her eyes fixed, her respiration broken. Save a slight convulsive movement, which from time to time agitated her under jaw, her features appeared calm, but of livid paleness. At the further end of the dungeon, near the door, under the open wicket, a veteran with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, with a rough and swarthy face, a bald head, and long gray mustachios, is seated on a chair.

He ought never to lose sight of the condemned.

"It is very cold here! and yet my eyes burn; and then I am thirsty--always thirsty," said Calabash, at the end of a few moments. "Some water, if you please, sir."

The old soldier rose and took from a bench a tin pail of water, filled a tumbler, and gave her a drink.

After having drunk greedily, she said, "thank you, sir."

"Will you drink?" asked the soldier of the widow, who shook her head in the negative.

"What o'clock is it, sir?" said Calabash.

"It will soon be half-past four."

"In three hours!" resumed Calabash, with a sardonic and sinister smile, alluding to the time of her execution, "in three hours--" She dared not finish.

The widow shrugged her shoulders. Her daughter comprehended her thoughts, and replied, "You have more courage than I, mother, do you never falter--"

"Never."

"I know it well--I see it clearly. Your face is as tranquil as if you were seated by the fire of our kitchen, sewing. Oh! those good days are so far off--so far----"

"Parrot!"

"It is true; instead of resting there and thinking, without saying anything, I would rather talk--I would rather----"

"Shake off your thoughts, coward!"

"Even if it should be so, mother, every one has not your courage. I have done all I could to imitate you. I have not listened to the priest, because you did not wish it. And yet I may have been wrong--for, in fine," added the condemned girl, shuddering, "_hereafter_--who knows? and _hereafter_ will be very soon."

"In three hours."

"How coldly you say that, mother! And yet it is true; we are here, both of us, not sick, not wishing to die, and yet in three hours----"

"In three hours you will have died like a true Martial. You will have seen black, that's all; be bold, daughter."

"It is not right for you to talk to your daughter in that way," said the old soldier, in a slow and grave tone; "you would have done much better to have allowed her to speak with the ordinary."

The widow shrugged her shoulders with savage contempt, and, without turning her head, she continued: "Courage, daughter; we will show them that women have more firmness than these men, with their priests--the cowards!"

"Commandant Leblon was the bravest of the third regiment of Cha.s.seurs; I saw him covered with wounds in the breach of Saragossa, and he died making the sign of the cross," said the veteran.

"You were his chaplain, then?" demanded the widow, with a savage burst of laughter.

"I was his soldier," answered the veteran, mildly. "It was only to let you know that one can pray when about to die, without being a coward."

Calabash looked attentively at this man with the bronzed visage, a perfect type of the soldier of the Empire; a deep scar furrowed his left cheek, and was lost in his large mustache. The simple words of this veteran, whose features, wounds, and red ribbon announced calm and tried bravery, profoundly struck the widow's daughter.

She had refused the consolation of the priest, more from shame and fear of her mother, than from callousness. In her restless and dying thoughts, she compared the impious jesting of her mother with the piety of the soldier.

Strong in this testimony, she thought she could listen without cowardice to those religious instincts which even intrepid men had obeyed.

"In truth," said she, with anguish, "why did I not wish to hear the priest?

there is no weakness in that. Besides, it would keep off my thoughts, and then, hereafter, who knows?"

"Again!" said the widow, in a tone of withering scorn. "Time is wanting--it is a pity--you would be religious. The arrival of your brother Martial will finish your conversion. But he will not come; the honest man, the good son."

Just as the widow p.r.o.nounced these last words the door of the prison opened.

"Already!" cried Calabash with a convulsive start. "Oh! they have put the clock ahead! They have deceived us!"

"So much the better--if the watch of the executioner is too fast--your follies will not dishonor me."

"Madame," said the prison warder, with that kind of commiseration which forebodes death, "your son is here; will you see him?"

"Yes," answered the widow, without turning her head.

"Enter, sir," said the warder. Martial entered.

The veteran remained in the dungeon, the door of which was left open as a matter of precaution. Through the gloom of the corridor, half lighted by the increasing day and by a lamp, several soldiers were seen sitting or standing. Martial was as pale as his mother; his countenance expressed deep and profound anguish, his knees trembled under him. In spite of the crimes of this woman, in spite of the aversion that she had always shown for him, he had thought it a duty to obey her last wishes. As soon as he entered the dungeon, the widow cast on him a searching look, and said to him in a hollow and angry voice, as if to awaken in her son a feeling of revenge, "You see what they are going to do with your mother and your sister!"