Under Sentence of Death; Or, a Criminal's Last Hours - Victor Hugo

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up from my seat. I watched all his movements—my heart beat; already I saw all doors opening before the uniform of a gendarme, and the Conciergerie left far behind me.

      Suddenly he stopped, with an air of hesitation. “Ah! you want to get out of this?”

      “Of course,” I replied; “but your fortune is made.”

      He interrupted me.

      “Ah, no, that will not do; how could the numbers be worth anything if you were not dead?”

      I sat down in silence; all hope had fled, and again I was plunged in despair.

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      I closed my eyes, and covered them with my hands, striving to forget the present in the past. As I pondered, the recollections of my childhood came back to me, soft, calm, and smiling like islands of flowers, in the black gulf of confused thoughts which turned and twisted in my brain.

      I could see myself once again, a laughing schoolboy, playing, running, and shouting to my brothers, in the green avenues of the neglected garden of the home where my earlier years were spent. And then, four years later, I was there—still a child, but full of dreams and sentiments. But there was a girl with me in the lonely garden.

      A little Spaniard, with large eyes and long hair, olive-tinted skin, red lips and cheeks, an Andalusian, fourteen years of age, called Pepa. Our mothers had told us to run about together in the garden; we came out and walked about. They had told us to play, but we preferred to talk, children of the same age but different sex.

      For more than a year we had been in the habit of playing and quarrelling together. I disputed with Pepita for the ripest apple on the tree, and I once struck her for the possession of a bird’s nest. She wept, and I said, “Serves you right,” and we both ran to complain to our mothers, who openly blamed me, but in their inmost heart each thought that her own child was right.

      Now she is leaning on my arm; I feel proud and happy. We are walking slowly, and conversing in low tones. She lets her handkerchief drop, I pick it up for her; our hands tremble as they meet. She is talking to me of the little birds, of the sun that we see over there setting in crimson behind the trees, of her schoolmates, of her dress, of her ribbons. We talk of the most innocent things, and yet we blush; the child has become a young girl.

      It was a summer’s evening; we were under the chestnut-trees at the bottom of the garden.

      After one of those long intervals of silence which occurred so often in our walks, she suddenly let go of my arm, and cried, “Let us run.” And she started off in front of me, her figure slender as a wasp’s, her little feet raising her dress half-way up the leg. I pursued her; she fled. As she dashed along the wind raised her tippet, and showed the olive-tinted hue of her neck.

      I was beside myself; I caught her just by the ruined well. As the winner I seized her by the waist, and drew her down upon a bank of turf. She was out of breath, and laughing. I was quite serious, and gazed into her dark eyes, half-veiled by her black lashes.

      “Sit there,” said she to me; “there is plenty of daylight, let us read. Have you a book?”

      I had with me the second volume of the “Travels of Spalanzani.” I opened it at hazard, and moved close to her; she rested her shoulder against mine, and we began to read upon the same page. Before turning the page she had always to wait for me. Her intellect ran quicker than mine did.

      “Have you finished?” she asked, when I had hardly begun.

      Our heads touched, our hair mingled together, and our respirations crossed each other, and then our lips met.

      When we wished to begin reading again, the sky was studded with stars.

      “Oh, mamma, mamma!” she exclaimed as she entered the house, “how we have been running!”

      I kept silence.

      “You say nothing, my boy,” said my mother. “You look sad.”

      My heart was full of bliss.

      I shall remember that evening until the last day of my life.

      The last day of my life!

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      Some hour has struck—I do not know which. I can hardly hear the sound; there is a buzzing in my ears, it is my last thoughts that are working in my brain.

      At this last moment I fall back upon my recollections. I look upon my crime with horror, but I wish for a longer time for repentance. I had more feelings of remorse before my condemnation; since, it seems that there is room for nothing except the thoughts of death. When my thoughts turn for a moment to my past life, they veer round to the axe which will shortly terminate all, and I shiver as if the idea was a new one. My happy childhood, my glorious youth, the end of which is to be stained with my blood. Between that and the present there is a river of blood, another’s and mine. If any one ever reads my life, they will not believe in this fatal year, which opens with a crime, and closes with a shameful punishment. It would be impossible to credit it.

      A sanguinary law, O cruel men—and yet I was not naturally wicked.

      To die in a few hours, and to think that there was a time when I was free and pure, when I wandered under the trees, when I walked upon the leaf-strewn paths.

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      At this very time there is, in the houses around the place in which I am, men who come and go, who laugh and talk, who read the paper and talk over their affairs, tradesmen who sell, young girls who are working at their ball-dresses, and mothers who are playing with their children.

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      I recollect one day, when I was a child, going to see the peal of bells of Notre Dame. I was already dizzy with having mounted the dark winding staircase, and having crossed the narrow gallery which connects the two towers of the cathedral, and saw Paris stretching beneath my feet; then I entered the belfry where hangs the bell, and its clapper which weighs I know not how many pounds.

      I advanced hesitatingly over the uneven flooring, gazing at the bell so celebrated amongst the children and the people of Paris, and remarked, not without a feeling of terror, that the sloping tile roofs were on a level with my feet; and I took a bird’s-eye view of the place of Paris—Notre Dame, and the passers-by looking like a swarm of ants. All of a sudden the heavy bell rang, a vibration shook the air and made the lofty tower quiver. The planking trembled on the beams. Affrighted, I threw myself upon the flooring, and clasped it with my two hands, speechless and breathless, with that tremendous pealing in my ears, whilst under my very eyes was that tremendous precipice where so many people were passing in calm and quiet. Well, it seems that I am still in the belfry tower. Everything seems to be buzzing and humming around me, there is a sound of bells beating on my brain; and around me, as across an abyss, I can see that calm and peaceful life that I have quitted where men walk peacefully to and fro.

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      The Hotel de Ville is a sinister-looking edifice with its pointed roof, and its strange-looking clock with a white face, its staircases worn by the feet of many passers-by. There are two arches on the

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