The Last Day of a Condemned Man Page 2

  When the book appeared, three years ago, there were some who imagined that it was worth while to question if the idea was the author's. Some thought it was taken from an English book, others from an American. Strange mania, to look for the origin of things in a thousand places, and to make the stream which runs through your street start from the mouths of the Nile! No! It was taken neither from an English nor an American nor a Chinese book. The author found the idea of The Last Day of a Condemned Man not in any book,--he is not in the habit of going so far for his ideas; but he found it where you all may find it, where, perhaps, you have found it, (for who in his own mind has not written or dreamed of The Last Day of a Condemned Man?) on the public Place, on the Place de Greve. It was there that, passing by one day, he found the dread idea lying in a pool of blood, beneath the crimson arms of the guillotine.

  Ever after, each time that at the will of the fatal Thursdays, in the Court of Appeals, one of the days arrived when the cry of a death-sentence was heard in Paris; every time that the author heard beneath his windows those hoarse criers calling the spectators to La Greve,--every time, the dread thought came back to him, took possession of him, filled his mind with gendarmes and hangmen, and crowds of spectators; explained to him hour after hour the last agonies of the wretched sufferer, while he confesses, while his hair is cut off, while his hands are bound; called upon him, the poor poet, to tell it all to the world, which goes on unmindful, attending to its own affairs, while this frightful thing is taking place; urged him, begged him, shook him, snatched away from him his humorous verses if he happened to be writing, and killed them before they were half begun; stopped all his work, intercepted itself between him and all else, surrounded and beset him on all sides. It was a torture,--a torture which began with the dawn, and which lasted, like that of the wretch who was being murdered at that very moment, until four o'clock. Only then, when the ponens caput expiravit, announced by the fatal voice of the clock, was the author able to breathe again, and find some peace of mind. Finally, one day,--it was, he thinks, the one after the execution of Ulbach,--he began to write this book. From that moment he found comfort. When one of those public crimes, called legal executions, was committed, his conscience told him that he was not conjointly liable; and he no longer felt that drop of blood on his forehead which spurted from La Greve upon the head of every member of the social community.

  But this was not enough. To wash one's hands is good, but to stop the flow of the blood is better.

  He knows no higher, no holier, no nobler aim than this,--to strive for the abolishment of capital punishment. And it is from his heart that he adheres to the wishes and the efforts of the generous men of every nation, who for several years have worked to overthrow the gallows, the only tree which is not uprooted by the Revolution. It is with joy that it comes his turn, his, the poor poet, to apply his axe, and enlarge as much as possible the gash made by Beccaria, sixty years ago, on the old gallows which has stood for so many centuries over Christendom.

  We have said that the scaffold is the only thing which Revolutionists do not demolish. It is seldom indeed that a revolution spares human life; and coming, as it does, to prune, cut, hack, and behead society, capital punishment is one of the instruments which it is most loath to give up.

  We will admit, however, that if ever a revolution seemed to us worthy and capable of abolishing capital punishment, it was the Revolution of July. It seems to belong to the kindest popular movement of modern times to blot out the barbarous punishment of Louis XI, Richelieu, and Robespierre, and to inscribe on the face of the law the sacredness of human life. 1830 deserved to break the chopper of '93.

  We hoped so for an instant. In August, 1830, there was so much generosity, such a spirit of gentleness and progress among the people, and their hearts were looking forward to such a bright future, that it seemed as if, from the very first, capital punishment were abolished from a sense of justice, and by a tacit and general consent, like the other evils which had annoyed us. The people had just made a bonfire of the rubbish of the ancient regime. These were the bloody rags. We thought they had been burned in the pile, like the others. And for several weeks, confident and credulous, we trusted in the future, and in the sacredness of life as in the sacredness of liberty.

  Scarcely had two months elapsed before an attempt was made to dissolve the sublime legal Utopia of Cesar Bonesana.

  Unfortunately the attempt was awkward, clumsy, almost hypocritical, and was made in other interests than the general one.

  In October of the year 1830, we remember, that a few days after the Chamber had set aside, by order of the day, the proposition to bury Napoleon under the column, every member began to cry and scream. The question of capital punishment was again brought on the tapis, on which occasion we were going to say something, when it seemed that every fibre of every lawyer was seized with a sudden and wonderful pity for any one who spoke or groaned, or raised his hands to heaven. Capital punishment, great God! what a horrible thing! One old attorney-general grew pale in his scarlet robe, he who all his life had eaten bread that had been soaked in the blood of the requisitors, and all at once raised a piteous cry, and called the gods to witness that he was indignant at the guillotine. For two days the court-house was filled with crying haranguers. It was a lamentation, a myriology, a concert of lugubrious psalms, a "Super flumina Babylonis," a Stabat Mater Dolorosa, a great symphony in C, with choruses sung by the entire orchestra of orators who occupied the front row of benches in the chamber, and made such beautiful speeches on great occasions. One came with his bass, another with his falsetto. Nothing was wanting. The affair could not have been more pitiful or pathetic. The night session, in particular, was as tender, paternal, and heartrending as the fifth act of Lachaussee. The kind public, which understood nothing of it, had tears in its eyes.3

  What, then, was the question? The abolishment of capital punishment?

  Yes and no.

  These are the facts.

  Four society men, men of good social standing, such as one meets in a drawing-room, and with whom perhaps one exchanges civilities,--four of these men, I say, had attempted, in the high political circles, one of those bold deeds which Bacon calls crimes, and which Machiavelli calls enterprises. But whichever they are, the law, cruel to all, punishes them with death. And the four gentlemen were taken prisoners, captives of the law, and were guarded by three hundred tricolored cockades beneath the beautiful ogives of Vincennes. What was to be done, and how go about it? You can readily see that it was impossible to send to La Greve, in a wagon, ignobly bound with great ropes, and sitting back to back with the officer whose title we must even refrain from mentioning, four men like you or me, four society men. If there were a mahogany guillotine--!

  Well! There was nothing to do but to abolish capital punishment!

  Thereupon the Chamber set to work to do it.

  Note, gentlemen, that even yesterday you discussed abolishing this theoretical, imaginary, foolish, poetical Utopia. Remember that this is not the first time we have tried to call your attention to the prison-wagon, and the thick ropes, and the horrible scarlet machine, and that it is strange that this hideous apparatus all at once springs before your eyes.

  Bah! This is indeed the question! It is not on your account, People, that we abolish capital punishment, but on our own account, as deputies, and men who may in time be ministers. We do not want the dreadful guillotine to kill our higher classes. We overthrow it. So much the better, if that accommodates every one; but we have thought only of ourselves. Ucalegon burns. We extinguish the fire. Quick, suppress the hangmen, blot out the law.

  Thus it is that an alloy of egoism alters and changes the most beautiful social combinations. It is the black vein in the white marble; it runs everywhere, and suddenly appears every moment beneath the chisel. Your statue must be done over.

  Surely it is not necessary for us to state here, that we are not of those who demanded the heads of the four ministers. As soon as these unf
ortunate men were imprisoned, our indignant anger, roused by their criminal attempts, changed, as did that of the world at large, into a profound pity. We remembered the education of some of them, the slightly developed brain of their leader, a fanatical and obstinate relapser of the conspiracies of 1804, grown gray before his time under the damp shade of the state-prisons; we remembered the fatal necessity of their common position, the impossibility of stopping on that rapid slide upon which the monarchy had thrown itself headlong, the 8th of August, 1829, the influence of the royal person, which we did not, until then, sufficiently realize, and especially the dignity spread by one of them, like a purple cloak, over their misfortune. We are of those who wished most sincerely that their lives might be spared, and who were ready to devote themselves toward this end. If ever, by any impossibility, it should happen that their scaffold was erected some day on the Place de Greve, we will not doubt,--and if it is an illusion, we wish to keep it,--we will not doubt but that there would be a riot to overthrow it, and that he who writes these lines would be in this righteous riot. For, it must be admitted also, that at a time of social crises, of all the scaffolds, the political one is the most abominable, the most wicked, the most harmful, the most necessary to have abolished. This kind of guillotine takes root in the pavement, and in a short time pushes forth its shoots at every point.

  At the time of a revolution, look out for the first head that falls. It whets the people's appetite.

  We were then personally in accord with those who wanted to save the four ministers, and for every reason, sentimental as well as political. Only we would have preferred the Chamber to choose another time for proposing the abolishment of capital punishment.

  If this longed-for abolishment had been suggested, not on account of the four ministers who had fallen from the Tuileries to Vincennes, but on account of one of the poor fellows whom you hardly notice when they pass you in the street, to whom you do not speak, whose dusty elbow you instinctively avoid,--the poor fellows who in childhood ran ragged and barefooted in the mud of the streets, shivering on the wharves in winter, warming themselves at the vent-holes of the kitchen of Monsieur Vefour with whom you dine, routing out here and there a crust of bread from the ash-heaps, which they have to wipe off before eating, scraping the stream all day long with a nail to find a liard, and with only the free show of the King's fete and the executions at La Greve, the only other free show, for amusement; poor devils, whom hunger drives to theft, and theft to what comes after; children disinherited by a harsh society, whom the house of correction takes at the age of twelve, the galleys at eighteen, and the scaffold at forty; poor wretches whom you could make good, moral, and useful by means of a school and a workshop, but whom you do not know what to do with, as you turn them over like a useless bundle, now on the red ant-hill of Toulon, now in the still enclosure of Clamart, cutting off life after having taken away their liberty--if it were in regard to one of these men that you had proposed to abolish capital punishment, oh, then your session would indeed have been good and great, holy, majestic, and to be venerated. Since the august fathers of Thirty, who invited the heretics to their council in the name of God's entrails, per viscera Dei, because they hoped for their conversion, quaniam sancta synodus sperat hoereticorum conversionem, never did an assembly of men present to the world a more sublime, more illustrious, and more pitiful spectacle. It has always belonged to the truly great and strong to care for the weak and feeble. A council of Brahmins would be beautiful taking up the cause of the paria; and in this case the cause of the paria was the cause of the people. By abolishing capital punishment on this account, and without waiting until you are interested in the question, you would accomplish more than a political act, you would do a social act.

  But you have not even accomplished a political act, in trying to abolish it, not in order to abolish it, but in order to save four wretched ministers who put their hands upon state policies!

  What happened? As you were not sincere, the populace became defiant. When they saw that you wished to fool them, they grew angry against the whole question, and, strange fact! they took sides and argued for that capital punishment, the whole burden of which they supported. It was your awkwardness that brought them to this. By not being perfectly frank, you compromised the question for a long time. You were playing a comedy, and they hissed it.

  But some wits had the kindness to take this farce seriously. Immediately after the famous session, the order had been given to the attorney-generals by a keeper of the seals, an honest man, to suspend all capital punishment indefinitely. Apparently it was a great step. Those opposed to capital punishment breathed again. But the illusion did not last long.

  The trial of the ministers was brought to a close. Some sentence, I do not know what, was pronounced. The four lives were spared. Ham was chosen as the happy medium between death and liberty. These various arrangements once made, all fear vanished in the minds of the statesmen; and with the fear, humanity disappeared. It was no longer a question of abolishing capital punishment; and once without need of her, Utopia became Utopia again; theory, theory; poetry, poetry.

  There always had been in the prisons, however, some unfortunate convicts who, for five or six months, had walked about in the yards, breathing the air, calm, sure of living, taking their respite for their pardon. But wait.

  The hangman had had a great fright. The day when he had heard our lawmakers speak of humanity, philanthropy, progress, he thought himself lost; and he hid, the wretch, he cowered down under his guillotine, ill at ease in the July heat, like a night-bird in daylight, trying to make himself forgotten, stopping up his ears, and not daring to breathe. He was not seen for six months. But he had been listening; and he had not heard the Chamber utter his name, nor any of those great expressions of which he was so afraid. No more commentaries on the "Treatise on Crimes and Punishment." They were occupied with entirely different things, of great importance, such as a parochial road, a subsidy for the Opera Comique, or a payment of one hundred thousand francs on an apoplectic budget of fifteen hundred millions. No one thought of him, the hangman. Seeing which, he becomes calm, he puts his head out of his hole, and looks about on every side; he takes one step, then two, like the mouse in La Fontaine; then he ventures out suddenly from under his scaffold; he springs up, mends it, restores it, polishes, caresses it, makes it work and shine, and sets about oiling the old rusty machine that has become out of order through disuse. All at once he turns, seizes by the hair, from the first prison he reaches, one of the poor wretches who have been counting on living, drags him out, strips him, binds him down, and--behold! the executions are begun again!

  All this is horrible, but it is history.

  Yes, the unhappy captives had a respite of six months; but their punishment was gratuitously aggravated in this way. Then, for no reason or necessity, without knowing why, for pleasure alone, the respite was revoked one fine morning, and all these human beings were coldly submitted to a systematic execution. Well, great God! I ask you, what harm would it have done us had they lived? Is there not enough air in France for every one to breathe?

  One day a miserable clerk of the chancellor, it matters not who, rose from his chair, saying: "Come! no one thinks any more about the abolishment of capital punishment. It is time to return to the guillotine!" The heart of that man must have been made of stone.

  Moreover, never have executions been accompanied by more atrocities than since the revocation of the respite of July. Never has the story of La Greve been more revolting, never has it better proved the wickedness of capital punishment. This increased cruelty is the just punishment of the men who brought back the law of blood with a vengeance. May they be punished by their own deeds! It would only be right.

  We must cite here two or three examples of the frightful and impious acts connected with some executions. It would make the wives of the public prosecutors nervous. A woman sometimes has a conscience.

  In the South, toward the close of last September (we a
re not quite sure of the place, day, or the name of the condemned man; but they can all be found if proof is needed, and we think that it was at Pamiers)--toward the close of September, a man was found in prison, quietly playing at cards. He was told that he must die in two hours, which announcement made him tremble in every limb, for he had been forgotten for six months, and had grown to think that he would not have to die. He was shaved, bound, confessed; then they took him in a wheelbarrow between four gendarmes, through the crowd, to the place of execution. Up to this point nothing could have been simpler. It was the usual way of doing such things. When they reached the scaffold, the hangman received him from the priest, led him aside, bound him to the seasaw, put him into the oven, so to speak (here I use the slang expression), then let down the chopper. The heavy iron triangle rose with difficulty, fell with jerks into its grooves, and (here the horrors begin) mangled the man, but did not kill him. The victim gave a fearful shriek. The hangman, disconcerted, raised the chopper and let it fall a second time. Again it cut the victim's neck, but did not behead him. He gave a fearful groan, and the crowd groaned too. The hangman once more raised the chopper, hoping the third time for success. Not so. The third blow brought out a third river of blood from the victim's neck, but did not cut off his head. Let us abridge the story. The chopper rose and fell five times; five times it struck the man's neck, five times he shrieked out beneath the blow, raising his head, and crying for mercy! The indignant populace seized some stones, and began throwing them at the hangman. The latter fled under the guillotine, and crouched down behind the horses of the gendarmes. But this is not all. The victim, seeing that he was alone on the scaffold, rose and stood there, a fearful sight, dripping with blood, trying to hold up his half-severed head, which hung down over his shoulder, and imploring them with feeble moans to untie him. The people, filled with pity, were on the point of calling the gendarmes, and coming to the aid of the unhappy wretch who five times had suffered his death-sentence, when a valet of the hangman, a young man of twenty, mounted the scaffold, told the victim to turn over that he might unbind him, and then, taking advantage of the dying man's defenceless position, he jumped on his back, and began with difficulty to hack, with a butcher's knife, at what still remained of his neck. All this happened. All this was seen. It is all true.