The Lenten penance succeeds the carnival revels.
When they brought the news to Augustus Zwirina that Valentine
Kalondai had happily escaped, the big fat man suddenly grew blue in
the face, and was struck down with apoplexy on the spot. So swiftly
did death overtake him that he had not even time to make his will.
This extraordinary case made a huge sensation throughout the town.
Whole processions of acquaintances thronged the house of mourning,
and in the courts of the Zwirinas there was wailing and woe.
Now the courtyard of the Kalondais was only separated from that of
the Zwirinas by a narrow partition wall. When then Dame Sarah heard
the lamentations in her neighborhood, and learnt the cause thereof,
viz., that her son had managed to escape and that the superrector
had died of grief in consequence, she planted herself in the
passage, and, despite the keenness of a February morning, began to
sing the psalms in which King David celebrates the humiliation of
his enemies. The louder grew the lamentations next door, the louder
she sang her revengefully exultant psalms.
Who could forbid her? Were they not sacred songs?
On the day of the funeral, too, she sat on the balcony of her house,
and while the priests and the choristers below were intoning dirges
by the side of the bier, and the relations of the dead man
accompanied these mournful songs with their sobs, the butcher's
widow, dressed in white, as if she were holding high festival,
mingled her exultant songs of triumph with their sobs and dirges.
And henceforward, through the still watches of the night, when
everyone was asleep, Dame Sarah sang her psalms and exulted over her
fallen and humiliated enemies.
Who could forbid a poor forlorn widow to seek comfort for her
afflicted soul in spiritual songs?
As for Henry Catsrider, he was driven from his profession three days
later for putting to shame the dignity of his office, the reputation
of the city, and the majesty of the law by his bungling. On the same
scaffold which he himself had erected his own apprentices tore his
red mantle from his shoulders and the red cap from his head, struck
him three times in the face before all the people with the great
silver seal hanging round his neck (which was a gift from the King
of Poland), and finally drove him away amid the derisive laughter of
the crowd.
What became of the degraded headsman, how and where he ended his
days, on these points nothing has ever been recorded.