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 passage 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 Chasseurs; 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 pronounced 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!"
"Ay! mother, it is frightful; but I warned you of it, alas!--I told you."
The widow bit her pale lips with rage; her son did not comprehend her; she
resumed: "They are going to kill us, as they killed your father."
"Alas! I can do nothing--it is finished. Now, what would you have me do?
Why did you not listen to me--you and sister? You would not have been
here."
"Oh! it is so," answered the widow, with her habitual and savage irony;
"you find it all right, do you?"
"Mother!"
"Now you are satisfied; you can say, without a lie, that your mother is
dead; you shall no longer blush for her."
"If I were a bad son," answered Martial, quickly, shocked at the unjust
harshness of his mother, "I should not be here."
"You came from curiosity."
"I come to obey you."
"Oh! if I had listened to you, Martial, instead of listening to my mother,
I should not be here," cried Calabash, in a heart-rending voice, and
yielding at length to her anguish and terror, which, until now (through the
influence of her mother), she had restrained. "It is your fault: I curse
you, my mother!"
"She repents--she curses me! you must be delighted now!" said the widow to
her son, with a burst of diabolical laughter.
Without replying to her, Martial approached Calabash, whose agony
continued, and said to her, with compassion, "Poor sister! it is too late
now."
"Never too late to be a coward!" cried the mother, with fury. "Oh! what a
race! what a race! Happily Nicholas has escaped; happily François and
Amandine will escape you. They have already the seeds of vice: poverty will
cause them to grow!"
"Oh, Martial! watch well over them, or they will end like my mother and
myself. They will also lose their heads," cried Calabash, uttering a hollow
groan.
"He will do well to watch over them," cried the widow, vehemently; "vice
and misery will be stronger than he, and some day they will avenge father,
mother, and sister."
"Your horrible hope will not be realized, mother!" answered Martial,
indignantly. "Neither they nor I shall ever more have misery to fear. La
Louve saved the young girl whom Nicholas wished to drown, the relations of
this girl have proposed to give us plenty of money, or less money and some
lands in Algiers. We have preferred the land. There is some danger, but
that suits us. To-morrow we leave with the children, and never return."
"Is what you say true?" asked the widow, in a tone of irritated surprise.
"I never told a falsehood."
"You do now, to drive me mad."
"Why? because the welfare of your children is secured?"
"Yes; of the wolfs cubs you would make lambs. The blood of your father,
your sister, mine, will not be avenged."
"At this moment, do not talk thus."
"I have killed--they kill me. We are even."
"Mother, repentance."
The widow shouted with laughter.
"For thirty years I have lived in crime, and to repent for thirty years
they give me three days, and death at the end of them. Do you think I have
time? No, no; when my head falls, it will gnash its teeth with rage and
hatred."
"Brother, help--take me from hence; they are coming," murmured Calabash, in
a suffocating voice, for the poor creature began to be delirious.
"Will you hush?" said the widow, exasperated by the weakness of Calabash,
"will you hush? Oh! the wretch! and she _my_ daughter! pah!"
"Mother! mother!" cried Martial, tortured by this horrible scene, "why did
you send for me?"
"Because I thought to give you a heart and revenge: but who has not the one
has not the other, coward!"
"My mother!"
"Coward, I say!"
At this moment a tramp of footsteps was heard in the corridor. The veteran
looked at his watch, and stood up. The rising sun, dazzling and radiant,
shot suddenly a golden beam of light through the grated window of the
corridor opposite the door of the dungeon. This door was thrown open, and
two keepers appeared, bringing two chairs; then the jailer came, and said
to the widow, in an agitated voice, "Madame, it is time."
The widow stood up, impassible; Calabash uttered piercing screams. Four men
entered. Three of them, roughly clad, held in their hands small coils of
very fine but strong cord. The tallest of these four men, neatly dressed in
black, wearing a round hat and a white cravat, handed a paper to the
jailer. This man was the executioner. The paper was a receipt for two women
fit to be guillotined. The executioner took possession of these two of
God's creatures; from that time he was answerable.
To the frightful despair of Calabash had succeeded a helpless torpor. Two
of the assistants were obliged to seat her on her bed, and to sustain her.
Her jaws, clinched by convulsions, hardly allowed her to utter some
unmeaning words; she rolled around in vacancy her dull and almost sightless
eyes; her chin fell upon her breast, and without the assistance of the two
deputies, her body would have sunk to the ground like an inert mass.
Martial (after having for a long time embraced this unfortunate being)
alarmed, not daring nor able to move a step, and as if fascinated by the
scene, remained immovable. The brazen hardihood of the widow did not
forsake her; with her head erect and thrown back, she assisted to take off
the waistcoat, which impeded her movements. It fell to the ground, and she
remained in her old dress of black woolen.
"Where must I place myself?" she asked in a firm voice.
"Have the kindness to seat yourself in one of these two chairs," said the
executioner, pointing to them.
The door being left open, several of the keepers, the governor of the
prison, and some privileged persons, were seen standing in the corridor.
The widow walked with a firm and bold step to the place indicated, passing
near her daughter, when she stopped, and said in a voice slightly broken:
"Daughter, kiss me!"
At the voice, Calabash was aroused from her apathy, drew up on her seat,
and with a gesture of malediction, she cried, "If there is eternal fire,
descend into it, accursed."
"My child, embrace me!" said the widow again, making a step toward her
daughter.
"Do not approach me! you have ruined me!" murmured the unfortunate,
throwing out her hands as if to repulse her mother.
"Forgive me!"
"No, no!" said Calabash, in a convulsed voice; and this effort having
exhausted her strength, she fell back, almost without consciousness, into
the arms of the assistants.
A shade passed over the impassible face of the widow; for a moment her dry
and burning eyes became moistened. At this instant she met the eyes of her
son. After a moment's hesitation, and as if she yielded to the effect of an
inward struggle, she said to him, "And you?"
Martial threw himself sobbing into the arms of his mother.
"Enough!" said the widow, overcoming her emotion, and disengaging herself
from the embraces of her son. "He is waiting," she added, pointing to the
executioner.
Then she walked rapidly toward the chair, where she resolutely seated
herself. The spark of maternal sensibility, which had for a moment lighted
up the dark recesses of this corrupted heart, was extinguished forever.
"Sir," said the veteran to Martial, approaching him with interest, "do not
remain here. Come, come."
Martial, stupefied, with horror and alarm, mechanically followed the
soldier. Two of the assistants had carried the wretched Calabash to the
other chair; one of them sustained the almost lifeless body, while the
other, by means of whip-cord, exceedingly fine but very strong, tied her
hands behind her back, and also fastened her feet together by the ankles,
allowing slack enough to enable her walk slowly. The executioner and his
other assistant performed the same operation on the widow, whose features
underwent no alteration; only from time to time she coughed slightly. When
the condemned were thus prevented from offering any resistance, the
executioner, drawing from his pocket a long pair of scissors, said to her
with marked politeness, "Have the goodness to bend your head."
The widow obeyed, saying: "We are good customers; you have had my husband;
now here are his wife and daughter."
Without replying, the executioner gathered in his left hand the long gray
hair of the condemned, and commenced cutting it short--very short,
particularly about the neck.
"This makes the third time that I have had my hair dressed in my lifetime,"
said the widow, with a horrible laugh: "the day of my first communion, when
they put on my veil; the day of my marriage, when they put on my orange
blossoms; and now to-day--the head-dress of death."
The executioner remained silent. The hair of the condemned being thick and
coarse, the operation was so long in being performed, that Calabash's lay
strewed upon the ground before her mother's was half finished.
"You do not know of what I am thinking?" said the widow, after having
looked at her daughter again.
The executioner continued to keep silent. Nothing could be heard but the
snipping of the scissors and the kind of rattling which from time to time
escaped from the throat of Calabash. At this moment was seen in the
corridor a priest of venerable appearance, who approached the governor, and
spoke a few words to him in a low tone. The chaplain came to make a last
effort to soften the heart of the widow.
"I think," resumed the widow at the end of some moments, and seeing that
the executioner did not reply, "I think that at five years old, my
daughter, whose head is to be cut off, was the handsomest child that I ever
saw. She had flaxen hair and rosy cheeks. Then, who would have told me
that,--" After a pause, she cried, with a burst of laughter, and an
expression impossible to be described, "What a comedy is fate!"
At this moment the last locks of the condemned fell upon her shoulders.
"It is finished, madame,' said the executioner, politely.
"Thank you. I recommend to you my son Nicholas," said the widow; "you will
dress his hair some of these days." A keeper came and whispered a few words
to her.
"No; I have already said no," answered she, roughly. The priest heard these
words, raised his eyes toward heaven, clasped his hands, and disappeared.
"Madame, we are going to set out; will you take something?" said the
executioner, obsequiously.
"Thank you; to-night I will take a drink of sawdust."
And the widow after this new sarcasm stood up erect. Although her step was
firm and resolute, the executioner obligingly wished to assist her; she
made a gesture of impatience and said, in a harsh and imperious tone:
"Do not touch me; I have a firm step and a good eye. On the scaffold you
will see I have a good voice, and if I speak words of repentance."
And the widow, leaving the dungeon, escorted by the executioner and an
assistant, entered the corridor. The two other assistants were obliged to
carry Calabash in a chair; she was dying. After having traversed the whole
length of the corridor, the funeral procession ascended the same staircase,
which conducted to a court on the outside. The sun, with its warm and
golden light, gilded the tops of the high white walls which surrounded the
court, and strangely contrasted with the pure blue of the sky. The air was
soft and balmy; never was a spring morning more smiling, more magnificent.
In this court were seen a detachment of police, a cab, and a long, narrow
vehicle, painted yellow, drawn by three post horses, which neighed gayly,
shaking little bells on their harness. This vehicle was entered from behind
like an omnibus. This was the cause of a last joke from the widow.
"The conductor will not say full?" said she, as she mounted the step as
lightly as the cord which confined her ankles would allow.
Calabash, expiring, sustained by an assistant, was placed in the carriage
opposite her mother, and the door was closed. The hackney-coachman had
fallen asleep; the executioner shook him.
"Excuse me, citizen," said he, descending hastily from his seat; "but a
night in Mid-Lent is rough. I had just taken to Vendanges de Bourgogne a
load of maskers, who were singing, '_La mére Godichon_,' when you engaged
me by the hour. I--"
"Enough. Follow this vehicle to the Boulevard St. Jacques."
"Excuse me, citizen. An hour ago I was going to the 'Vendanges;' now to the
guillotine! That proves that, as the saying is, there are queer ups and
downs in life!"
The two vehicles, preceded and followed by the gendarmes, left Bicetre and
took the road to Paris.
* * * * *
We have presented the picture of the toilet of the condemned in all its
frightful reality, because it seems to us that we can derive from it
powerful arguments. Against punishment of death. Against the manner in
which it is applied. Against the effects which must be expected from such
an example given to the populace.
The toilet, although divested of that solemnity, at once imposing and
religious, which ought, at least to surround all the acts of the highest
punishment known to the laws, is the most impressive of all the ceremonies
attending the execution of a criminal, and yet it is concealed from the
multitude.
In Spain, on the contrary, the condemned remains exposed during three days
in a "_chapelle ardente_;" his coffin is continually before his eyes;
the priests say the prayers for the dying; the bells of the church night
and day ring a funeral knell.
It will be conceived that this kind of initiation to death may alarm the
most hardened criminals, and inspire with salutary terror the crowd which
surrounds the "_chapelle mortuaire_."
Then the day of the execution is a day of public mourning; the bells of all
the churches toll; the condemned is slowly conducted to the scaffold, with
mournful and imposing pomp; his coffin is carried before him; the priests,
walking at his side, chant the prayers for the dead; then comes the
religious brotherhood; and, finally, the mendicant friars, asking from the
crowd money for prayers for the repose of the culprit's soul. The crowd
never remains deaf to this appeal. Without doubt, all this is frightful,
but it is logical and imposing. It shows that they do not cut off from this
world a creature of God, full of life and strength, as they would slaughter
an ox. It causes the multitude to reflect (who always judge of the crime by
the magnitude of the punishment) that homicide is a fearful offense, since
its punishment disturbs, afflicts, and sets in commotion a whole city.
Again, this dreadful spectacle may cause serious reflections, inspire
salutary alarms; and that which is barbarous in this human sacrifice, is at
least hidden by the awful majesty of its execution. But, we ask, the events
taking place exactly as we have described them (and sometimes even _less
seriously_), what kind of an example can it afford? Early in the
morning, the condemned is bound and thrown into a closed carriage; the
postilion whips up his horses, reaches the scaffold; the ax descends, and a
head falls into a basket, in the midst of the most atrocious jeerings of
the vilest of a vile populace! Finally, in a hasty and secret execution,
where is the example? where is the terror? And then, as the execution takes
place, as we may say, privately, in a byplace, with great precipitation,
the whole town is ignorant of this bloody and solemn act; nothing announces
that, on this day, they are _killing a man_; they laugh and sing at
the theaters; the multitudes pass on, careless and indifferent. As it
regards society, religion, and humanity, this judicial homicide, committed
in the name of the _interests of all_, is, however, something which
ought to be of importance to _all_. In fine, let us say it again, say
it always, here is the sword, but where is the crown? Beside the punishment
show the recompense; then only will the lesson be complete and fruitful.
If, on the day following this morn of sorrow and of death, the people, who
have seen the blood of a great criminal redden the scaffold, should see the
truly virtuous man honored and rewarded, they would dread as much the
punishment of the first, as they would ambitiously covet the triumphs of
the last; terror hardly prevents crime, never does it inspire virtue. Does
any one consider the effect of capital punishment on the criminals
themselves? Either they brave it with reckless impudence; or, inanimate,
they suffer it, half dead with terror; or they offer their heads with
profound and sincere repentance.
Now the punishment is insufficient for those who defy it; useless for those
who are already morally dead; excessive for those who repent with
sincerity. Let us repeat it: society does not kill the murderer to cause
him suffering, or to inflict the _lex talionis_; it kills him to prevent
him from doing harm; it kills him that the example of his punishment may
serve as a warning to murderers _to come._ We think that the punishment is
barbarous, and that it does not sufficiently terrify. If this assertion is
doubted, we will recall many proved facts of the deep horror expressed by
hardened criminals for solitary confinement. Is it not known that some have
committed murders in order to be condemned to death, preferring this
punishment to a cell? What, then, would be their horror, when _blindness_,
joined to solitary confinement, would deprive them of the hope of escape--a
hope which he preserves, and which he sometimes realizes, even in a dungeon
and loaded with irons. And touching this matter, we also think that the
abolishment of capital punishment will be one of the forced consequences of
solitary confinement; the alarm which this punishment inspires the
generation who at this moment people the prisons and the galleys, being
such, that many among these incorrigibles prefer to incur the highest
penalty known to the law, than imprisonment in a cell; then, doubtless, the
punishment of death ought to be suppressed, in order to sweep away this
last and frightful alternative.