Und den Mordstahl seh’ ich blinken;
Und das Morderauge gluhn!
“Kassandra.”
(And I see the steel of Murder glitter,
And the eye of Murder glow.)
Viola was in the prison that opened not but for those already condemned
before adjudged. Since her exile from Zanoni, her very intellect had
seemed paralysed. All that beautiful exuberance of fancy which, if not
the fruit of genius, seemed its blossoms; all that gush of exquisite
thought which Zanoni had justly told her flowed with mysteries and
subtleties ever new to him, the wise one,--all were gone, annihilated;
the blossom withered, the fount dried up. From something almost above
womanhood, she seemed listlessly to sink into something below childhood.
With the inspirer the inspirations had ceased; and, in deserting love,
genius also was left behind.
She scarcely comprehended why she had been thus torn from her home and
the mechanism of her dull tasks. She scarcely knew what meant those
kindly groups, that, struck with her exceeding loveliness, had gathered
round her in the prison, with mournful looks, but with words of comfort.
She, who had hitherto been taught to abhor those whom Law condemns for
crime, was amazed to hear that beings thus compassionate and tender,
with cloudless and lofty brows, with gallant and gentle mien, were
criminals for whom Law had no punishment short of death. But they, the
savages, gaunt and menacing, who had dragged her from her home, who
had attempted to snatch from her the infant while she clasped it in her
arms, and laughed fierce scorn at her mute, quivering lips,--THEY were
the chosen citizens, the men of virtue, the favourites of Power, the
ministers of Law! Such thy black caprices, O thou, the ever-shifting and
calumnious,--Human Judgment!
A squalid, and yet a gay world, did the prison-houses of that day
present. There, as in the sepulchre to which they led, all ranks were
cast with an even-handed scorn. And yet there, the reverence that comes
from great emotions restored Nature’s first and imperishable, and most
lovely, and most noble Law,--THE INEQUALITY BETWEEN MAN AND MAN! There,
place was given by the prisoners, whether royalists or sans-culottes,
to Age, to Learning, to Renown, to Beauty; and Strength, with its own
inborn chivalry, raised into rank the helpless and the weak. The iron
sinews and the Herculean shoulders made way for the woman and the child;
and the graces of Humanity, lost elsewhere, sought their refuge in the
abode of Terror.
“And wherefore, my child, do they bring thee hither?” asked an old,
grey-haired priest.
“I cannot guess.”
“Ah, if you know not your offence, fear the worst!”
“And my child?”--for the infant was still suffered to rest upon her
bosom.
“Alas, young mother, they will suffer thy child to live.’
“And for this,--an orphan in the dungeon!” murmured the accusing heart
of Viola,--“have I reserved his offspring! Zanoni, even in thought, ask
not--ask not what I have done with the child I bore thee!”
Night came; the crowd rushed to the grate to hear the muster-roll.
(Called, in the mocking jargon of the day, “The Evening Gazette.”) Her
name was with the doomed. And the old priest, better prepared to die,
but reserved from the death-list, laid his hands on her head, and
blessed her while he wept. She heard, and wondered; but she did not
weep. With downcast eyes, with arms folded on her bosom, she bent
submissively to the call. But now another name was uttered; and a man,
who had pushed rudely past her to gaze or to listen, shrieked out a
howl of despair and rage. She turned, and their eyes met. Through
the distance of time she recognised that hideous aspect. Nicot’s face
settled back into its devilish sneer. “At least, gentle Neapolitan, the
guillotine will unite us. Oh, we shall sleep well our wedding-night!”
And, with a laugh, he strode away through the crowd, and vanished into
his lair.
....
She was placed in her gloomy cell, to await the morrow. But the child
was still spared her; and she thought it seemed as if conscious of the
awful present. In their way to the prison it had not moaned or wept. It
had looked with its clear eyes, unshrinking, on the gleaming pikes and
savage brows of the huissiers. And now, alone in the dungeon, it put its
arms round her neck, and murmured its indistinct sounds, low and sweet
as some unknown language of consolation and of heaven. And of heaven it
was!--for, at the murmur, the terror melted from her soul; upward, from
the dungeon and the death,--upward, where the happy cherubim chant the
mercy of the All-loving, whispered that cherub’s voice. She fell upon
her knees and prayed. The despoilers of all that beautifies and hallows
life had desecrated the altar, and denied the God!--they had removed
from the last hour of their victims the Priest, the Scripture, and the
Cross! But Faith builds in the dungeon and the lazar-house its sublimest
shrines; and up, through roofs of stone, that shut out the eye of
Heaven, ascends the ladder where the angels glide to and fro,--PRAYER.
And there, in the very cell beside her own, the atheist Nicot sits
stolid amidst the darkness, and hugs the thought of Danton, that death
is nothingness. (“Ma demeure sera bientot LE NEANT” (My abode will soon
be nothingness), said Danton before his judges.)) His, no spectacle
of an appalled and perturbed conscience! Remorse is the echo of a lost
virtue, and virtue he never knew. Had he to live again, he would live
the same. But more terrible than the death-bed of a believing and
despairing sinner that blank gloom of apathy,--that contemplation of
the worm and the rat of the charnel-house; that grim and loathsome
NOTHINGNESS which, for his eye, falls like a pall over the universe of
life. Still, staring into space, gnawing his livid lip, he looks upon
the darkness, convinced that darkness is forever and forever!
....
Place, there! place! Room yet in your crowded cells. Another has come to
the slaughter-house.
As the jailer, lamp in hand, ushered in the stranger, the latter touched
him and whispered. The stranger drew a jewel from his finger. Diantre,
how the diamond flashed in the ray of the lamp! Value each head of your
eighty at a thousand francs, and the jewel is more worth than all!
The jailer paused, and the diamond laughed in his dazzled eyes. O thou
Cerberus, thou hast mastered all else that seems human in that fell
employ! Thou hast no pity, no love, and no remorse. But Avarice survives
the rest, and the foul heart’s master-serpent swallows up the tribe.
Ha! ha! crafty stranger, thou hast conquered! They tread the gloomy
corridor; they arrive at the door where the jailer has placed the fatal
mark, now to be erased, for the prisoner within is to be reprieved a
day. The key grates in the lock; the door yawns,--the stranger takes the
lamp and enters.