When the grey morning appeared, he could no longer endure to lie
quietly in his bed while his soul was tormented with unrest, he got up,
dressed himself, left his room and went out of doors.
It was a damp, cold, horrid autumn morning: the fog clung to the houses
and to the uneven pavement of the old town: a heavy, yellow vapor, the
smoke of a factory chimney kept sinking down lower and lower. The
lonely wanderer met few people, those who recognized him greeted him
respectfully, he did not often acknowledge the greeting and when he
did, it was unconsciously. Most of them looked after him in utter
astonishment; what could have brought the Chief Justice so early out of
doors? It seemed at times as if he were looking for something he had
lost; he would walk along slowly for a stretch with his looks fixed on
the ground, then he would stop and go back the same way. And how broken
down, how weary he looked today!--as if he had suddenly become an old
man, the people thought.
Freezing with cold, while his pulses beat at fever-speed, he thus
wandered for a long while aimlessly through the desolate streets, first
this way, then that, until the morning bells of the Cathedral sounded
in his ears. He stood still and listened as if he had never heard their
mighty sound before; they appeared to vibrate in his heart; his
features changed and grew gentler as he listened; a ray of tender
longing gleamed in his white face, and, as if drawn by invisible cords,
he hurried faster and faster towards the Cathedral. But when he stood
before its open door and looked into the dark space, lit only by a dim
light, the sanctuary lamp before the high-altar, he hesitated; he shook
his head and sighed deeply, and his features again resumed their
gloomy, painful look.
He looked up at the Cathedral clock, the hands were pointing to seven.
"An hour more," he murmured and went over towards the Court-House. It
was a huge, straggling, rectangular building, standing on its own
ground. In front were the Chief Justice's residence and the offices; at
the back the criminal prison.
He turned towards his own quarters. He had just set his foot on the
steps, when a new idea seemed to occur to him. He hesitated. "I must,"
he hissed between his teeth and he clenched his hands till the nails
ran painfully into the flesh; "I must, if only for a minute."
He stepped back into the street, went around the building and up to the
door at the back. It was locked; there was a sentinel in front of it.
He rang the bell, a warder opened the door and seeing the Chief Justice
respectfully pulled off his hat.
"Fetch the Governor," muttered Sendlingen, so indistinctly that the man
hardly understood him. But he hurried away and the Governor of the
prison appeared. He was visibly much astonished. "Does your Lordship
wish to make an inspection?" he asked.
"No, only in one or two particular cases."
"Which are they, my lord?"
But the unhappy man felt that his strength was leaving him. "Later on,"
he muttered, groping for the handle of the door so as to support
himself. "Another time."
The Governor hastened towards him. "Your Lordship is ill again--just as
you were yesterday--we are all much concerned! May I accompany you back
to your residence? The nearest way is through the prison-yard, if you
choose."
He opened a door and they stepped out into the prison-yard; it was
separated by a wall from the front building; the only means of
communication was an unostentatious little door in the bare, high,
slippery wall. It seemed to be seldom used; the Governor was a long
time finding the key on his bunch and when at length it opened, the
lock and hinges creaked loudly.
"Thank you," said Sendlingen. "I have never observed this means of
communication before."
"Your predecessor had it made," answered the Governor, "so that he
might inspect the prison without being announced. The key must be in
your possession."
"Very likely," answered Sendlingen, and he went back to his residence.
Franz placed his breakfast before him. "There'll be a nice ending to
this," he growled. "We are dangerously ill and yet we trapse about the
streets in all weathers. Dr. Berger, too, is surprised at our new
ways."
"Has he been here already?"
"He was here a few minutes ago, but will be back at eight.... But now
we have got to drink our tea." He did not budge till the cup had been
emptied.
With growing impatience Sendlingen looked at the clock. "He can have
nothing fresh to say," he thought. "He must guess my intention and want
to hinder me. He will not succeed."
But he did succeed. As he entered, Sendlingen had just taken up his hat
and stick.
"You are going to the trial?" began his faithful friend almost roughly,
"You must not, Victor, I implore you. I forbid you. What will the
judges think if you are too ill to preside, and yet well enough to be
present with no apparent object. But the main thing is not to torment
yourself, it is unmanly. Do not lessen your strength, you may require
it."
He wrested his hat from him and forced him into an armchair.
"My restlessness will kill me if I stay here," muttered Sendlingen.
"You would not be better in there, but worse. I shall come back to you
at once; I think, I fear, it will not last long. Don't buoy yourself up
with any hopes, Victor. Before a jury, I could get her acquitted, with
other judges, at a different time, we might have expected a short term
of imprisonment ... but now----"
"Death!" Like a shriek the words escaped from his stifled breast.
"But she may not, she will not die!" continued Berger. "I will set my
face against it as long as there is breath in my body, nay, I would
have done so even if she had not been your daughter. God bless you,
Victor."
Berger gathered up his bundle of papers and proceeded along the
corridor and up some stairs, until he found himself outside the court
where the trial was to take place. Even here a hum of noise reached
him, for the court was densely crowded with spectators. As far as he
could see by the glimmer of grey morning light that broke its difficult
way in by the round windows, it was a well-dressed audience in which
ladies preponderated. "Naturally," he muttered contemptuously.
For a few seconds eye-glasses and opera-glasses were directed upon him,
to be then again immediately turned on the accused. But her face could
not be seen; she was cowering in a state of collapse on her wooden
seat, her forehead resting on the ledge of the dock; her left arm was
spread out in front of her, her right hung listlessly by her side.
Public curiosity had nothing to sate itself on but the shudders
that at times convulsed her poor body; one of the long plaits of her
coal-black, wavy hair had escaped from beneath the kerchief on her head
and hung down low, almost to the ground, touching the muddy boots of
the soldier who did duty as sentinel close beside her.
Berger stepped to his place behind her; she did not notice him until he
gently touched her icy cold hand. "Be brave, my poor child," he
whispered.
She started up in terror. "Ah!" went from every mouth in Court: now at
length they could see her face. Berger drew himself up to his full
height; his eyes blazed with anger as he stepped between her and the
crowd.
"Oh, what crowds of people!" murmured the poor girl. Her cheeks and
forehead glowed in a fever-heat of shame: but the colour soon went and
her grief-worn face was white again; the look of her eyes was weary and
faint. "To think that one should have to suffer so much before dying."
"You will not die!" He spoke slowly, distinctly, as one speaks to a
deaf person. "You will live, and after you have satisfied the justice
of men, you will begin life over again. And when you do friendship and
love will not be wanting to you." While he was saying this, and at the
same time looking her full in the face, her resemblance to his friend
almost overpowered him. She was like her father in the colour of her
hair and eyes, in her mouth and her forehead.
"Love and care are waiting for you!" he continued with growing warmth.
"This I can swear. Do you hear? I swear that it is so! As regards the
trial, I can only give you this advice: tell, as you have hitherto
done, the whole truth. Bear up as well as you can; oppose every lie,
every unjust accusation."
She had heard him without stirring, without a sign of agreement or
dissent. It was doubtful whether she had understood him. But he had not
time to repeat his admonition; the Crown-advocate and the five Judges
had entered with Werner at their head. If Berger had hitherto cherished
any hope, it must have vanished now; two of the other Judges were among
the sternest on the bench; the fourth never listened and then always
chimed in with the majority; it was but a slender consolation to Berger
when he finally saw the wise and humane Baron Dernegg take his place
beside the judges.
Werner opened the proceedings and the deed of accusation was then read
out by the Secretary of the Court. Its compiler--a young, fashionably
dressed junior Crown-advocate of an old aristocratic family, who had
only been in the profession a short time,--listened to the recital of
his composition with visible satisfaction. And indeed his
representation of the matter was very effective.
According to him the Countess Riesner-Graskowitz was one of the noblest
women who ever lived, the Accused one of the most abandoned. A helpless
orphan, called by unexampled generosity to fill a post which neither
her years nor abilities had fitted her for, she had requited this
kindness by entangling the young Count Henry in her wiles in order to
force him into a marriage. After he had disentangled himself from these
unworthy bonds, and after Victorine Lippert knew her condition, instead
of repentantly confiding in her noble protectress, she had exhausted
all the arts of crafty dissembling in order not to be found out. And
when at length she was, as a most just punishment, suddenly dismissed
from the castle, she in cold blood murdered her child so as to be free
from the consequences of her fault. In his opinion, the Accused's
pretended unconsciousness was a manifest fable, and the crime a
premeditated one, as her conduct at the castle sufficiently proved. Her
character was not against the assumption, she was plainly corrupted at
an early age, being the daughter of a woman of loose character.
"It is a lie! a scandalous lie!"
Like a cry from the deepest recesses of the heart, these words suddenly
vibrated through the Court with piercing clearness.
It was the Accused who had spoken. She had listened to the greatest
part of the document without a sound, without the slightest change of
countenance, as if she were deaf. Only once at the place where it spoke
of "manifest fable" she had gently and imperceptibly shaken her head;
it was the first intimation Berger had that she was listening and
understood the accusation. But now, hardly had the libel on her dead
mother been read, when she rose to her feet and uttered those words so
suddenly that Berger was not less motionless and dumfounded than the
rest.
And then broke forth the hubbub; such an interruption, and in such
language, had never before occurred in Court. The spectators had risen
and were talking excitedly; the crown-advocate stood there helplessly;
even Herr von Werner had to clear his throat repeatedly before he could
ejaculate "Silence!"
But the command was superfluous for hardly had the poor girl uttered
the words, when she fell back upon her seat, from thence to the ground,
and was now lying in a faint on the boards.
She was carried out; it was noticed by many and caused much scandal,
that the counsel for the Accused lifted the lifeless body and helped
carry it, instead of leaving this to the warders.
The proceedings had to be interrupted. It was another half hour before
the Accused appeared in Court again, leaning on Berger's arm, her
features set like those of an animated corpse. There was a satirical
murmur in the crowd, and Werner, too, reflected whether he should not,
there and then, reprove the Counsel for unseemly behaviour. And this
determined him to be all the severer in the reprimand which he
addressed to the Accused on account of her unheard of impertinence. She
should not escape her just punishment, the nature and extent of which
he would determine by the opinion of the prison-doctor.
Then the reading of the deed of accusation was finished; the
examination began. There was a murmur of eager expectation among the
spectators; their curiosity was briefly but abundantly satisfied. To
the question whether she pleaded guilty, Victorine Lippert answered
quietly but with a steadier voice than one would have supposed her
capable of:
"Yes!... What I know about my deed, I have already told in evidence. I
deserve death, I wish to die. It is a matter of indifference to one
about to die what men may think of her; God knows the truth. He knows
that much, yes most, of what has just been read here, is incorrect. I
do not contest it, but one thing I swear in the face of death, and may
God have no mercy on me in my last hour if I lie; my mother was noble
and good; no mother can ever have been better and no wife more pure.
She trusted an unworthy wretch, and he must have been worse than ever
any man was, if he could forsake her--but she was good. I implore you,
read her testimonials, her letters to me--I beseech you, I conjure you,
just a few of these letters.-For myself I have nothing to ask--"
Her voice broke, her strength again seemed to forsake her and she sank
down on her seat.
There was a deep silence after she had ended: in her words, in her
voice, there must have been something that the hearts of those present
could not shut out; even the crown-advocate looked embarrassed. Herr
von Werner alone was so resolutely armed to meet the Hydra of the
social Revolution, which he was bent on combating in this forlorn
creature, as to be above all pity. He would certainly have begun a
wearisome examination and have spared the poor creature no single
detail, but his daughter was expecting a happy event to-day, and Baron
Sendlingen had, notwithstanding, not had sufficient professional
consideration to take over the conduct of this trial, and the half
hour's faint of the Accused had already unduly prolonged the
proceedings--so he determined to cut the matter as short as was
compatible with his position. The accused had just again unreservedly
repeated her confession; further questions, he explained, would be
superfluous.
The examination of the witnesses could be proceeded with at once. This
also was quickly got through. There were the peasants, who had found
Victorine and her lifeless child on the morrow of the deed, and the
prison doctor, none of whom could advance any fresh or material fact.
The only witness of importance to the Accused was the servant-girl who
had helped her in her last few months at the castle. The girl had been
shortly after dismissed from the Countess' service, and in the
preliminary inquiry, she had confirmed all Victorine's statements; if
she to-day remained firm to her previous declarations, the accusation
of premeditated murder would be severely shaken. To Berger's alarm she
now evasively answered that her memory was weak,--she had in the
meantime gone into service at Graskowitz again. In spite of this and of
the protest of the defence, she was sworn: Berger announced his
intention of appealing for a nullification of the trial.
Then the depositions of the Countess and her son were read; the Court
had declined to subp[oe]na them. The Countess had not spared time or
trouble in depicting the murderess in all her abandonment; but the
depositions which Count Henry had made at his embassy, were brief
enough: as far as he recollected he had made the girl no promise of
marriage, and indeed there was no reason for doing so. Berger demanded,
as proof to the contrary, that the letters which had been taken from
the Accused and put with the other papers, should he read aloud; this
the Court also declined because they did not affect the question of her
guilt.
Then followed the speeches for and against. The Crown-Advocate was
brief enough: the trial, he contended, had established the correctness
of the charge. If ever at all, then in the present case, should the
full rigour of the law be enforced. By her protestation that she had
received a most careful bringing up from a most excellent mother, she
had herself cut from under her feet the only ground for mitigation. All
the more energetically and fully did Berger plead for the utmost
possible leniency; his knowledge of law, his intellect and his
oratorical gifts had perhaps never before been so brilliantly
displayed. When he had finished, the people in Court broke out into
tumultuous applause.
The Judges retired to consider their verdict. They were not long
absent; in twenty minutes they again appeared in Court. Werner
pronounced sentence: death by hanging. The qualification of "unanimous"
was wanting. Baron Dernegg had been opposed to it.
There was much excitement among the spectators. Berger, although not
unprepared for the sentence, could with difficulty calm himself
sufficiently to announce that every form of appeal would be resorted
to. The Accused had closed her eyes for a moment and her limbs trembled
like aspen-leaves, but she was able to rise by herself to follow the
warders.
"Thank you," she said pressing Berger's hands. "But the appeal----"
"Will be lodged by me," he said hastily interrupting her. "I shall come
and see you about it to-day."
He hurried away down the stairs. But when he got into the long corridor
that led to Sendlingen's quarters, he relaxed his pace and at length
stood still. "This is a difficult business," he murmured and he stepped
to a window, opened it and eagerly drank in the cool autumn air as if
to strengthen himself.
When a few minutes after he found himself in Sendlingen's lobby, he met
Baron Dernegg coming out of his friend's study.
"Too late!" he thought with alarm. "And he has had to hear it from some
one else."
The usually comfortable-looking Judge was much excited. "You are no
doubt coming on the same errand, Dr. Berger," he began. "I felt myself
in duty bound to let the Chief Justice know about this sentence without
delay. The way in which he received it showed me once more what a
splendid man he is, the pattern of a Judge, the embodiment of Justice!
I assure you, he almost fainted, this--hm!--questionable sentence
affected him like a personal misfortune. Please do not excite him any
more about it and talk of something else first."
"Certainly," muttered Berger as he walked into the study.
Sendlingen lay back in his arm-chair, both hands pressed to his face.
His friend approached him without a word; it was a long, sad silence.
"Victor," he said at last, gently touching his shoulder, "we knew it
would be so!"
Sendlingen let his hands fall. "And does that comfort me?" he cried
wildly. And then he bowed his head still lower. "Tell me all!" he
murmured.
Berger then began to narrate everything. One thing only he omitted: how
Victorine had spoken of her mother's betrayer. "This very day," he
concluded, "I shall lodge a nullity appeal with the Supreme Court.
Perhaps it will consider the reasons weighty enough to order a new
trial; in any case when it examines the question, it will alter the
sentence."
"In any case?" cried Sendlingen bitterly.
"We cannot but expect as much from the sense of justice of our highest
Judges. Perhaps the chief witness's suspicious weakness of memory may
prove a lucky thing for us. If she had stuck by her former depositions,
or if the Court had not put her on her oath, then a simple appeal to
the Supreme Court would alone have been possible. Now, the case is more
striking and more sensational."
"And therefore all the worse!" interrupted Sendlingen. "Woe to him for
whom in these days the voice of the people makes itself heard; to the
gentry in Vienna it is worse than the voice of the devil. Besides, just
now, according to the opinion of the Minister of Justice, the world is
to be rid of child-murder by the offices of the hangman! And this is
the first case in educated circles, a much talked of case,--what a
magnificent opportunity of striking terror!"
"You take too black a view of the matter, Victor."
"Perhaps!--and therefore an unjust view! But how can a man in my
position be just and reasonable. Oh, George, I am so desolate and
perplexed! What shall I do; merciful Heaven, what shall I do?"
"First of all--wait!" answered Berger. "The decision of the Supreme
Court will be known in a comparatively short time, at latest in two
months!"
"Wait--only two months!" Sendlingen wrung his hands. "Though what do I
care for myself! But she--two months in the fear of death! To sit thus
in a lonely cell without light or air, or consolation,--behind her
unutterable misery, before her death----. Oh, she must either go mad or
die!"
"I shall often be with her, and Father Rohn, too, I hope. And then,
too," he added, half-heartedly, "one or other of the ladies of the
Women's Society for Befriending Female Criminals. Certainly these
comforters are not worth much."
"They are worth nothing," cried Sendlingen vehemently. "Oh, how
they will torture the poor girl with their unctuous virtue and
self-satisfied piety! I have to tolerate these tormentors, the Minister
of Justice insists on it, but at least they shall not enter this cell,
I will not allow it--or at least, only the single one among them who is
any good, my old Brigitta----"
"Your housekeeper?" asked Berger, in perplexity and consternation.
"That must not be! She might guess the truth. The girl!" he hesitated
again--"is like you, very like you Victor--and anyone who sees you so
often and knows you so well as Brigitta----"
"What does that matter?" Sendlingen rose. "She is discreet, and if she
were not--what does it matter, I repeat. Do you suppose that I never
mean to enter that cell?"
"You! Impossible!"
"I shall and I must! I will humour you in everything except in this one
thing!"
"But under what pretext? Have you ever visited and repeatedly visited
other condemned criminals?"
"What does that matter to me? A father must stand by his child!"
"And will you tell other people so?"
"Not until I am obliged; but then without a moment's hesitation. She,
however, must be told at once, in fact this very day."
"You must not do that, Victor. Spare the poor girl this sudden
revelation."
"Then prepare her beforehand! But to-morrow it must be!"
Berger was helpless; he knew what Victorine would say to her father if
she suddenly encountered him.
"Give her a little more time!" he begged, "Out of pity for her
shattered nerves and agitated mind, which will not bear any immediate
shock."
This was a request that Sendlingen could not refuse.
"Very well, I will wait," he promised. "But you will not wish to
prevent me from seeing her to-morrow. I have in any case to inspect the
prison. But I promise you: I will not betray myself and the governor of
the jail shall accompany me."