Condemned to death!
These five weeks have I dwelt with this idea,--always alone with it,
always frozen by its presence, always bent under its weight.
Formerly (for it seems to me rather years than weeks since I was free) I
was a being like any other; every day, every hour, every minute had its
idea. My mind, youthful and rich, was full of fancies, which it
developed successively, without order or aim, but weaving inexhaustible
arabesques on the poor and coarse web of life. Sometimes it was of
youthful beauties, sometimes of unbounded possessions, then of battles
gained, next of theatres full of sound and light, and then again the
young beauties, and shadowy walks at night beneath spreading
chestnut-trees. There was a perpetual revel in my imagination: I might
think on what I chose,--I was free.
But now,--I am a Captive! Bodily in irons in a dungeon, and mentally
imprisoned in one idea,--one horrible, one hideous, one unconquerable
idea! I have only one thought, one conviction, one certitude,--
_Condemned to death!_
Whatever I do, that frightful thought is always here, like a spectre,
beside me,--solitary and jealous, banishing all else, haunting me for
ever, and shaking me with its two icy hands whenever I wish to turn my
head away or to close my eyes. It glides into all forms in which my mind
seeks to shun it; mixes itself, like a horrible chant, with all the
words which are addressed to me; presses against me even to the odious
gratings of my prison. It haunts me while awake, spies on my convulsive
slumbers, and re-appears, a vivid incubus, in my dreams!
I have just started from a troubled sleep in which I was pursued by this
thought, and I made an effort to say to myself, “Oh, it was but a
dream!”
Well, even before my heavy eyes could read the fatal truth in the
dreadful reality which surrounds me,--on the damp and reeking
dungeon-walls, in the pale rays of my night-lamp, in the rough material
of my prison-garb, on the sombre visage of the sentry, whose cap gleams
through the grating of the door,--it seems to me that already a voice
has murmured in my ear,--
“_Condemned to death!_”