It is ten o’clock.
Oh, my poor little girl! In six hours more thy Father will be
dead,--something to be dragged about the tables of lecturing rooms; a
head to be cast by one party, a trunk to be dissected by another; then
all to be thrown together into a bier, and despatched to the felons’
burial-ground. This is what they are going to do with thy Father; yet
none of them hate me, all pity me, and all could save me! They are going
to kill me, Mary, to kill me in cold blood,--a ceremonial for the
general good. Poor little girl! thy Father, who loved thee so well, thy
Father who kissed thy little white neck, who passed his hands so fondly
through the ringlets of thy silken hair, who danced thee on his knee,
and every evening joined thy two little hands to pray to God!
Who will do all this for thee in future? Who now will love thee? My
darling child, what wilt thou do for my presents, pretty play things,
and kisses? Ah, unfortunate Orphan! What wilt thou do for food and
raiment?
If the Jury had seen thee, my pretty little Mary, they would have
understood it was wrong to kill the Father of a child three years old.
And when she grows up, what will become of her? Her Father will be one
of the disgraces of Paris. She will blush for me and at hearing my name;
she will be despised, rejected, reviled, on account of him who loved her
with all the tenderness of his heart. Oh, my little Mary, whom I so
idolized! can it be true that thou wilt encounter shame and horror
through me?
Oh! can it be true that I shall die before the close of day? Those
distant shouts which I hear, that mass of animated spectators who are
already hastening to the Quays, those gendarmes preparing in their
barracks,--is it all for me? Yes, I--myself am going to die?--this
actual self which is here, which lives, moves, breathes,--this self
which I touch and can feel!