According to the promise he had made his favourite, the Prince of
Carini ordered the condemned man to be sent from Messina to Palermo; and
Pascal, under a large escort of gendarmerie, was conveyed to the prison
of that city, situated behind the royal palace, and near to the asylum
for lunatics.
Towards the evening of the second day, a priest entered his dungeon.
Pascal rose when he saw the holy man: but, notwithstanding all the
entreaties of the priest, Pascal resolutely refused to confess. The
priest continued to exhort him to unburden his guilty mind; but nothing
could induce Pascal to perform this last office of religion. And the
priest, perceiving he could not overcome his obstinacy, asked him the
reason.
“The reason,” said Bruno, “is, that I do not wish to commit a
sacrilegious act.”
“In what manner, my son?” inquired the priest.
“Is not the first condition of a good confession,” said Bruno, “not only
the acknowledgment of your own sins, but the forgiveness of those of
your neighbour?”
“Certainly,” said the priest, “there can be no complete confession
without that.”
“Well,” said Bruno, “I have not forgiven; my confession would therefore
be imperfect, and I have no inclination to make a bad confession.”
“Is it not,” said the priest, “more likely that you have such enormous
crimes to acknowledge that you fear they will be too great to expect
pardon? But comfort yourself, God is merciful; and where there is
repentance there is always hope.”
“Nevertheless, my father,” said Bruno’, “if between your absolution and
my death, a wicked thought I have not the power to control should--”
“The benefit of your confession would be lost,” said the priest.
“It is useless then for me to confess,” observed Pascal, “for this
wicked thought will rise.”
“Cannot you drive it from your mind?” asked the priest.
Pascal smiled.
“It is that thought,” said he, “that has kept me alive, father; without
that one infernal thought, without that last hope of vengeance, do you
think I would have allowed myself to be dragged forward as a disgraceful
spectacle to the multitude? No! I would have strangled myself with the
chain that binds me. At Messina, I had made up my mind to do so; and I
was about carrying my intention into effect when an order came to convey
me to Palermo--I thought she would wish to see me die.”
“Whom do you mean?” asked the priest.
“She,” said Bruno, with bitter emphasis.
“But if you die in this manner,” said the priest, “without repenting,
heaven, will show you no mercy.”
“Father,” said Bruno, “she, also, shall die without repenting, for
she shall die at the moment she least expects it; she, also, shall die
without a priest, and without confession; she, also, shall find, like
me, heaven without mercy, and we shall sink to perdition together.”
At this instant the gaoler entered.
“Father,” he said, “the chapelle ardente is prepared.”
“Do you still persist in your refusal to confess, my son?” said the
priest.
“I do persist,” said Bruno, quietly.
“Then I shall no longer delay the mass for the dead,” said the priest,
“which I will repeat without pressing you any further; and I trust that,
while you listen, the Heavenly Spirit will visit you and inspire you
with better thoughts.”
“It may be so, father,” said Bruno; “but I have no reason to believe it
will.”
The gens-d’armes entered, unbound Bruno, and led him to the church of
St. François de Sales, facing the prison, and at that moment brilliantly
illuminated, for, according to custom, he was there to hear the mass
for the dead and pass the night in prayer, the execution being fixed for
eight o’clock the following morning.
An iron ring was fixed in a pillar in the choir, and Pascal was secured
to this ring by means of a chain that went round his body, but which
was sufficiently long to enable him to reach the balustrades where the
communicants knelt.
The instant mass commenced, the officers of the lunatic asylum brought
in a coffin, which they placed in the centre of the church: it contained
the remains of an insane person who had died during the day, and the
director thought the deceased might as well receive the benefit of the
mass that was about to be celebrated for the condemned criminal who was
to die.
Besides, there was an economy in this arrangement, both of time and
labour for the priest; and as it accommodated all parties, no objection
was made.
The sacristan lighted two tapers, one for the head and the other for the
foot of the coffin, and the mass began.
Pascal listened attentively during the whole service, and when it was
over, the priest went up to him and asked him if he was in a better
frame of mind; but the condemned man answered that, notwithstanding the
mass to which he had listened,--notwithstanding the prayers with which
he had accompanied it, his feelings of hatred and desire for vengeance
were still the same.
The priest told him that at seven o’clock on the following morning
he would return and ascertain whether a night of solitude and
contemplation, passed in a church and in presence of the crucifix, had
produced any change in his feelings of vengeance.
Bruno, as may be imagined, when left alone fell into a deep reverie. The
whole of the varied transactions of his life passed in review before his
eyes, from the days of his earliest infancy to that moment; and in vain
he endeavoured to discover in those early days of his life anything that
deserved the terrible fate that awaited his youth. He remembered only a
filial and sacred obedience towards the kind parents the Lord had given
him. He remembered his father’s abode---so quiet, so innocent, and happy
at one time--which suddenly, became, without his being aware of the
cause, full of tears and sorrow. He remembered the day when his father
went out, carrying with him a dagger, which on his return was covered
with blood. He remembered the night on which the author of his being was
arrested as a murderer; when they carried himself, still a child, into a
chapelle ardente like that in which he was now confined, where he saw a
man chained as he was now.
It seemed to him as if it were some fatal influence, some capricious
chance, some victorious superiority of evil over good, through the means
of which all the prospects of his devoted and once virtuous family had
been so utterly ruined.
And then he even doubted the truth of the promises of happiness which
heaven had made to man; he sought through his own distorted vision
for the interference of that Providence of which so much was said;
and fancying that in this, his extremity, some portion of this eternal
secret would perhaps be revealed to him, he bowed his forehead to the
earth and prayed--conjured the Deity, with all the fulness of his soul,
to interpret to him this terrible enigma--to raise the corner of that
mysterious veil which enshrouded his mind--to dispel his doubts and give
him confidence here and hopes for hereafter.
His hopes were vain; all was silent excepting that internal voice which
still continued to exclaim--“Vengeance! vengeance! vengeance!”
Then he thought the dead were charged to answer him, and that to that
end a corpse had been placed near him: so true it is that the most
insignificant amongst us all considers his own existence as the centre
of the creation, imagines everything is connected with his being, and
that his miserable body is the pivot on which the whole universe turns.
He, therefore, slowly raised himself, paler from the struggle he had had
with his mind than from any fear of the scaffold, and he turned his eyes
towards the corpse--it was that of a female.
Pascal shuddered without knowing why; he endeavoured to trace the
features of that woman--(the coffin in Italy is only closed at the
instant of interment)--but a corner of the winding-sheet had fallen over
the face and concealed it. Suddenly, an instinctive maddening feeling
reminded him of Teresa--Teresa, whom he had not seen since the day when
he first broke the bonds of God and man--Teresa, who had become mad, and
for three years had been confined in the lunatic asylum from whence
the coffin and the corpse had been brought--Teresa, his betrothed, with
whom, perhaps, he now found himself at the foot of that altar to which
he had so long hoped to have conducted her while living, and where, at
length, he had been brought by the bitter mockery of fate to rejoin her:
she dead--himself about ignominiously to die!
To remain longer in doubt was insupportable; he rushed towards the
coffin to satisfy himself, but he was suddenly dragged back by the
waist, his chain not being long enough to enable him to reach the
corpse, and it held him fast to the pillar; he stretched out his arms
towards the coffin, but he was still several feet away from the object
he sought to reach.
He then looked round in search of something by means of which he might
be able to remove the corner of the veil, but he could discover nothing;
he exerted all the power of his lungs in his endeavour to raise the
corner of the cloth, but it remained as motionless as marble.
He then turned round with a look of concentrated rage it would be
impossible to describe, seized his chain with both hands, and collecting
all his strength for the effort, he strove to break it; but the links
were too firmly-attached to each other and resisted all his efforts.
The cold perspiration of rage stood on his forehead; he threw himself
at the foot of the pillar, placed his head in his hands, and remained
motionless and mute as the statue of despair; and when the priest came
in the morning he found him still in the same position.
The reverend man approached him quietly and calmly, as became his
mission of peace and his office as a minister of reconciliation.
He thought that Pascal slept, but when he placed his hand upon his
shoulder, the bandit started and raised his head.
“Well, my son,” said the priest, “are you prepared for confession? I am
ready to absolve you?”
“I will answer you presently, father; but first render me a last
service,” said Bruno.
“What is it?” said the priest. “Speak!”
“Father,” said Bruno, “will you raise the corner of the cloth that hides
the features of that woman?”
The priest raised the corner of the winding-sheet. Pascal had not
deceived himself, that woman was Teresa!
He looked upon her for an instant with the deepest sorrow, and then made
a sign to the priest to let the linen fall: the priest obeyed him.
“Well, my son,” he said, “has the sight of death inspired you with any
pious thoughts?”
“Father,” said Bruno, “that woman and I were born to be happy and
innocent; but she perjured herself, and I became a murderer. She has
conducted this woman through madness, and me, through despair, to the
tomb into which we are both about to descend to-day. Let heaven pardon
her, if it can--I cannot!”
At this instant the guards entered the church to lead Pascal to the
scaffold.