“Believe me, monsieur, my estates in Salerno are not what they were; the
olive trees are old and all drains on my income are a burden--even this
gratuity. I thought I should be rid of it; but, alas, the extraordinary
conception of justice in your country!”
He broke the cigarette in his fingers, and flung the pieces over the
terrace.
“In the great range of mountains,” he began, “slashing across the
American states and beautifully named the Alleghanies, there is a vast
measure of coal beds. It is thither that the emigrants from Southern
Europe journey. They mine out the coal, sometimes descending into the
earth through pits, or what in your language are called shafts, and
sometimes following the stratum of the coal bed into the hill.
“This underworld, monsieur--this, sunless world, built underneath the
mountains, is a section of Europe slipped under the American Republic.
The language spoken there is not English. The men laboring in those
buried communities cry out sparate when they are about to shoot down the
coal with powder. It is Italy under there. There is a river called the
Monongahela in those mountains. It is an Indian name.”
He paused.
“And so, monsieur, what happened along it doubtless reminded me of
Cooper's story--Bough of Oak and the case of Corporal Flint.”
He took another cigarette out of a box on the table, but he did not
light it.
“In one of the little mining villages along this river with the
enchanting name there was a man physically like the people of the Iliad;
and with that, monsieur, he had a certain cast of mind not unHellenic.
He was tall, weighed two hundred and forty pounds, lean as a gladiator,
and in the vigor of golden youth.
“There were no wars to journey after and no adventures; but there was
danger and adventure here. This land was full of cockle, winnowed out
of Italy, Austria and the whole south of Europe. It took courage and the
iron hand of the state to keep the peace. Here was a life of danger;
and this Ionian--big, powerful, muscled like the heroes of the Circus
Maximus--entered this perilous service.
“Monsieur, I have said his mind was Hellenic, like his big, wonderful
body. Mark you how of heroic antiquity it was! It was his boast, among
the perils that constantly beset him, that no criminal should ever take
his life; that, if ever he should receive a mortal wound from the hand
of the assassins about him, he would not wait to die in agony by it. He
himself would sever the damaged thread of life and go out like a man!
“Observe, monsieur, how like the great heroes of legend--like the
wounded Saul when he ordered his armor-bearer to kill him; like Brutus
when he fell on his sword!”
He looked intently at the American.
“Doubtless, monsieur,” he went on, “those near this man along the
Monongahela did not appreciate his attitude of grandeur; but to us, in
the distance, it seemed great and noble.”
He looked out over the Mediterranean, where the great adventurers who
cherished these lofty pagan ideals once beat along in the morning of the
world.
“On an afternoon of summer,” he continued like one who begins a saga,
“this man, alone and fearless, followed a violator of the law and
arrested him in a house of the village. As he led the man away he
noticed that an Italian followed. He was a little degenerate, wearing a
green hat, and bearing now one name and now another. They traversed the
village toward the municipal prison; and this creature, featured like a
Parisian Apache, skulked behind.
“As they went along, two Austrians seated on the porch of a house heard
the little man speak to the prisoner. He used the word sparate. They did
not know what he meant, for he spoke in Italian; but they recognized
the word, for it was the word used in the mines before the coal was shot
down. The prisoner made his reply in Italian, which the Austrians did
not understand.
“It seemed that this man who had made the arrest did not know Italian,
for he stopped and asked the one behind him whether the prisoner was his
brother. The man replied in the negative.”
The Count paused, as though for an explanation. “What the Apache said
was: 'Shall I shoot him here or wait until we reach the ravine?' And the
prisoner replied: 'Wait until we come to the ravine.'
“They went on. Presently they reached a sort of hollow, where the reeds
grew along the road densely and to the height of a man's head. Here the
Italian Apache, the degenerate with the green hat, following some three
steps behind, suddenly drew a revolver from his pocket and shot the man
twice in the back. It was a weapon carrying a lead bullet as large as
the tip of one's little finger. The officer fell. The Apache and the
prisoner fled.
“The wounded man got up. He spread out his arms; and he shouted, with a
great voice, like the heroes of the Iliad. The two wounds were mortal;
they were hideous, ghastly wounds, ripping up the vital organs in the
man's body and severing the great arteries. The splendid pagan knew he
had received his death wounds; and, true to his atavistic ideal, the
ideal of the Greek, the Hebrew and the Roman, the ideal of the great
pagan world to which he in spirit belonged, and of which the poets sing,
he put his own weapon to his head and blew his brains out.”
The old Count, his chin up, his withered, yellow face vitalized, lifted
his hands like one before something elevated and noble. After some
moments had passed he continued:
“On the following day the assassin was captured in a neighboring
village. Feeling ran so high that it was with difficulty that the
officers of the law saved him from being lynched. He was taken about
from one prison to another. Finally he was put on trial for murder.
“There was never a clearer case before any tribunal in this world.
“Many witnesses identified the assassin--not merely English-speaking
men, who might have been mistaken or prejudiced, but Austrians, Poles,
Italians--the men of the mines who knew him; who had heard him cry out
the fatal Italian word; who saw him following in the road behind his
victim on that Sunday afternoon of summer; who knew his many names and
every feature of his cruel, degenerate face. There was no doubt anywhere
in the trial. Learned surgeons showed that the two wounds in the dead
man's back from the big-calibered weapon were deadly, fatal wounds that
no man could have survived.
“There was nothing incomplete in that trial.
“Everything was so certain that the assassin did not even undertake to
contradict; not one statement, not one word of the evidence against him
did he deny. It was a plain case of willful, deliberate and premeditated
murder. The judge presiding at the trial instructed the jury that a man
is presumed to intend that which he does; that whoever kills a human
being with malice aforethought is guilty of murder; that murder which is
perpetrated by any kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing
is murder in the first degree. The jury found the assassin guilty and
the judge sentenced him to be hanged.”
The Count paused and looked at his companions about him on the terrace.
“Messieurs,” he said, “do you think that conviction was just?”
There was a common assent. Some one said: “It was a cruel murder if ever
there was one.” And another: “It was wholly just; the creature deserved
to hang.”
The old Count bowed, putting out his hands.
“And so I hoped he would.”
“What happened?” said the American.
The Count regarded him with a queer, ironical smile.
“Unlike the great British people, monsieur,” he replied, “your courts
have never given the pig, or the pasture on which he gathers his acorns,
a consideration above the human family. The case was taken to your Court
of Appeals of that province.”
He stopped and lighted his cigarette deliberately, with a match
scratched slowly on the table.
“Monsieur,” he said, “I do not criticize your elevated court. It is
composed of learned men--wise and patriotic, I have no doubt. They
cannot make the laws, monsieur; they cannot coin a conception of justice
for your people. They must enforce the precise rules of law that the
conception of justice in your country has established.
“Nevertheless, monsieur”--and his thin yellow lips curled--“for the sake
of my depleted revenues I could have wished that the decision of this
court had been other than it was.”
“And what did it decide?” asked the American.
“It decided, monsieur,” replied the Count, “that my estates in Salerno
must continue to be charged with the gratuity to the indigent relative.
“That is to say, monsieur, it decided, because the great pagan did not
wait to die in agony, did not wait for the mortal wounds inflicted by
the would-be assassin to kill him, that interesting person--the man in
the green hat--was not guilty of murder in the first degree and could
not be hanged!”
Note--See State versus Angelina; 80 Southeastern Reporter, 141: “The
intervening responsible agent who wrongfully accelerates death is guilty
of the murder, and not the one who inflicted the first injury, though in
itself mortal.”