THE SENTENCE OF DEATH.
The candles were burning on the table though it was broad daylight, the
bells were tolling though nobody was sick, the coffin had also been made
ready though nobody was dead.
The hard sentence had been pronounced over the poor sinner, he must die.
The law demanded his head. If his dear father and mother and all his
brothers and sisters were to plead for him all day long they could not
wash away the strict letter of the law with their tears.
All those who sat by the long table, the captains, lieutenants, and
common soldiers, all of them wished, longed, to avoid uttering the fatal
word. The General himself covered his face with his hands as he uttered
the words:
"With God there is mercy!"
In his hand he held a little staff, a little white staff. From time to
time he glances at it, it is still whole, still smooth and unbroken.
The old sergeant-major approaches him, his shako on his head, his
storm-belt strapped down over his shoulder, one hand by his side, the
other touching the band of his shako.
"Mercy, General, for the poor condemned prisoner!"
"With God only there is mercy."
Again the sergeant-major raises the tip of his palm to the cord of his
shako and makes his petition.
"Mercy, General, for the poor condemned criminal!"
A third time he utters his appeal.
"With God only there is mercy," is the General's reply.
The little white staff falls to the ground broken in two. The condemned
man gives a sigh of relief, thanks the gentlemen present for the trouble
they have taken, the good sergeant-major for interceding on his behalf,
and the rigorous judge for pronouncing over him the sentence of the law.
Then they take him away to the house of mourning, give him a white
uniform to put on, and set meat and drink before him that he may eat and
drink for the last time.
That day the iron man was afraid to go to his own quarters.
Suppose Cornelia were to ask him what sentence he had pronounced upon
the son of his enemy?
He durst not go home, he was actually afraid.
He was still brooding there when the gaoler came to tell him that the
condemned man wished to say a few words to the General privately.
Vertessy hastened to him at once.
"You defended yourself badly," said he reproachfully on entering, "you
made it impossible for us to pronounce any other sentence."
"I know that, I wished it so," replied the youth with a bright, calm
countenance. "That is all over now, General; it was a soldier's duty to
condemn me. In three days' time I am to die. Take it as if I was very
sick, and the doctors had told you beforehand that I had only three more
days to live."
"I will send the sentence to His Majesty."
"It would be useless. Why, even you can advance nothing in my defence,
and I have myself nothing to allege in mitigation of my sentence."
"But I know everything. Others have come forward to defend you, and if
you had not cut the ground from under my feet by your defiant answers
before the court-martial, I might have devised some means of saving
you."
"I am surprised that anyone should have defended me. I know of none who
might bear me in mind."
"Indeed yes. First of all there was my wife."
"Ah! General, such knowledge will make my death the easier."
"Then there was the man you fired at in your stupid jealousy."
"Then he did not die after all?" exclaimed the youth joyfully. "It does
me good to hear that."
"That's all one so far as you are concerned. You have in any case
committed a capital offence."
"But my heart is the easier, nevertheless. A load has been removed from
it. I thank you. What you have said will shorten my last moments."
"Your third advocate was your father."
"What?" stammered the youth with trembling lips--"my father, did you
say?--my own father?"
"Your own dear father. He wrote to me with those trembling hands of his,
those hands which have barely recovered from a paralytic stroke. He
wrote to me himself--do you realise what that means?"
"He wrote on my account!" whispered the condemned man, clasping his
manacled hands together and closing his heavy eyelashes over his moist
eyes.
"Your fourth advocate was Count Kamienszki, whose sister you will
doubtless remember."
The youth looked up in astonishment.
"I have no recollection of such a person. _She_ had no brother."
Vertessy shrugged his shoulders.
"He himself told me so, he was with me here to-day."
A struggle with a torturing suspicion seemed to be going on in the young
soldier's troubled mind; presently, however, he turned to the General
with a radiant countenance and said to him with a smile:
"All these things, General, will alleviate my chastisement and I thank
you for telling them to me. I regret that my misfortune will cause
others to shed tears which I did not expect, which I do not desire;
still, they will greatly ease my affliction. I am sure that you too, at
the bottom of your heart, forgive me and my poor family--you do forgive
us, General, do you not? Will you not even go further and protect that
poor old man who has now got nobody to stand by him?--will you not be
his protector if any danger, yes, any great danger should threaten him?"
The General pressed the young man's extended hand--the chains rattled on
the hand that he held in his.
"And now, General, may I speak to you of a very serious matter? Would
you be so good as to hear me out?"
"Say on."
"And you will not take what I am about to tell you as the mere ravings
of a disordered brain? Many men's brains grow disordered at the approach
of death I know; you will not imagine that I am simply delirious, will
you? You will believe that I am well and with all my wits, sound both in
heart and mind, will you not?"
The General nodded.
"First of all I would beg you not to postpone my execution for the usual
three days. Let it take place sooner. I do not ask this for my own sake.
I am as good as dead already, my time has run."
"Why do you make this request?"
"I will tell you presently. Then I would beg you not to conduct me
outside the town; the execution could take place just as well inside the
courtyard of the barracks."
"Very well, I will promise you that."
"And, finally, announce the execution for the afternoon and have it
carried out in the morning, early, at break of day, before anyone is
awake."
"What are your reasons for so extraordinary a request?"
"I will tell you, General. You know right well what terrifying rumours
have been circulating through the land in consequence of the
extraordinary, unprecedented epidemic now raging there. I had an
opportunity of discovering, involuntarily, the designs of sundry
malevolent persons who looked upon this terrible time as an excellent
occasion for carrying out their nefarious designs. The dregs of the
population have been roused to action, and only await the signal to pour
their ignorant, brutal herds all over the kingdom. This is no idle tale
I am telling you, General. I have heard their seditious mutterings, I
have read their letters, I have seen the lists of the names of those who
are to fall the first victims. My father's name stands at the very top
of the list. His peasants have always hated him as much as they have
loved me. One of the leaders of these secret conspirators was formerly a
fellow-soldier with me, since then he has been compelled to quit the
service. I accidentally met him in Galicia, where he was pursuing his
secret plans. He promised to hide me away, and, immediately afterwards,
went and denounced me. It is part of his infernal plan, when I am led
outside the town and a large crowd of people have come together to see
the execution, to incite the mob to riot, overpower the little band of
soldiers guarding me, release me, proclaim me far and wide as a hero,
and use my name as the means of provoking a general rising. You can see,
General, with what horror I so much as mention this affair, you can see
that I have neither dreamt nor imagined it, but shudder at it, and for
that very reason would hasten on my exit from this world."
The General really did believe that the youth was not quite in his right
mind.
The young man perceived the cold smile on the General's face, and
convulsively grasping his hand with his own manacled hands, exclaimed
despairingly:
"General! they would murder my father, they would destroy my house, my
nation!"
"Who forsooth?" inquired the General with an expression of unutterable
contempt. "These skulking loafers, eh? I will not presume to deny that
they may, perhaps, intend to do what you say, such ideas may and do
occur at times to some blockhead or other. But I do not believe that the
time will ever come for the realisation of such projects. But if anybody
should attempt to move in the matter, I solemnly assure you that at the
very first outcry he will be a dead man!"
And he tapped his sword with proud self-consciousness.
At that moment an adjutant hastily entered the room and announced that
there were suspicious gatherings of the people in the market-place and
the streets of the town. They were exclaiming loudly against the gentry
and the soldiers, and were goading one another on with incendiary
speeches. It had been found necessary to bar the gates of the town hall
against them, and the windows of an apothecary's shop had already been
smashed. Apparently they meant to give most of their attention to the
barracks and the town hall.
The General had no sooner hastened out of the corridor than he already
heard in the adjacent streets, that vague hubbub whose chaotic voice
sounds so terrifying in the ears of the faint-hearted, who know not
whether it is an alarm of fire or a hue and cry after a murderer.
On the present occasion, however, there was both fire and murder in the
sound--it was a riot.
In a distant part of the town some over-zealous guardians of public
order had set ringing the alarm-bells, whose strident semi-tones rose
above the low hideous murmur of the mob.
The General hastened into the courtyard. The soldiers were already
standing there under arms.
There was scarcely more than two hundred men there, the rest were a long
way off, forming part of the far-stretching military cordon.
This, however, was quite enough for Vertessy's purpose.
What had he to fear? It was impossible to conceive that the honest
scythe and saddle makers of the town, the peaceful citizens who had only
to do with planes and awls and shuttles, would dare to attack him
forcibly and compel him to retire before them.
Swiftly, but with the utmost _sang froid_, he made his preparations.
Half a battalion took up a position outside the gate guarding every
approach, the rest remained within the courtyard.
The rifles of the soldiers outside the gate remained unloaded.
At three rolls of a drum the remaining column also marched out into the
street.
A single word of command would suffice for subsequent tactics.
It was also considered necessary to close the gates of the neighbouring
house, and two sentries were posted outside it with loaded muskets.
All this was done in the most perfect order, there was no hurry, no
bustle.
In that house opposite dwelt the General's wife; one could reach it from
the barracks across a garden.
Vertessy had just completed his preparations when Cornelia's maid came
hastening up to him and whispered something in his ear.
For a moment a smile of delight flashed across the General's face, which
immediately afterwards, however, formed into still darker folds than
before.
Hastily transferring the command to his first lieutenant, he hastened to
his dwelling, promising to be back in a moment.
It must indeed have been a matter of importance to have constrained
Vertessy to quit the post becoming a soldier at such a moment.
He hastened as fast as he could go to his wife's bedchamber.
The curtains had been let down, in the semi-obscure alcove lay a pale
woman, seemingly a corpse which, nevertheless, was suffering the
torments of life.
Domestics were gathered round the bed, at a table sat the doctor writing
something.
Vertessy had already unfastened his sword outside so as to avoid making
a clatter. He now rushed to Cornelia's side, seized her trembling,
sweat-covered hand, and, pressing it to his lips, inquired:
"How do you feel?"
"On the threshold of death," answered the lady, and with her other arm
she drew down her husband's head towards her that she might kiss it. Her
whole face was as white as marble, and the cold sweat stood out upon her
forehead like pearly beads.
"The coming hour has secrets of its own, Vertessy," lisped the lady,
pressing Vertessy's hand in her own, "whether it be good or evil, joy or
death."
Vertessy's eyes interrogated the doctor as if he hoped for some
comforting reassurance from him.
The doctor beckoned him aside.
"She is suffering tortures," he whispered, "but she would hide it from
you."
"She may hide it in her voice, but I can tell it is so from her
breathing. Is the danger great?"
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
"Pretty much as usual. She is very nervous, and besides that, there is
something on her mind."
"What can it be?"
"It would be as well, General, if you ascertained. At such a time peace
of mind is a matter of life or death, and fear or any feeling of anxiety
might have a bad effect upon--a new life."
At the words "a new life" that involuntary gleam of joy flashed across
Vertessy's lips once more. He went back to his wife and knelt down on
her tapestried cushion.
"Cornelia, how are you?"
"In God's hands," whispered the lady, raising her glorious eyes. "God
chastises and is merciful as it seemeth Him good."
Her convulsive pressure showed Vertessy what she must be suffering.
"There is mercy with God," faintly murmured the lady once more.
Vertessy felt his heart tremble at these words. An hour before he also
had said: "With God there is mercy," and that to a man who had promised
himself a long life.
The lady turned towards him with a languid look, pressed both her
husband's hands to her breast, and looking long and painfully into his
eyes, she asked:
"Will God be merciful to me?"
"To thee, my angel?--yes!--oh yes!" stammered the General.
"And have you also been merciful to him who begged you for mercy?"
Vertessy could not meet that look, he could find no words to answer that
question.
"Vertessy! One death demands another, judgment is requited with
judgment. I am standing on the edge of the grave, do not let me die."
"What am I doing, what can I do?" said her husband with a faltering
voice.
"You see," replied his wife, winding her arm round his like a tender
creeping plant round a sturdy oak, "if you slay, I must die also. What
the condemned man in the neighbouring house suffers that I also must
endure--his terror, his despair, his death-struggle. Oh! my husband,
have pity upon me. Be merciful now to him who has offended, that I also
may find mercy with God!"
Vertessy's mind was much disturbed. And now the doctor approached him
and solemnly observed:
"General, I fancy it would not be the first instance of a capitally
condemned felon being pardoned on the plea of such a sufferer."
Vertessy regarded him abstractedly as if to beg him to proceed.
"I knew of a similar case when I was in service at the fortress of
Comorn, when a youth, who had thrice deserted the ranks, was pardoned in
consequence of a similar petition."
"And do you believe that it would do good?"
"My dear sir, when the exaltation of the nerves has reached such a
degree as this, the imagination is omnipotent, good news may give life,
bad news death. A soothing thought in such cases is worth all the drugs
in the world."
Vertessy kissed the forehead of his pale, suffering well-beloved, and
cried with a manly emphasis, which instantly inspired self-confidence:
"I will save him!"
The lady raised her trembling hands and her pale features to Heaven, her
eyes slowly closed, and a smile of joy passed over her white face.
Outside resounded the threefold roll of the drums.
The General arose, hastened to the door, tied on his sword, and rushed
towards the barracks.
The noise, the hubbub, was now quite close at hand, and he fell
a-thinking how he could best, with fair words, persuade these turbulent
citizens to go back to their homes and begin weaving linen and stitching
boots again, though he longed all the time to storm forth amongst them
and like a tempest scatter them in every direction.