XXXV. La mazzolata.

XXXV

The Mazzolata.

“Gentlemen,” said the Count of Monte Cristo as he entered, “accept all my apologies for having allowed myself to be anticipated; but in presenting myself earlier at your lodgings, I should have feared to be indiscreet. Besides, you had me told that you would come, and I held myself at your disposal.

“We have, Franz and I, a thousand thanks to offer you, Count,” said Albert; “you are truly extricating us from a great difficulty, and we were in the very act of inventing the most fantastic vehicles when your gracious invitation reached us.

“Why, my dear sirs,” replied the count, making a sign to the two young men to seat themselves on a divan, “it is the fault of that imbecile Pastrini if I left you so long in distress! He had not said a word to me of your predicament—I, who, alone and isolated as I am here, sought only an occasion to make the acquaintance of my neighbors. From the moment I learned that I could be of some service to you, you saw with what eagerness I seized the opportunity to present you my compliments.”

The two young men bowed. Franz had not yet found a single word to say; he had come to no resolution, and, as nothing indicated in the count either the wish to recognize him or the desire to be recognized by him, he did not know whether he ought, by some remark, to allude to the past, or leave time to the future to bring him new proofs. Besides, certain that it was he who had been in the box the evening before, he could not answer so positively that he who watched it was at the Colosseum; he resolved, therefore, to let things take their course without making any direct overture to the count. Moreover, he had one advantage over him: he was master of his secret, whereas, on the contrary, he could have no hold upon Franz, who had nothing to hide.

He resolved, however, to lead the conversation to a point which might, in the meantime, bring about the clearing up of certain doubts.

“Count,” he said to him, “you offered us places in your carriage and places at your windows in the Rospoli Palace; now, could you tell us how we might procure some post, as it is called in Italy, on the Piazza del Popolo?”

“Ah! yes, that is true,” said the count with a distracted air, and looking at Morcerf with sustained attention; “is there not, in the Piazza del Popolo, something like an execution?”

“Yes,” replied Franz, seeing that he had of his own accord come to the very point to which he wished to lead him.

“Wait, wait, I think I told my steward yesterday to attend to that; perhaps I may yet render you this slight service.”

He stretched out his hand toward a bell-cord, which he pulled three times.

“Have you ever concerned yourself,” he said to Franz, “with the employment of time and the means of simplifying the goings and comings of servants? I have made a study of it: when I ring once, it is for my valet; twice, for my majordomo; three times, for my steward. In this way, I lose neither a minute nor a word. See, here is our man.”

There then entered an individual of forty-five to fifty years, who appeared to Franz to resemble to a hair the smuggler who had introduced him into the grotto, but who did not seem in the least to recognize him. He saw that the word had been given.

“Monsieur Bertuccio,” said the count, “did you occupy yourself, as I ordered you yesterday, with procuring me a window on the Piazza del Popolo?”

“Yes, Excellency,” replied the steward, “but it was very late.”

“What! said the count, frowning; did I not tell you I wished to have one?”

“And Your Excellency has one, too—that which was hired by Prince Lobanieff; but I was obliged to pay a hundred….”

“That will do, that will do, Monsieur Bertuccio, spare these gentlemen all such household details; you have the window, that is all that is needed. Give the address of the house to the coachman, and stand on the staircase to conduct us: that is sufficient; go.”

The steward bowed and made a step to retire.

“Ah!” resumed the count, “do me the pleasure of asking Pastrini if he has received the *tavoletta*, and if he will send me the program of the execution.”

“That is useless,” replied Franz, drawing his notebook from his pocket; “I had those tablets under my eyes, I copied them, and here they are.”

“Very well; then, Monsieur Bertuccio, you may retire, I have no further need of you. Only let us be informed when breakfast is served.” These gentlemen, he continued, turning toward the two friends, “do me the honor of breakfasting with me?”

“But, indeed, Count,” said Albert, “that would be taking advantage.”

“Not at all, on the contrary, you do me great pleasure; you will return it all to me some day in Paris, one or the other, and perhaps both. Monsieur Bertuccio, have three covers laid.”

He took the notebook from Franz’s hands.

“We say then,” he continued in the tone in which he would have read the *Petites Affiches*, “that ‘there will be executed, today, February 22, the named Andrea Rondolo, guilty of assassination upon the person of the very respectable and venerated don César Torlini, canon of the church of Saint-Jean-de-Latran, and the named Peppino, called *Rocca Priori*, convicted of complicity with the detestable bandit Luigi Vampa and the men of his troop…’”

“Hum! ‘The first will be *mazzolato*, the second *decapitato*.’ Yes, indeed,” resumed the count, “that was how the thing was to take place at first; but I believe that since yesterday some change has occurred in the order and conduct of the ceremony.”

“Indeed!” said Franz.

“Yes, yesterday at Cardinal Rospigliosi’s, where I spent the evening, there was some talk of a sort of reprieve granted to one of the two condemned men.”

“To Andrea Rondolo?” asked Franz.

“No…” replied the count negligently (he cast a glance at the notebook as if to recall the name), “to the other—Peppino, called *Rocca Priori*. That deprives you of a guillotining, but you have the *mazzolata* left, which is a very curious punishment when one sees it for the first time, and even the second; whereas the other, which you must know besides, is too simple, too even: there is nothing unexpected. The *mandaïa* does not err, does not tremble, does not strike falsely, does not begin again thirty times like the soldier who cut off the head of the Count of Chalais, and to whom, moreover, Richelieu had perhaps recommended patience. Ah! see,” added the count in a contemptuous tone, “do not speak to me of Europeans as regards punishments; they understand nothing of them, and are truly in the infancy or rather the dotage of cruelty.”

“Indeed, Count,” replied Franz, “one would think you had made a comparative study of punishments among the different peoples of the world.”

“There are few, at least, that I have not seen,” replied the count coldly.

“And you found pleasure in assisting at those horrible spectacles?”

“My first feeling was repulsion, the second indifference, the third curiosity.”

“Curiosity! the word is terrible, do you know it?”

“Why? There is scarcely in life but one serious preoccupation; that is death—well! is it not curious to study in what different ways the soul may quit the body, and how, according to characters, temperaments, and even the customs of the country, individuals support that supreme passage from being to nothingness? As for me, I answer you one thing: it is that the more one has seen others die, the more easy it becomes to die: thus, in my opinion, death is perhaps a punishment, but is not an expiation.”

“I do not understand you well,” said Franz; “explain yourself, for I cannot tell you to what extent what you say piques my curiosity.”

“Listen,” said the count; and his face infused itself with gall, as another’s colors with blood. “If a man had caused to perish, by unheard-of tortures, amid endless torments, your father, your mother, your mistress, one of those beings, in short, who, when torn from your heart, leave there an eternal void and an ever-bleeding wound, would you believe the reparation that society accords you sufficient, because the blade of the guillotine has passed between the base of the occipital and the trapezius muscles of the murderer, and because he who made you feel years of moral suffering has experienced a few seconds of physical pain?”

“Yes, I know,” replied Franz, “human justice is insufficient as a consoler: it can shed blood in exchange for blood, that is all; one must ask of it what it can, and no more.”

“And yet I put to you there a material case,” resumed the count, “that where society, attacked in the base upon which it rests by the death of an individual, avenges death by death; but are there not millions of griefs by which the bowels of man may be torn without society concerning itself in the least, without offering him the insufficient means of vengeance of which we spoke just now? Are there not crimes for which the stake of the Turks, the troughs of the Persians, the rolled nerves of the Iroquois would be too gentle punishments, and which yet indifferent society leaves unpunished?… Answer, are there not such crimes?”

“Yes,” replied Franz, “and it is to punish them that the duel is tolerated.”

“Ah! the duel,” cried the count, “a pleasant way, upon my soul, of arriving at one’s end, when the end is vengeance! A man has taken your mistress from you, a man has seduced your wife, a man has dishonored your daughter; of a whole life, which had the right to expect from God the share of happiness He promised to every human being in creating him, he has made an existence of pain, of misery, or of infamy, and you believe yourself avenged because to this man, who has put delirium in your mind and despair in your heart, you have given a sword-thrust in the breast or lodged a bullet in the head? Come now! Not to mention that it is he who often comes triumphant from the struggle, washed in the eyes of the world and in some sort absolved by God. No, no,” continued the count, “if I ever had to avenge myself, it is not thus that I would do it.”

“Thus you disapprove of the duel? thus you would not fight a duel?” asked Albert in his turn, astonished to hear such a strange theory advanced.

“Oh! to be sure I would!” said the count. “Let us understand one another: I would fight a duel for a trifle, for an insult, for a contradiction, for a slap, and that with so much the more unconcern that, thanks to the skill I have acquired in all bodily exercises and to the slow habit I have formed of danger, I should be almost sure of killing my man. Oh! to be sure! I would fight a duel for all that; but for a slow, deep, infinite, eternal grief, I would return, if possible, a grief like that which had been done to me: eye for eye, tooth for tooth, as say the Orientals, our masters in all things, those elect of creation who have known how to make themselves a life of dreams and a paradise of realities.”

“But,” said Franz to the count, “with this theory which constitutes you judge and executioner in your own cause, it is difficult that you should keep within a measure where you eternally escape the power of the law yourself. Hatred is blind, anger is dizzy, and he who pours out vengeance risks drinking a bitter draught.”

“Yes, if he is poor and clumsy; no, if he is a millionaire and skillful. Besides, the worst that can befall him is that last punishment of which we spoke just now, that which the philanthropic French revolution substituted for quartering and the wheel. Well! what is punishment, if he has avenged himself? Truly, I am almost sorry that, according to all probability, this wretched Peppino is not *decapitato*, as they say; you would see how long it lasts, and whether it is really worth speaking of. But, upon my honor, gentlemen, we have here a singular conversation for a carnival day. How did it come about? Ah! I remember! you asked me for a place at my window; well, so be it, you shall have it; but let us sit down to table first, for here they come to announce that we are served.”

Indeed, a servant opened one of the four doors of the salon and uttered the sacramental words:

“*Al suo commodo!*”

The two young men rose and passed into the dining-room.

During breakfast, which was excellent and served with infinite refinement, Franz sought Albert’s eyes, in order to read there the impression which he did not doubt the words of their host had produced upon him; but, whether in his habitual carelessness he had not paid much attention to them, whether the concession the Count of Monte Cristo had made to him regarding the duel had reconciled him with him, whether, finally, the antecedents we have related, known to Franz alone, had doubled for him alone the effect of the count’s theories, he did not perceive that his companion was in the least preoccupied; on the contrary, he did honor to the meal like a man condemned for four or five months to Italian cookery, that is to say, one of the worst cuisines in the world. As for the count, he scarcely touched each dish; one would have said that in sitting down to table with his guests he fulfilled a simple duty of politeness, and that he awaited their departure to have some strange or particular dish served to him.

This involuntarily recalled to Franz the terror the count had inspired in the Countess G…, and the conviction in which he had left her that the count, the man he had shown her in the box opposite her, was a vampire.

At the end of breakfast, Franz drew out his watch.

“Well,” said the count to him, “what are you doing?”

“You will excuse us, Count,” replied Franz, “but we still have a thousand things to do.”

“What?”

“We have no disguises, and today disguise is obligatory.”

“Do not trouble yourselves about that. We have, I believe, on the Piazza del Popolo, a private room; I will have the costumes you will be kind enough to indicate to me carried there, and we will mask on the spot.”

“After the execution?” cried Franz.

“Doubtless, after, during, or before, as you please.”

“Facing the scaffold?”

“The scaffold forms part of the festival.”

“See here, Count, I have reflected,” said Franz; “decidedly I thank you for your kindness, but I shall content myself with accepting a place in your carriage, a place at the window of the Rospoli Palace, and I leave you free to dispose of my place at the window of the Piazza del Popolo.”

“But you are losing, I warn you, a very curious thing,” replied the count.

“You will tell me about it,” rejoined Franz, “and I am convinced that from your lips the account will impress me almost as much as the sight could. Besides, more than once already I have wished to make up my mind to assist at an execution, and I have never been able to decide; and you, Albert?”

“I,” replied the viscount, “saw Castaing executed; but I believe I was a little drunk that day. It was the day of my leaving college, and we had spent the night at I know not what tavern.”

“Besides, it is no reason, because you did not do a thing in Paris, that you should not do it abroad: when one travels, it is to instruct oneself; when one changes place, it is to see. Think then what a figure you will cut when they ask you: ‘How do they execute at Rome?’ and you answer: ‘I do not know.’ And then, they say the condemned man is an infamous rogue, a knave who killed with a fire-dog a good canon who had brought him up like his son. The devil! when one kills a man of the church, one takes a more fitting weapon than a fire-dog, especially when that man of the church is perhaps our father. If you were traveling in Spain, you would go to see the bullfights, would you not? Well, suppose it is a combat we are going to see; remember the ancient Romans of the Circus, the hunts where they killed three hundred lions and a hundred men. Remember those eighty thousand spectators who clapped their hands, those wise matrons who took their marriageable daughters there, and those charming vestals with white hands who made with the thumb a charming little sign which meant: ‘Come, no laziness! finish me that man who is three-quarters dead.’”

“Are you going, Albert?” said Franz.

“Faith, yes, my dear! I was like you, but the count’s eloquence decides me.”

“Let us go then, since you wish it,” said Franz; “but in conducting me to the Piazza del Popolo, I should like to pass through the Corso; is that possible, Count?”

“On foot, yes; in a carriage, no.”

“Well, I will go on foot.”

“Is it quite necessary that you pass through the Corso?”

“Yes, I have something to see there.”

“Well, let us pass through the Corso; we will send the carriage to wait for us on the Piazza del Popolo, by the Strada del Babuino; besides, I am not sorry either to pass through the Corso, to see if orders I have given have been executed.”

“Excellency,” said the servant, opening the door, “a man dressed as a penitent asks to speak with you.”

“Ah! yes,” said the count, “I know what it is. Gentlemen, will you step back into the salon; you will find upon the centre table some excellent Havana cigars; I will rejoin you in an instant.”

The two young men rose and went out by one door, while the count, after renewing his excuses to them, went out by the other. Albert, who was a great amateur, and who, since he had been in Italy, counted as no slight sacrifice that of being deprived of the cigars of the Café de Paris, approached the table and uttered a cry of joy on perceiving real puros.

“Well,” asked Franz of him, “what do you think of the Count of Monte Cristo?”

“What do I think of him?” said Albert, visibly astonished that his companion put such a question to him; “I think he is a charming man, who does the honors of his house marvelously, who has seen much, studied much, reflected much, who is, like Brutus, of the Stoic school, and,” he added, lovingly puffing a smoke which spiraled toward the ceiling, “who above all possesses excellent cigars.”

Such was Albert’s opinion of the count; now, as Franz knew that Albert pretended to form an opinion on men and things only after mature reflection, he did not attempt to change his.

“But,” said he, “have you noticed a singular thing?”

“What?”

“The attention with which he looked at you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

Albert reflected.

“Ah!” said he, sighing, “nothing astonishing in that. I have been absent from Paris nearly a year; I must have clothes from another world. The count will have taken me for a provincial; undeceive him, dear friend, and tell him, I beg you, at the first opportunity, that it is not so.”

Franz smiled; an instant after, the count re-entered.

“Here I am, gentlemen,” said he, “and wholly yours; the orders are given; the carriage goes its way to the Piazza del Popolo, and we will go ours, if you please, by the Corso. Take some of those cigars, Monsieur de Morcerf.”

“Faith, with great pleasure,” said Albert, “for your Italian cigars are even worse than those of the régie. When you come to Paris, I will return you all this.”

“I do not refuse; I count upon going there some day, and, since you permit it, I will knock at your door. Come, gentlemen, come, we have no time to lose; it is half-past twelve; let us start.”

All three went down. Then the coachman took his last orders from his master, and followed the Via del Babuino, while the pedestrians went up by the Piazza di Spagna and the Via Frattina, which led them straight between the Fiano Palace and the Rospoli Palace.

All Franz’s glances were for the windows of the latter palace; he had not forgotten the signal agreed upon in the Colosseum between the man in the cloak and the Transteverine.

“Which are your windows?” he asked the count in the most natural tone he could assume.

“The three last,” replied he with a negligence that was not affected; for he could not guess with what aim this question was put to him.

Franz’s eyes rapidly turned to the three windows. The side windows were hung with yellow damask, and the middle one with white damask with a red cross.

The man in the cloak had kept his word to the Transteverine, and there was no longer any doubt: the man in the cloak was indeed the count.

The three windows were still empty.

Moreover, on all sides preparations were making; chairs were being placed, scaffolds erected, windows draped. Masks could not appear, carriages could not circulate, until the sound of the bell; but one felt the masks behind all the windows, the carriages behind all the doors.

Franz, Albert, and the count continued to descend the Corso. As they approached the Piazza del Popolo, the crowd grew denser, and above the heads of that crowd one saw two things rising: the obelisk surmounted by a cross which marks the centre of the square, and, in front of the obelisk, exactly at the point of visual correspondence of the three streets del Babuino, del Corso, and di Ripetta, the two upper beams of the scaffold, between which shone the rounded iron of the *mandaïa*.

At the corner of the street they found the count’s steward, who was waiting for his master.

The window hired at that exorbitant price, no doubt, of which the count had not wished to inform his guests, belonged to the second floor of the great palace, situated between the Via del Babuino and the Monte Pincio; it was, as we have said, a sort of dressing-closet opening into a bedchamber; by closing the door of the bedchamber, the tenants of the closet were at home; upon the chairs had been laid Pierrot costumes of white and blue satin, of the most elegant.

“As you left me the choice of costumes,” said the count to the two friends, “I have had these prepared for you. First, they are what will be most worn this year; next, they are the most convenient for confetti, inasmuch as the flour does not show on them.”

Franz heard the count’s words very imperfectly, and perhaps did not appreciate at its worth this new politeness; for all his attention was attracted by the spectacle presented by the Piazza del Popolo, and by the terrible instrument which at that hour formed its principal ornament.

It was the first time Franz had seen a guillotine; we say guillotine, for the Roman *mandaïa* is cut almost upon the same pattern as our instrument of death. The knife, which has the form of a crescent that would cut by the convex part, falls from less high—that is all.

Two men, seated on the swinging plank upon which the condemned is laid, were breakfasting meanwhile, and were eating, as far as Franz could see, bread and sausages; one of them lifted the plank, drew from it a flask of wine, took a draught, and passed the flask to his comrade; these two men were the executioner’s assistants!

At this single sight, Franz had felt the sweat start from the roots of his hair.

The condemned men, conveyed the evening before from the Carceri Nuove to the little church of Santa Maria del Popolo, had passed the night, each assisted by two priests, in a death-chamber closed with a grating, before which sentinels paced, relieved hour by hour.

A double hedge of carabineers placed on each side of the church door extended to the scaffold, around which it curved, leaving free a path some ten feet wide, and around the guillotine a space of about a hundred paces in circumference. All the rest of the square was paved with heads of men and women. Many women held their children on their shoulders. These children, who rose above the crowd by the whole chest, were admirably placed.

The Monte Pincio seemed a vast amphitheatre of which all the tiers had been loaded with spectators; the balconies of the two churches which form the angle of the Via del Babuino and the Via di Ripetta overflowed with privileged curious ones; the steps of the peristyles seemed a moving and motley wave which an incessant tide pushed toward the portico: each asperity of the wall that could give place to a man had its living statue.

What the count said is then true, that which is most curious in life is the spectacle of death.

And yet, instead of the silence which the solemnity of the spectacle seemed to command, a great noise rose from that crowd, a noise composed of laughter, hooting, and joyful cries; it was evident, moreover, as the count had said, that this execution was nothing else, for all the people, than the beginning of the carnival.

Suddenly this noise ceased as if by enchantment; the door of the church had just opened.

A brotherhood of penitents, each member of whom was clothed in a gray sack pierced only at the eyes, and held a lighted taper in his hand, appeared first; at the head marched the chief of the brotherhood.

Behind the penitents came a man of tall stature. This man was naked, except for a linen breech-cloth to the left side of which was attached a large knife hidden in its sheath; he carried upon his right shoulder a heavy iron mass. This man was the executioner.

He had, moreover, sandals attached to the lower leg by cords.

Behind the executioner marched, in the order in which they were to be executed, first Peppino and then Andrea.

Each was accompanied by two priests.

Neither had his eyes bandaged.

Peppino walked with a rather firm step; no doubt he had had notice of what was preparing for him.

Andrea was supported under each arm by a priest.

Both from time to time kissed the crucifix which the confessor presented to them.

At this sight alone, Franz felt his legs fail him; he looked at Albert. He was pale as his shirt, and by a mechanical movement he threw far from him his cigar, though he had smoked but half of it.

The count alone appeared impassive. There was even more: a slight red tinge seemed desirous of piercing the livid pallor of his cheeks.

His nostrils dilated like those of a ferocious animal that scents blood, and his lips, slightly parted, showed his white teeth, small and sharp like those of a jackal.

And yet, despite all that, his face had an expression of smiling gentleness which Franz had never seen in him; his black eyes especially were admirable for meekness and velvet.

Meanwhile the two condemned men continued to advance toward the scaffold, and as they drew near one could distinguish the features of their faces. Peppino was a fine fellow of four-and-twenty to six-and-twenty years, with a complexion tanned by the sun, and a free and wild glance. He carried his head high, and seemed to scent the wind to see from what side his deliverer would come to him.

Andrea was stout and short: his face, basely cruel, indicated no age; he might, however, have been about thirty. In prison, he had let his beard grow. His head fell back upon one of his shoulders, his legs bent under him: his whole being seemed to obey a mechanical movement in which his will was already no more.

“It seems to me,” said Franz to the count, “that you announced to me there would be but one execution.”

“I told you the truth,” he replied coldly.

“Yet here are two condemned men.”

“Yes; but of these two condemned men, one touches death, and the other has yet long years to live.”

“It seems to me that if the pardon is to come, there is no time to lose.”

“So here it comes; look,” said the Count.

Indeed, at the moment Peppino arrived at the foot of the *mandaïa*, a penitent, who seemed to be late, pierced the hedge without the soldiers opposing his passage, and, advancing toward the chief of the brotherhood, handed him a paper folded in four.

Peppino’s ardent gaze had lost none of these details; the chief of the brotherhood unfolded the paper, read it, and raised his hand.

“The Lord be blessed and His Holiness be praised!” said he in a loud and intelligible voice. “There is a pardon of life for one of the condemned.”

“Pardon!” cried the people with a single cry; “there is pardon!”

At this word of pardon, Andrea seemed to bound and raised his head.

“Pardon for whom?” he cried.

Peppino remained motionless, mute and panting.

“There is pardon of the penalty of death for Peppino Rocca Priori,” said the chief of the brotherhood.

And he passed the paper to the captain commanding the carabineers, who, after reading it, returned it to him.

“Pardon for Peppino!” cried Andrea, entirely roused from the state of torpor in which he seemed plunged; “why pardon for him and not for me? we were to die together; I was promised he should die before me; they have no right to make me die alone; I will not have it!”

And he tore himself from the arms of the two priests, writhing, howling, roaring, and making senseless efforts to break the cords that bound his hands.

The executioner made a sign to his two assistants, who leaped down from the scaffold and came to seize the condemned man.

“What is the matter?” asked Franz of the count.

For, as all this passed in Roman patois, he had not very well understood.

“What is the matter?” said the count; “do you not understand well? It is that this human creature who is about to die is furious that his fellow does not die with him, and that, if they let him, he would tear him with his nails and teeth rather than let him enjoy the life of which he is about to be deprived. O men! men! race of crocodiles!” as Karl Moor says, cried the count, extending both fists toward all that crowd, “how well I recognize you there, and how in all times you are worthy of yourselves!”

Indeed, Andrea and the two assistants of the executioner rolled in the dust, the condemned man still crying: “He must die, I wish him to die! They have no right to kill me alone!”

“Look, look,” continued the count, seizing each of the two young men by the hand, “look, for, upon my soul, it is curious; there is a man who was resigned to his fate, who walked to the scaffold, who was going to die like a coward, it is true, but who was going to die, after all, without resistance and without recrimination: do you know what gave him some strength? do you know what consoled him? do you know what made him take his punishment in patience? It is that another shared his anguish; it is that another was going to die like him; it is that another was going to die before him! Lead two sheep to the butcher’s, two oxen to the slaughter-house, and make one of them understand that his companion will not die, the sheep will bleat with joy, the ox will low with pleasure—but man, man whom God made in His image, man to whom God imposed as first, as only, as supreme law, the love of his neighbor, man to whom God gave a voice to express his thought, what will be his first cry when he learns that his comrade is saved? a blasphemy. Honor to man, this masterpiece of nature, this king of creation!”

And the count burst into laughter, but a terrible laughter which indicated that he must have suffered horribly to have come to laugh thus.

Meanwhile the struggle continued, and it was something frightful to see. The two valets carried Andrea to the scaffold; all the people had taken part against him, and twenty thousand voices cried with a single cry: “Death! death!”

Franz threw himself back; but the count seized his arm and held him before the window.

“What are you doing?” said he to him; “feeling pity? it is, faith, well placed! If you heard the mad dog cry, you would take your gun, you would throw yourself into the street, you would kill without mercy, point-blank, the poor beast, who, after all, would be guilty only of having been bitten by another dog, and of returning what was done to it: and see, you have pity on a man whom no other man has bitten, and who yet has killed his benefactor, and who now, unable to kill because his hands are tied, wishes by all means to see his fellow-prisoner, his companion in misfortune, die! No, no, look, look.”

The recommendation had become almost useless; Franz was as if fascinated by the horrible spectacle. The two valets had carried the condemned man upon the scaffold, and there, despite his efforts, his bites, his cries, they had forced him to kneel. During this time, the executioner had placed himself sideways and the mass at rest; then, at a sign, the two assistants drew aside. The condemned man tried to rise, but before he had time, the mass fell upon his left temple; a dull, muffled noise was heard, the patient fell like an ox, face to the ground, then, by a rebound, turned upon his back. Then the executioner let fall his mass, drew the knife from his belt, with a single stroke opened his throat, and, immediately mounting upon his belly, began to knead it with his feet.

At each pressure, a jet of blood sprang from the condemned man’s neck.

This time, Franz could hold out no longer; he threw himself back, and went to fall upon a chair, half-fainting.

Albert, his eyes shut, remained standing, but clutching the window-curtains.

The count was standing and triumphant like the evil angel.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”