"Ay! mother, it is frightful; but I warned you of it, alas!--I told you."
The widow bit her pale lips with rage; her son did not comprehend her; she resumed: "They are going to kill us, as they killed your father."
"Alas! I can do nothing--it is finished. Now, what would you have me do?
Why did you not listen to me--you and sister? You would not have been here."
"Oh! it is so," answered the widow, with her habitual and savage irony; "you find it all right, do you?"
"Mother!"
"Now you are satisfied; you can say, without a lie, that your mother is dead; you shall no longer blush for her."
"If I were a bad son," answered Martial, quickly, shocked at the unjust harshness of his mother, "I should not be here."
"You came from curiosity."
"I come to obey you."
"Oh! if I had listened to you, Martial, instead of listening to my mother, I should not be here," cried Calabash, in a heart-rending voice, and yielding at length to her anguish and terror, which, until now (through the influence of her mother), she had restrained. "It is your fault: I curse you, my mother!"
"She repents--she curses me! you must be delighted now!" said the widow to her son, with a burst of diabolical laughter.
Without replying to her, Martial approached Calabash, whose agony continued, and said to her, with compa.s.sion, "Poor sister! it is too late now."
"Never too late to be a coward!" cried the mother, with fury. "Oh! what a race! what a race! Happily Nicholas has escaped; happily Francois and Amandine will escape you. They have already the seeds of vice: poverty will cause them to grow!"
"Oh, Martial! watch well over them, or they will end like my mother and myself. They will also lose their heads," cried Calabash, uttering a hollow groan.
"He will do well to watch over them," cried the widow, vehemently; "vice and misery will be stronger than he, and some day they will avenge father, mother, and sister."
"Your horrible hope will not be realized, mother!" answered Martial, indignantly. "Neither they nor I shall ever more have misery to fear. La Louve saved the young girl whom Nicholas wished to drown, the relations of this girl have proposed to give us plenty of money, or less money and some lands in Algiers. We have preferred the land. There is some danger, but that suits us. To-morrow we leave with the children, and never return."
"Is what you say true?" asked the widow, in a tone of irritated surprise.
"I never told a falsehood."
"You do now, to drive me mad."
"Why? because the welfare of your children is secured?"
"Yes; of the wolfs cubs you would make lambs. The blood of your father, your sister, mine, will not be avenged."
"At this moment, do not talk thus."
"I have killed--they kill me. We are even."
"Mother, repentance."
The widow shouted with laughter.
"For thirty years I have lived in crime, and to repent for thirty years they give me three days, and death at the end of them. Do you think I have time? No, no; when my head falls, it will gnash its teeth with rage and hatred."
"Brother, help--take me from hence; they are coming," murmured Calabash, in a suffocating voice, for the poor creature began to be delirious.
"Will you hush?" said the widow, exasperated by the weakness of Calabash, "will you hush? Oh! the wretch! and she _my_ daughter! pah!"
"Mother! mother!" cried Martial, tortured by this horrible scene, "why did you send for me?"
"Because I thought to give you a heart and revenge: but who has not the one has not the other, coward!"
"My mother!"
"Coward, I say!"
At this moment a tramp of footsteps was heard in the corridor. The veteran looked at his watch, and stood up. The rising sun, dazzling and radiant, shot suddenly a golden beam of light through the grated window of the corridor opposite the door of the dungeon. This door was thrown open, and two keepers appeared, bringing two chairs; then the jailer came, and said to the widow, in an agitated voice, "Madame, it is time."
The widow stood up, impa.s.sible; Calabash uttered piercing screams. Four men entered. Three of them, roughly clad, held in their hands small coils of very fine but strong cord. The tallest of these four men, neatly dressed in black, wearing a round hat and a white cravat, handed a paper to the jailer. This man was the executioner. The paper was a receipt for two women fit to be guillotined. The executioner took possession of these two of G.o.d"s creatures; from that time he was answerable.
To the frightful despair of Calabash had succeeded a helpless torpor. Two of the a.s.sistants were obliged to seat her on her bed, and to sustain her.
Her jaws, clinched by convulsions, hardly allowed her to utter some unmeaning words; she rolled around in vacancy her dull and almost sightless eyes; her chin fell upon her breast, and without the a.s.sistance of the two deputies, her body would have sunk to the ground like an inert ma.s.s.
Martial (after having for a long time embraced this unfortunate being) alarmed, not daring nor able to move a step, and as if fascinated by the scene, remained immovable. The brazen hardihood of the widow did not forsake her; with her head erect and thrown back, she a.s.sisted to take off the waistcoat, which impeded her movements. It fell to the ground, and she remained in her old dress of black woolen.
"Where must I place myself?" she asked in a firm voice.
"Have the kindness to seat yourself in one of these two chairs," said the executioner, pointing to them.
The door being left open, several of the keepers, the governor of the prison, and some privileged persons, were seen standing in the corridor.
The widow walked with a firm and bold step to the place indicated, pa.s.sing near her daughter, when she stopped, and said in a voice slightly broken:
"Daughter, kiss me!"
At the voice, Calabash was aroused from her apathy, drew up on her seat, and with a gesture of malediction, she cried, "If there is eternal fire, descend into it, accursed."
"My child, embrace me!" said the widow again, making a step toward her daughter.
"Do not approach me! you have ruined me!" murmured the unfortunate, throwing out her hands as if to repulse her mother.
"Forgive me!"
"No, no!" said Calabash, in a convulsed voice; and this effort having exhausted her strength, she fell back, almost without consciousness, into the arms of the a.s.sistants.
A shade pa.s.sed over the impa.s.sible face of the widow; for a moment her dry and burning eyes became moistened. At this instant she met the eyes of her son. After a moment"s hesitation, and as if she yielded to the effect of an inward struggle, she said to him, "And you?"
Martial threw himself sobbing into the arms of his mother.
"Enough!" said the widow, overcoming her emotion, and disengaging herself from the embraces of her son. "He is waiting," she added, pointing to the executioner.
Then she walked rapidly toward the chair, where she resolutely seated herself. The spark of maternal sensibility, which had for a moment lighted up the dark recesses of this corrupted heart, was extinguished forever.