Your excellent sister has turned pious, repents of her own sins, and curses her mother!"
Without making any reply to this unnatural speech, Martial approached Calabash, whose dying agonies seemed to have commenced, and, regarding her with deep compa.s.sion, said:
"My poor sister! Alas, it is now too late to recall the past!"
"It is never too late to turn coward, it seems!" cried the widow, with savage excitement. "Oh, what a race you are! Happily Nicholas has escaped; Francois and Amandine will slip through your fingers; they have already imbibed vice enough, and want and misery will finish them!"
"Oh, Martial," groaned forth Calabash, "for the love of G.o.d, take care of those two poor children, lest they come to such an end as mother"s and mine!"
"He may watch over them as much as he likes," cried the widow, with settled hatred in her looks, "vice and dest.i.tution will have greater effect than his words, and some of these days they will avenge their father, mother, and sister!"
"Your horrible expectations, mother, will never be fulfilled," replied the indignant Martial; "neither my young brother, sister, nor self have anything to fear from want. La Louve saved the life of the young girl Nicholas tried to drown, and the relations of the young person offered us either a large sum of money or a smaller sum and some land at Algiers; we preferred the latter, and to-morrow we quit Europe, with the children, for ever."
"Is that absolutely true?" asked the widow of Martial, in a tone of angry surprise.
"Mother, when did I ever tell you a falsehood?"
"You are doing so now to try and put me into a pa.s.sion!"
"What, displeased to learn that your children are provided for?"
"Yes, to find that my young wolves are to be turned into lambs, and to hear that the blood of father, mother, and sister have no prospect of being avenged!"
"Do not talk so--at a moment like this!"
"I have murdered, and am murdered in my turn,--the account is even, at any rate."
"Mother, mother, let me beseech you to repent ere you die!"
Again a peal of fiendish laughter burst from the pallid lips of the condemned woman.
"For thirty years," cried she, "have I lived in crime; would you have me believe that thirty years" guilt is to be repented of in three days, with the mind disturbed and distracted by the near approach of death?
No, no, three days cannot effect such wonders; and I tell you, when my head falls its last expression will be rage and hatred!"
"Brother, brother," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Calabash, whose brain began to wander, "help, help! Take me from hence," moaned she in an expiring voice; "they are coming to fetch me--to kill me! Oh, hide me, dear brother, hide me, and I will love you ever more!"
"Will you hold your tongue?" cried the widow, exasperated at the weakness betrayed by her daughter. "Will you be silent? Oh, you base, you disgraceful creature! And to think that I should be obliged to call myself your parent!"
"Mother," exclaimed Martial, nearly distracted by this horrid scene, "will you tell me why you sent for me?"
"Because I thought to give you heart and hatred; but he who has not the one cannot entertain the other. Go, coward, go!"
At this moment a loud sound of many footsteps was heard in the corridor; the old soldier looked at his watch.
A rich ray of the golden brightness, which marked the rising of that day"s sun, found its way through the loopholes in the walls, and shed a flood of light into the very midst of the wretched cell, rendered now completely illumined by means of the opening of the door at the opposite end of the pa.s.sage to that in which the condemned cell was situated. In the midst of this blaze of day appeared two gaolers, each bearing a chair; an officer also made his appearance, saying to the widow in a voice of sympathy:
"Madame, the hour has arrived."
The mother arose on the instant, erect and immovable, while Calabash uttered the most piercing cries. Then four more persons entered the cell; four of the number, who were very shabbily dressed, bore in their hands packets of fine but very strong cord. The taller man of the party was dressed in black, with a large cravat; he handed a paper to the officer. This individual was the executioner, and the paper a receipt signifying his having received two females for the purpose of guillotining them. The man then took sole charge of these unhappy creatures, and, from that moment, was responsible for them.
To the wild terror and despair which had first seized Calabash, now succeeded a kind of stupefaction; and so nearly insensible was she that the a.s.sistant executioners were compelled to seat her on her bed, and to support her when there; her firmly closed jaws scarcely enabled her to utter a sound, but her hollow eyes rolled vacantly in their sockets, her chin fell listlessly on her breast, and, but for the support of the two men, she would have fallen forwards a lifeless, senseless ma.s.s.
After having bestowed a last embrace on his wretched sister, Martial stood petrified with terror, unable to speak or move, and as though perfectly spellbound by the horrible scene before him.
The cool audacity of the widow did not for an instant forsake her; with head erect, and firm, collected manner, she a.s.sisted in taking off the strait-waistcoat she had worn, and which had hitherto fettered her movements; this removed, she appeared in an old black stuff dress.
"Where shall I place myself?" asked she, in a clear, steady voice.
"Be good enough to sit down upon one of those chairs," said the executioner, pointing to the seats arranged at the entrance of the dungeon.
With unfaltering step, the widow prepared to follow the directions given her, but as she pa.s.sed her daughter she said, in a voice that betokened some little emotion:
"Kiss me, my child!"
But as the sound of her mother"s voice reached her ear, Calabash seemed suddenly to wake up from her lethargy, she raised her head, and, with a wild and almost frenzied cry, exclaimed:
"Away! Leave me! And if there be a h.e.l.l, may it receive you!"
"My child," repeated the widow, "let us embrace for the last time!"
"Do not approach me!" cried the distracted girl, violently repulsing her mother; "you have been my ruin in this world and the next!"
"Then forgive me, ere I die!"
"Never, never!" exclaimed Calabash; and then, totally exhausted by the effort she had made, she sank back in the arms of the a.s.sistants.
A cloud pa.s.sed over the hitherto stern features of the widow, and a moisture was momentarily visible on her glowing eyeb.a.l.l.s. At this instant she encountered the pitying looks of her son. After a trifling hesitation, during which she seemed to be undergoing some powerful internal conflict, she said:
"And you?"
Sobbing violently, Martial threw himself into his mother"s arms.
"Enough!" said the widow, conquering her emotion, and withdrawing herself from the close embrace of her son; "I am keeping this gentleman waiting," pointing to the executioner; then, hurrying towards a chair, she resolutely seated herself, and the gleam of maternal sensibility she had exhibited was for ever extinguished.
"Do not stay here," said the old soldier, approaching Martial with an air of kindness. "Come this way," continued he, leading him, while Martial, stupefied by horror, followed him mechanically.
The almost expiring Calabash having been supported to a chair by the two a.s.sistants, one sustained her all but inanimate form, while the other tied her hands behind with fine but excessively strong whipcord, knotted into the most inextricable meshes, while with a cord of the same description he secured her feet, allowing her just so much liberty as would enable her to proceed slowly to her last destination. The widow having borne a similar pinioning with the most imperturbable composure, the executioner, drawing from his pocket a pair of huge scissors, said to her with considerable civility:
"Be good enough to stoop your head, madame."
Yielding immediate obedience to the request, the widow said:
"We have been good customers to you; you have had my husband in your hands, and now you have his wife and daughter!"
Without making any reply, the executioner began to cut the long gray hairs of the prisoner very close, especially at the nape of the neck.
"This makes the third time in my life," continued the widow, with a dismal smile, "that I have had my head dressed by a professor: when I took my first communion the white veil was arranged; then on my marriage, when the orange-flowers were placed there; and upon the present occasion; upon my word, I hardly know which became me most. You cannot guess what I am thinking of?" resumed the widow, addressing the executioner, after having again contemplated her daughter.
But the man made her no sort of answer, and no sound was heard but that of the scissors, and the sort of convulsive and hysterical sob that occasionally escaped from Calabash.