At Bicetre, a gloomy corridor, lighted at intervals by grated windows, or kind of air-holes just above the level of the courtyard, leads to the condemned cell. This dungeon received its light only from a large wicket in the upper part of the door, which opened into the dark passage spoken of above. In this cell, with its damp and moldy walls, its floor paved with stones as cold as those of the sepulcher, were confined Widow Martial and her daughter Calabash. The sharp face of the convict's widow, stern and immovable, stood out in bold relief, like a marble mask, from the midst of the obscurity which existed in the dungeon.

Deprived of the use of her hands, for under her black dress she wore a strait-jacket, she asked that her cap might be taken off, complaining of great heat in the head. Her gray hair fell disheveled upon her shoulders. Seated on the edge of the bed, her feet on the ground, she looked fixedly on her daughter, Calabash, who was separated from her by the width of the dungeon. She, half reclining, and also wearing a strait-jacket had her back against the wall. Her head was hanging on her breast, her eyes fixed, her respiration broken. Save a slight convulsive movement, which from time to time agitated her under jaw, her features appeared calm, but of livid paleness. At the further end of the dungeon, near the door, under the open wicket, a veteran with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, with a rough and swarthy face, a bald head, and long gray mustachios, is seated on a chair. He ought never to lose sight of the condemned.

"It is very cold here! and yet my eyes burn; and then I am thirsty—always thirsty," said Calabash, at the end of a few moments. "Some water, if you please, sir."

The old soldier rose and took from a bench a tin pail of water, filled a tumbler, and gave her a drink.

After having drunk greedily, she said, "thank you, sir."

"Will you drink?" asked the soldier of the widow, who shook her head in the negative.

"What o'clock is it, sir?" said Calabash.

"It will soon be half-past four."

"In three hours!" resumed Calabash, with a sardonic and sinister smile, alluding to the time of her execution, "in three hours—" She dared not finish.

The widow shrugged her shoulders. Her daughter comprehended her thoughts, and replied, "You have more courage than I, mother, do you never falter—"

"Never."

"I know it well—I see it clearly. Your face is as tranquil as if you were seated by the fire of our kitchen, sewing. Oh! those good days are so far off—so far——"

"Parrot!"

"It is true; instead of resting there and thinking, without saying anything, I would rather talk—I would rather——"

"Shake off your thoughts, coward!"

"Even if it should be so, mother, every one has not your courage. I have done all I could to imitate you. I have not listened to the priest, because you did not wish it. And yet I may have been wrong—for, in fine," added the condemned girl, shuddering, "hereafter—who knows? and hereafter will be very soon."

"In three hours."

"How coldly you say that, mother! And yet it is true; we are here, both of us, not sick, not wishing to die, and yet in three hours——"

"In three hours you will have died like a true Martial. You will have seen black, that's all; be bold, daughter."

"It is not right for you to talk to your daughter in that way," said the old soldier, in a slow and grave tone; "you would have done much better to have allowed her to speak with the ordinary."

The widow shrugged her shoulders with savage contempt, and, without turning her head, she continued: "Courage, daughter; we will show them that women have more firmness than these men, with their priests—the cowards!"

"Commandant Leblon was the bravest of the third regiment of Chasseurs; I saw him covered with wounds in the breach of Saragossa, and he died making the sign of the cross," said the veteran.

"You were his chaplain, then?" demanded the widow, with a savage burst of laughter.

"I was his soldier," answered the veteran, mildly. "It was only to let you know that one can pray when about to die, without being a coward."

Calabash looked attentively at this man with the bronzed visage, a perfect type of the soldier of the Empire; a deep scar furrowed his left cheek, and was lost in his large mustache. The simple words of this veteran, whose features, wounds, and red ribbon announced calm and tried bravery, profoundly struck the widow's daughter.

She had refused the consolation of the priest, more from shame and fear of her mother, than from callousness. In her restless and dying thoughts, she compared the impious jesting of her mother with the piety of the soldier. Strong in this testimony, she thought she could listen without cowardice to those religious instincts which even intrepid men had obeyed.

"In truth," said she, with anguish, "why did I not wish to hear the priest? there is no weakness in that. Besides, it would keep off my thoughts, and then, hereafter, who knows?"

"Again!" said the widow, in a tone of withering scorn. "Time is wanting—it is a pity—you would be religious. The arrival of your brother Martial will finish your conversion. But he will not come; the honest man, the good son."

Just as the widow pronounced these last words the door of the prison opened.

"Already!" cried Calabash with a convulsive start. "Oh! they have put the clock ahead! They have deceived us!"

"So much the better—if the watch of the executioner is too fast—your follies will not dishonor me."

"Madame," said the prison warder, with that kind of commiseration which forebodes death, "your son is here; will you see him?"

"Yes," answered the widow, without turning her head.

"Enter, sir," said the warder. Martial entered.

The veteran remained in the dungeon, the door of which was left open as a matter of precaution. Through the gloom of the corridor, half lighted by the increasing day and by a lamp, several soldiers were seen sitting or standing. Martial was as pale as his mother; his countenance expressed deep and profound anguish, his knees trembled under him. In spite of the crimes of this woman, in spite of the aversion that she had always shown for him, he had thought it a duty to obey her last wishes. As soon as he entered the dungeon, the widow cast on him a searching look, and said to him in a hollow and angry voice, as if to awaken in her son a feeling of revenge, "You see what they are going to do with your mother and your sister!"

"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 compassion, "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 FranÇois 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, impassible; 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 God's creatures; from that time he was answerable.

To the frightful despair of Calabash had succeeded a helpless torpor. Two of the assistants 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 assistance of the two deputies, her body would have sunk to the ground like an inert mass. 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 assisted 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, passing 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 assistants.

A shade passed over the impassible 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.

"Sir," said the veteran to Martial, approaching him with interest, "do not remain here. Come, come."

Martial, stupefied, with horror and alarm, mechanically followed the soldier. Two of the assistants had carried the wretched Calabash to the other chair; one of them sustained the almost lifeless body, while the other, by means of whip-cord, exceedingly fine but very strong, tied her hands behind her back, and also fastened her feet together by the ankles, allowing slack enough to enable her walk slowly. The executioner and his other assistant performed the same operation on the widow, whose features underwent no alteration; only from time to time she coughed slightly. When the condemned were thus prevented from offering any resistance, the executioner, drawing from his pocket a long pair of scissors, said to her with marked politeness, "Have the goodness to bend your head."

The widow obeyed, saying: "We are good customers; you have had my husband; now here are his wife and daughter."

Without replying, the executioner gathered in his left hand the long gray hair of the condemned, and commenced cutting it short—very short, particularly about the neck.

"This makes the third time that I have had my hair dressed in my lifetime," said the widow, with a horrible laugh: "the day of my first communion, when they put on my veil; the day of my marriage, when they put on my orange blossoms; and now to-day—the head-dress of death."

The executioner remained silent. The hair of the condemned being thick and coarse, the operation was so long in being performed, that Calabash's lay strewed upon the ground before her mother's was half finished.

"You do not know of what I am thinking?" said the widow, after having looked at her daughter again.

The executioner continued to keep silent. Nothing could be heard but the snipping of the scissors and the kind of rattling which from time to time escaped from the throat of Calabash. At this moment was seen in the corridor a priest of venerable appearance, who approached the governor, and spoke a few words to him in a low tone. The chaplain came to make a last effort to soften the heart of the widow.

"I think," resumed the widow at the end of some moments, and seeing that the executioner did not reply, "I think that at five years old, my daughter, whose head is to be cut off, was the handsomest child that I ever saw. She had flaxen hair and rosy cheeks. Then, who would have told me that,—" After a pause, she cried, with a burst of laughter, and an expression impossible to be described, "What a comedy is fate!"

At this moment the last locks of the condemned fell upon her shoulders.

"It is finished, madame,' said the executioner, politely.

"Thank you. I recommend to you my son Nicholas," said the widow; "you will dress his hair some of these days." A keeper came and whispered a few words to her.

"No; I have already said no," answered she, roughly. The priest heard these words, raised his eyes toward heaven, clasped his hands, and disappeared.

"Madame, we are going to set out; will you take something?" said the executioner, obsequiously.

"Thank you; to-night I will take a drink of sawdust."

And the widow after this new sarcasm stood up erect. Although her step was firm and resolute, the executioner obligingly wished to assist her; she made a gesture of impatience and said, in a harsh and imperious tone:

"Do not touch me; I have a firm step and a good eye. On the scaffold you will see I have a good voice, and if I speak words of repentance."

And the widow, leaving the dungeon, escorted by the executioner and an assistant, entered the corridor. The two other assistants were obliged to carry Calabash in a chair; she was dying. After having traversed the whole length of the corridor, the funeral procession ascended the same staircase, which conducted to a court on the outside. The sun, with its warm and golden light, gilded the tops of the high white walls which surrounded the court, and strangely contrasted with the pure blue of the sky. The air was soft and balmy; never was a spring morning more smiling, more magnificent. In this court were seen a detachment of police, a cab, and a long, narrow vehicle, painted yellow, drawn by three post horses, which neighed gayly, shaking little bells on their harness. This vehicle was entered from behind like an omnibus. This was the cause of a last joke from the widow.

"The conductor will not say full?" said she, as she mounted the step as lightly as the cord which confined her ankles would allow.

Calabash, expiring, sustained by an assistant, was placed in the carriage opposite her mother, and the door was closed. The hackney-coachman had fallen asleep; the executioner shook him.

"Excuse me, citizen," said he, descending hastily from his seat; "but a night in Mid-Lent is rough. I had just taken to Vendanges de Bourgogne a load of maskers, who were singing, 'La mÉre Godichon,' when you engaged me by the hour. I—"

"Enough. Follow this vehicle to the Boulevard St. Jacques."

"Excuse me, citizen. An hour ago I was going to the 'Vendanges;' now to the guillotine! That proves that, as the saying is, there are queer ups and downs in life!"

The two vehicles, preceded and followed by the gendarmes, left Bicetre and took the road to Paris.

* * * * *

We have presented the picture of the toilet of the condemned in all its frightful reality, because it seems to us that we can derive from it powerful arguments. Against punishment of death. Against the manner in which it is applied. Against the effects which must be expected from such an example given to the populace.

The toilet, although divested of that solemnity, at once imposing and religious, which ought, at least to surround all the acts of the highest punishment known to the laws, is the most impressive of all the ceremonies attending the execution of a criminal, and yet it is concealed from the multitude.

In Spain, on the contrary, the condemned remains exposed during three days in a "chapelle ardente;" his coffin is continually before his eyes; the priests say the prayers for the dying; the bells of the church night and day ring a funeral knell.

It will be conceived that this kind of initiation to death may alarm the most hardened criminals, and inspire with salutary terror the crowd which surrounds the "chapelle mortuaire."

Then the day of the execution is a day of public mourning; the bells of all the churches toll; the condemned is slowly conducted to the scaffold, with mournful and imposing pomp; his coffin is carried before him; the priests, walking at his side, chant the prayers for the dead; then comes the religious brotherhood; and, finally, the mendicant friars, asking from the crowd money for prayers for the repose of the culprit's soul. The crowd never remains deaf to this appeal. Without doubt, all this is frightful, but it is logical and imposing. It shows that they do not cut off from this world a creature of God, full of life and strength, as they would slaughter an ox. It causes the multitude to reflect (who always judge of the crime by the magnitude of the punishment) that homicide is a fearful offense, since its punishment disturbs, afflicts, and sets in commotion a whole city. Again, this dreadful spectacle may cause serious reflections, inspire salutary alarms; and that which is barbarous in this human sacrifice, is at least hidden by the awful majesty of its execution. But, we ask, the events taking place exactly as we have described them (and sometimes even less seriously), what kind of an example can it afford? Early in the morning, the condemned is bound and thrown into a closed carriage; the postilion whips up his horses, reaches the scaffold; the ax descends, and a head falls into a basket, in the midst of the most atrocious jeerings of the vilest of a vile populace! Finally, in a hasty and secret execution, where is the example? where is the terror? And then, as the execution takes place, as we may say, privately, in a byplace, with great precipitation, the whole town is ignorant of this bloody and solemn act; nothing announces that, on this day, they are killing a man; they laugh and sing at the theaters; the multitudes pass on, careless and indifferent. As it regards society, religion, and humanity, this judicial homicide, committed in the name of the interests of all, is, however, something which ought to be of importance to all. In fine, let us say it again, say it always, here is the sword, but where is the crown? Beside the punishment show the recompense; then only will the lesson be complete and fruitful. If, on the day following this morn of sorrow and of death, the people, who have seen the blood of a great criminal redden the scaffold, should see the truly virtuous man honored and rewarded, they would dread as much the punishment of the first, as they would ambitiously covet the triumphs of the last; terror hardly prevents crime, never does it inspire virtue. Does any one consider the effect of capital punishment on the criminals themselves? Either they brave it with reckless impudence; or, inanimate, they suffer it, half dead with terror; or they offer their heads with profound and sincere repentance.

Now the punishment is insufficient for those who defy it; useless for those who are already morally dead; excessive for those who repent with sincerity. Let us repeat it: society does not kill the murderer to cause him suffering, or to inflict the lex talionis; it kills him to prevent him from doing harm; it kills him that the example of his punishment may serve as a warning to murderers to come. We think that the punishment is barbarous, and that it does not sufficiently terrify. If this assertion is doubted, we will recall many proved facts of the deep horror expressed by hardened criminals for solitary confinement. Is it not known that some have committed murders in order to be condemned to death, preferring this punishment to a cell? What, then, would be their horror, when blindness, joined to solitary confinement, would deprive them of the hope of escape—a hope which he preserves, and which he sometimes realizes, even in a dungeon and loaded with irons. And touching this matter, we also think that the abolishment of capital punishment will be one of the forced consequences of solitary confinement; the alarm which this punishment inspires the generation who at this moment people the prisons and the galleys, being such, that many among these incorrigibles prefer to incur the highest penalty known to the law, than imprisonment in a cell; then, doubtless, the punishment of death ought to be suppressed, in order to sweep away this last and frightful alternative.