He rose and crossed his arms on his chest.
“Could you have admitted it more stupidly? You didn’t see my eyes just now when you assured me that there was nothing wrong with me, ‘absolutely nothing.’ No, for if you had seen them you would have trembled with fear, you would have read in them what I am going to tell you . . .”
The doctor was very pale as he stammered:
“My God, I am not infallible . . . Nowadays this idea of tuberculosis has become an obsession, creeps into everything . . . It influences one unconsciously . . . one is apt to give importance to a sound that may be accidental, something temporary . . . I may have been wrong . . . the greatest physicians have made mistakes in their diagnoses . . . I will examine you again . . .”
The man burst into a terrible laugh:
“You will, will you! . . . For what kind of a fool do you take me? You run yourself on to the point of a sword, and you think you can get free by a graceful twist? There is nothing wrong with me! You have told me so. Nothing, nothing, nothing! This time—and for the best of reasons—I will accept your word without question.
“But you have made me into an assassin, and you are my accomplice. Unconscious accomplice? I agree with you. You were the brain, and I, I was the arm. And as Justice is everlastingly the same, I—‘the highly strung, the essentially nervous!’—I judge, I condemn and I execute. You first. Myself afterwards.”
Two shots rang out. The servants rushed in to find the two bodies lying on their backs.
Some brain and blood had splashed on the table and made a crimson mark on an unfinished prescription that ran:
Bromide 15 grams
Distilled water. . . .
Extenuating Circumstances
IT WAS from the newspapers that Françoise learned that her son had been arrested.
At first she was unable to believe it; it was too monstrous.
Her lad, her little lad, so well-behaved, so shy, who just a month ago had spent his Easter leave with her; her son a thief and a murderer? . . . She seemed to see him standing before her again in his soldier’s uniform, his round young face smiling and kind; she felt again on her wrinkled cheeks his hearty goodbye kisses, and, filled with happy and peaceful memories of him, she shrugged her shoulders, repeating:
“Of course it’s a mistake. It’s someone else.”
Still, there it was, written with a big headline: “Crime of a Soldier.” It had happened in his barracks, and his name was there in full.
Bewildered, she crouched in her chair, her spectacles pushed up on her forehead, her hands clasped, her mouth trembling as she talked to herself in the warm silence of the kitchen, her eyes looking vaguely at the old dog lying by the open door, at the tall clock whose slow tick-tock gravely marked the time.
Someone came in. She started violently, crying: “Who’s there?” Recognizing a neighbor and wishing to hide her agitation, she added:
“I was asleep . . . It’s hot . . .”
Habitually reserved and silent, today she went on talking, talking, asking questions and making replies, fearing that she herself might be questioned. As she uttered her disjointed sentences, her one thought was: “Does she know?”
Unable at last to think of anything else to say, she relapsed into silence. With an odd expression, the neighbor said:
“Is it long since you had news of your son?”
“No . . . This morning.”
She did not say how! But as she spoke there came to her an overwhelming desire to be reassured, to be comforted, to hear a voice echo her indignant: “It’s a mistake! It’s not my lad—how could it be? . . .”
She held out the paper, and trying to speak easily:
“Have you seen this? . . . Queer, isn’t it?” Her throat dry, the tears welling up in her eyes, she added:
“I was so stupid . . . When I saw it first, it gave me quite a turn! . . . What a fool! . . .”
The neighbor still remained silent. She repeated:
“But it’s strange, isn’t it? . . . It’s strange! . . .”
“Yes, it’s odd there should be two of the same name in the same regiment.”
With a great sigh of relief, the old woman cried:
“That’s just what I say! . . . That’s it! . . . there are two of them . . . It’s not mine! . . .”
“I don’t know anything about that,” answered the woman. “I’m only asking you . . . It’s to be hoped there are . . . because if it’s your lad . . . They are saying it was him that robbed the cooper . . . yes, the three hundred francs that were stolen when he was home at Easter.”
The mother drew herself up stiffly, white as death, her fists clenched:
“How dare they! . . . He never did it . . . never, never! . . . Aren’t you ashamed of yourself ? . . . What have we done to you that you put everything on us? . . . My poor little lad . . . Oh, but you shall all see! . . .”
And without shutting the door behind her, without even putting on her sabots, she hurried, almost running, to the railway station.
She arrived at the town just as it was striking seven. In the train, instead of diminishing, her fears had grown. She was no longer saying: “It is impossible!” but “Suppose it is true! . . .” The journey had seemed endless, with the villages and fields rushing past her, the telegraph poles rising and falling giddily like a swing. When the train stopped she began to tremble, almost feeling that the moment to know the truth had come too quickly. She was murmuring Paters and Aves, adding her own supplications to the prayers that came mechanically to her lips:
“O, Kind Virgin, you could never have let such a thing happen, could you? . . . The beautiful prayers I shall say to you presently! . . .”
Behind the iron gate the courtyard of the barracks stretched white in front of the square buildings. Soldiers were sitting on the steps, chatting in the evening calm. Her boy had taught her the different ranks. She stopped, saying timidly:
“Excuse me, Sergeant, I want to ask you something. I want to know . . .”
She hesitated, not daring to show her fear.
“It’s this. It’s about my son . . . Jules Michon of the 3rd Company . . . I want to know if . . . if I can see him . . .”
She tried to smile:
“I am his mother . . . his mother . . . No? But why? . . . Where is he? . . . Is he ill? . . . Then why can’t I? . . . Yes, I know . . . No, I don’t know . . . He has been arrested . . . At the police station? . . . No? . . . In . . . in prison . . . you say? . . . He is to be tried by court-martial? . . .”
She hid her face in her hands.
Holy Virgin, it was true then! Holy Virgin . . .
Staggering, she turned away. At the military prison she learned that her son was in solitary confinement, and the word “solitary” increased her terror. She imagined him alone, forever shut away from everyone, fastened in. They told her to go and see a lawyer. From him she learned the exact state of affairs. There was no possible doubt about it. Her boy had killed someone to rob him; they had found the money—nearly six three hundred francs—in his mattress. He had confessed.
After much weeping and useless begging to be allowed to see him, she went back to the village. Everyone knew. Shrinking from what they might say to her, dreading their looks, she did not go home till midnight. Like a poor animal who fears blows and hides itself, she no longer dared to go out, keeping her shutters closed, trembling as she lifted the paper that was pushed under her door every morning. From it she learned not only all the details of the crime, but that her son was accused of something else. All the evidence seemed to prove that it really was he who had robbed the cooper. But that—never! She would swear it was not true . . . But eventually she began to have doubts about even that.
At the end of a month she went back to the lawyer. She no longer asked to see her son. Not, great God, that she had ceased to love him . . . She was ashamed . . .
“What will they do with him, Monsieur? You won’t let them take him from me . . .”
&n
bsp; “My poor woman, I am very much afraid they will . . . If only I could find some extenuating circumstance . . .”
“What’s that? A circumstance . . . what does it mean?”
“It means something that will lessen the crime in the eyes of the judge. Here is an example: A man steals; if it can be proved that he did it because he was in great poverty, because his children were starving, that would be an extenuating circumstance. In his case there’s nothing of the kind. It’s not even his first offense. That other robbery—he denies it—but— Well, well, I will do everything that can possibly be done.”
Françoise went home wearier and more heartbroken than ever, her mind tortured by those new words: “Extenuating circumstances.” How, where, could she find some excuse that would move the judges to clemency? . . . There was none. She could see nothing but the crime; nothing could lessen its horror.
The day of the trial came. She set out again, the last step in the ascent of her Calvary. In the train she prayed, invoking all the saints, while through her empty brain there resounded the words, so often repeated: “Extenuating circumstances . . . Extenuating circumstances . . .”
She waited in the dark, gloomy room with the witnesses who lowered their voices because of her presence. When her turn came she walked into the box with faltering steps, her eyelids blinking in the clear light, and in a moment her eyes were on her boy, who bowed his head over a handkerchief with big blue squares and burst into short, sharp sobs . . . She drew herself up stiffly and faced the judge.
She herself had asked to go into the witness box. Standing there, she wondered vaguely why she had insisted. She knew nothing at all about it; she had nothing to say. Why was she there? . . . For no reason at all except that she was his mother. Was it not she who had borne him . . . nursed him . . . caressed him . . . brought him up? . . . Was he not hers, her very own? . . . But no, not now; today he did not belong to her.
To all the questions she replied by signs or unintelligible words. There was dense silence in the court. An infinite pity went out toward the old, black-robed peasant woman, bowed by sorrow.
“He is your only child?” said the judge.
“Yes, Monsieur.”
“Did you have anything to complain of when he lived with you?”
“Oh no, Monsieur!”
“Had he any bad companions?”
“Never. His father, who was liked and respected by everyone, would not have allowed it . . . Neither would I . . . We were very highly thought of . . .”
“We know . . . we know . . .”
Then, turning to the prisoner:
“You knew it, too, and that is why, screening yourself behind the good reputation of your parents, you took advantage of your stay with your mother to commit robbery . . . How could anyone suspect the son of such honest people? . . . Others may be able to say: I am not wholly responsible. I lived with people who set me a bad example. You . . . you have no such excuse.”
At this the old woman seemed to make a violent effort. A strange light shone under the tear-swollen lids of her small eyes, and, her head bowed, without a gesture, in a voice that was almost steady, she spoke.
“Forgive me, Monsieur. I see I must tell you the truth. My poor lad is guilty of much, very guilty . . . But he is not the only one . . . I told you just now I had nothing to reproach myself with . . . I lied. That three hundred francs of the cooper’s, it was I who stole them, me . . . When my Jules came home at Easter, I told him I had done it . . . It frightened him, poor lad . . . he is very young . . . he saw his mother might lose her honor and her reputation . . . and it was to get the money back and stop my being arrested that he stole that other money . . . He was interrupted . . . he lost his head . . . and he struck the blow without knowing what he did.”
She was silent for a moment, out of breath: then went on in a lower tone:
“I lied . . . I am a wicked woman. It was I who set him the bad example . . . It is me you must arrest . . . Is that an extenuating circumstance for him? . . . Forgive me, Monsieur . . .”
More bowed than ever, the shoulders drooping, the head lower, she seemed to shrink to nothing . . .
The son escaped with hard labor for life. She—soon afterwards she died, scorned by all the village. They said a hasty mass for her and laid her in a remote part of the graveyard, a corner where even on the sunniest days the shadow of the church or belfry does not reach.
This story was told me by her grave, which had nothing to ornament it but a cross of weatherbeaten wood and a single wreath of rusty beads, twisted and broken, on which, however, I could distinguish the words:
“To Françoise Michon. From the judge who tried her son.”
The Confession
I STOOD STILL for a moment before the open door, hesitating, and it was only when the old woman who had been sent to bring me said for the second time, “It is here,” that I went in.
At first I could see nothing but the lamp screened by a lowdrawn shade; then I distinguished on the wall the motionless shadow of a recumbent body, long and thin, with sharp features. A vague odor of gasoline and ether floated round me. But for the sound of the rain beating on the slates of the roof and the dull howling of the wind in the empty chimney, the silence was death-like.
“Monsieur,” said the old woman gently as she bent over what I now saw was a bed, “Monsieur! . . . the gentleman you asked for is here.”
The shadow raised itself, and a faint voice said:
“Very well . . . leave us, Madame . . . leave us . . .”
When she had shut the door after her, the voice went on:
“Come nearer, Monsieur. I am almost blind, I have a buzzing in my ears, and I hear very badly . . . Here, quite close to me, there ought to be a chair . . . Pardon me for having sent for you, but I have something very grave to tell you.”
The eyes in the face that craned toward me were wide open in a sort of stare, and he trembled as he faltered:
“But first, are you Monsieur Gernou? Am I speaking to Monsieur Gernou, leader of the bar?”
“Yes.”
He sighed as if with relief.
“Then at last I can make my confession. I signed my letter Perier, but that is not my real name. It is possible that if Death, so near me now, had not already changed my face, you might vaguely recognize me . . . But no matter . . .
“Some years ago, many long years, I was Public Prosecutor for the Republic . . . I was one of the men of whom people say: ‘He has a brilliant future before him,’ and I had resolved to have one. I only needed a chance to prove my ability: a case at the assizes gave me that chance. It was in a small town. The crime was one that would not have attracted much attention in Paris, but there it aroused passionate interest, and as I listened to the reading of the accusation I saw there would be a big struggle. The evidence against the prisoner was of the gravest nature, but it lacked the determining factor that will frequently draw a confession from the criminal—or the equivalent of a confession. The man made a desperate defense. A feeling of doubt, almost of sympathy ran through the court, and you know how great the power of that feeling is.
“But such influences do not affect a magistrate. I answered all the denials by bringing forward facts that made a strong chain of circumstantial evidence. I turned the life of the man inside out and revealed all his weak points and wrong-doings. I gave the jury a vivid description of the crime, and as a hound leads the hunters to the quarry, I ended by pointing to the accused as the criminal. Counsel for the defense answered my arguments, did his best to fight me . . . but it was useless. I had asked for the head of the man: I got it.
“Any sympathy I might have felt for the prisoner was quickly stifled by pride in my own eloquence. The condemnation was both the victory of the law and a great personal triumph for me.
“I saw the man again on the morning of the execution. I went to watch them wake him and prepare him for the scaffold, and as I looked at his inscrutable face I was suddenly seized with an anguish of
mind. Every detail of that sinister hour is still fresh in my memory. He showed no sign of revolt while they bound his arms and shackled his legs. I dared not look at him, for I felt his eyes were fixed on me with an expression of superhuman calm. As he came out of the prison door and faced the guillotine, he cried twice: ‘I am innocent!’ and the crowds that had been prepared to hiss him suddenly became silent. Then he turned to me and said: ‘Watch me die, it will be well worth while’ . . . He embraced the priest and his lawyer . . . It appears that he then placed himself unaided on the plank, that he never flinched during the eternal moment of waiting for the knife, and that I stood there with my head uncovered. It appears . . . for I, I did not see, having for the moment lost all consciousness of external things.
“During the days that followed my thoughts were too confused for me to understand clearly why I was full of some trouble that seemed to paralyze me. My mind had become obsessed by the death of this man. My colleagues said to me:
“ ‘It is always like that the first time.’
“I believed them, but gradually I became aware that there was a definite reason for my preoccupation: doubt. From the moment I realized this I had no peace of mind. Think of what a magistrate must feel when, after having caused a man to be beheaded, he begins asking himself:
“ ‘Suppose after all he were not guilty! . . .’
“I fought with all my strength against this idea, trying to convince myself that it was impossible, absurd. I appealed to all that is balanced and logical in my brain and mind, but my reasonings were always cut short by the question: ‘What real proof was there?’ Then I would think of the last moments of the criminal, would see his calm eyes, would hear his voice. This vision of the scaffold was in my mind one day when someone said to me:
Thirty Hours with a Corpse Page 5
