The Second Life of Doctor Albin

by Raoul Gineste

  Confronted by the young man’s expression, however, he quickly suppressed that surge of indignation.

  “Excuse me, my dear Monsieur,” he went on. “You are yielding to very natural sentiments of pity and I’m wrong to receive the proposition you’re making to me so poorly, but I beg you not to persist any longer. My resolution is unbreakable, my life is intolerable to me now, futile and purposeless, and my madness is too responsible not to be punished. The law, in suppressing me, is, in fact, making an instinctive act of prudence. The certitude of death has extinguished all the hatred in my heart, but if fatality threw me back into society, I sense that I would no longer have the strength to pardon it for the misfortunes of which I am nevertheless the first cause, since I have placed myself outside it of my own will. It is in memory of the unusual favors that it lavished upon me when I was still under its tutelage that I forgive it the disappointments with which it has overwhelmed me when I wanted only to owe my elevation to my own merit, that I consent not to harm it, and that I want to die.”

  With a sad smile he added: “I’m still speaking as if I were in command of my destiny! A man is, however, not the absolute master of his fate. It is for having forgotten that verity, for having believed in the omnipotence of the human Will, that I am going to climb the scaffold. Never forget, Monsieur, that the man really is mad who, born in the official routine, spoiled by the success that he owes to a relative superiority, takes it into his head one day, out of pride, to break the bonds that attach him to the collective mediocrity! Energy, the love of the truth, genius, if they are not accompanied by wealth and power, are broken like glass by any social organization. Every collectivity seeks instinctively to elevate its average of wellbeing or intelligence to the detriment of the individual; it consents to protect him on condition that he concedes to it the best part of his merit and his dignity. Woe to the man who does not accept the bargain; all will be in league against him, and the stupidity of the petty will add to the injustice of the great.

  “Believe me, it is not an anarchist—a companion, in the present sense of the word—who is speaking to you; the disasters of my last years have only compensated for the undeserved fortune of the first; I have no right to recriminate, I had my large share of wellbeing. But having benefited from all the advantages, all the privileges that present society can procure, and then having suffered, myself or by contact, all the miseries that it engenders—and always will engender, alas, so long as humans are not physically and intellectually equal—I have been able to make comparisons and differentiations that have made me pass into the camp of the revolutionaries: which is to say, the weak, the oppressed; for revolt is fatally born of oppression.

  “I have observed thus that, In spite of the generosity of his heart and the elevation of his soul, the fortunate man cannot veritably sympathize with the sufferings of the poor and understand them; and, on the other hand, the disinherited cannot judge without envy and bitterness those whom a superiority has placed above them. The inevitable consequence is the wellspring of tears and blood, the antagonism, that it will be very difficult to eradicate. Inequality, inherent or acquired, is always the social evil that eats us away; it is for that reason that the blind but instinctive crowd ridicules genius.

  “The weak will only admit individual efforts toward improvement if you at least offer them material compensations. It is therefore logical that the initiative of an entente should come from intellectuals and the powerful. Would it not at least be just, for example, to give labor the value and the wage that it merits? Every human being has a right to work—which is to say, to live—and all work ought to have just retribution; but I have learned, by suddenly finding myself in poverty, that things do not happen like that. If, as in Voltaire’s time, abuses no longer serve the laws, the laws too often still serve abuses.

  “Look, this is my testament: you’re young, a long and brilliant career is opening before you; doubtless you will soon be a magistrate. Always have pity on the unfortunate that you have been called upon to judge. Never forget that collective crime often has a large part of the responsibility in the individual fault. All is not for the best, believe me, in the best of societies. It is time to hear the clamors of those who are dying of hunger every day.

  “There is in mechanics an absolute principle known as the resistance of materials: superimposed materials can only support a certain force without being disorganized. If you allow too many injustices and miseries to be heaped one atop another, your social edifice will not take long to crumble. Already, a sinister cracking is making itself heard. Don’t continue to remain deaf to it, or you’ll be buried under the rubble.

  “One final plea: will you take charge of conveying to the Minister of Public Education, in order that he might confer with is colleague in Justice, the letter that I’m going to dictate to you.

  “Monsieur the Minister of Public Education.

  “A man, who has been condemned to death, has committed a social crime far greater than the one of which he has been accused. He would like to redeem it by rendering humankind an exceptional and inappreciable service. Human vivisection being, so to speak, impractical in our present organization, the psychology of the brain is groping in the dark; pathological hazard has scarcely cast a few rare glimmers of light therein—it is thus that Broca was able to find the location of speech in the third circumvolution. It is, however, of primordial necessity that that localization of cerebral function should at least be entirely known and demonstrated. How many scientific, and even philosophical, issues could then be elucidated; what giant steps might be taken in biological and psychological studies; what points of support might be provided to mental pathology?

  “Condemned to die futilely on a scaffold, a vestige without authority of barbaric epochs, he solicits the honor of lending himself to these experiments of the highest importance. He will experience cruel suffering, but his energy and determination will enable him to endure them. It is urgent that you make a rapid decision; the preparation and preliminaries of that vivisection require a fairly long lapse of time.

  “With the hope that French science will not lose the precious and perhaps unique opportunity that he offers benevolently, he has the honor, Monsieur the Minister, to be our humble and obedient servant,

  “X, known as Jacques Bilan.”

  A fortnight later, the governor of La Roquette received the following response, which he comes to read to his prisoner.

  “Monsieur the Governor,

  “The condemned Jacques Bilan has solicited the favor of serving in experiments in human vivisection; please will you tell him that his request has not been greeted favorably. In addition to the humanitarian sentiments opposed to its acceptance, it would be require, to organize a circumstance of that order, a special law to modify the penalty in vigor. Nevertheless, the Minister not being indifferent to the good will of the guilty party, authorizes you to engage him to sign a petition for clemency.

  “On behalf of the Minister of Public Education,

  “R.”

  The governor adds: “You have heard what I have just read. It’s certain clemency that is being announced to you; hasten to sign the recourse.”

  “No, Monsieur Governor,” he replies. “If I had wanted to live, I wouldn’t be here. The fatality that is pursuing me will not even permit me, it seems, to die usefully. So much the worse for my fellows, and so much the worse for me, for such a death would have been more glorious.”

  “You’re wrong to refuse the favor that is being offered to you,” says the governor, amazed.

  “The only favor that it will be agreeable for me to obtain would be the removal of this straitjacket that I have been wearing since my condemnation.”

  “I’m sorry not to be able to comply with your desire; the regulations formally oppose it; it would be necessary for an order to come from higher up.”

  “Well, let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  During the long days he has been sighing for eternal repose, t
he wait has begun to weigh upon him heavily. For fear that a regret might attach him to existence, he has not wanted to read any book, he has avoided distractions and the conversations that the guards have attempted to strike up with him; he has refused charitable or curious visits and has not accepted the anonymous assistances that have reached him. The days are spent in long meditations. The approach of death has further extinguished his hatred and disarmed his vengeance; he regrets the threats that wounded pride caused to rise to his lips.

  “Forget,” he says to his defender, who has come to see him for the last time, “the insensate words that you once heard. Anger renders us stupid and causes us to go astray; it is not human beings, immediately replaced by others just as mediocre, egotistical and unjust, that it is necessary to destroy; it is institutions and ideas that it is necessary to change. It is very rare, in any case, that a violent means arrives at the right time—which is to say, at the moment when the reaction that it inevitably provokes is not fatal to the cause it wants to serve. The theoreticians of anarchism, those whose words suggest action, would do well to meditate that truth. I wonder, now, why those ideas of vengeance invaded me. Perhaps I needed really to become an anarchist in order to accept without weakness the punishment that has been inflicted upon me as such...

  “And yet,” he murmurs, “the crime that I have committed is far more antisocial, far more worthy of me than the infantile conceptions of those such minds! Collective revolt produces transitory results, but individual revolt...”

  After a silence he adds: “Adieu! May all your desires be accomplished! Don’t come to see me again; it’s necessary that the slightest sympathy should not slip into my heart. I need all my courage; waiting is a thousand times more cruel than death.”

  Only the memory of Mariette, rendered pure of all mixture, aids him to support the long anguish of his agony. It is no longer Rose Gontran, however, but the prostitute Mariette, the streetwalker, who appears to him and consoles him. She alone seems worthy of pity, admiration and regret. It is the alms of love that the registered prostitute gave to the old pauper, and the unforgettable night when, savage and unchained, she entered forcefully into his heart, that come to haunt his solitude and causes tears to rise to his eyes. Why did he abandon her? She merited being redeemed. Poor Mariette!

  The dream he has that night announces to him that the hour is near. The man he saw one day in a London tavern, the dead man whose name he has taken suddenly surges forth before him.

  “Why have you denied me?” the veritable Jacques Bilan murmurs. “Why, having substituted my identity for yours, did you not have the courage to accept responsibility for my actions?

  “You do not foresee, then, as you emerged from the Monks Agency under my remains that our two past lives would henceforth form a single social entity? You did not know that we had once been conceived at the same fleeting instant, that the same influences presided over our creation, that the same share was conditionally attributed to us, the same gifts accorded to us? Fortune alone created the difference; born in your opulence, I would have shone with your glory; and you, born in my poverty, would have been the revolutionary that I was.

  “Why did you not divine the architect of your ruin? When the truth was revealed to you, you ought to have prostrated yourself at its feet, chased away the error of your life, chased away the error of your work. Instead of that, you wanted to benefit from an impure glory; you only adored the goddess in order to compel her to become the servant of your pride; an insane idea germinated in your head; you committed the sacrilegious imprudence of mocking the Death that had not summoned you and the Destiny that, to my detriment, had already allowed you to take more than your share; you underestimated their power; you wanted to impose your will upon them.

  “Insensate! In transgressing the decrees of Providence, which ceased to protect you, in placing yourself outside the social conditions that had been your only safeguard, in wanting to avoid the sacred laws that regulate the forms of human existence, you forged for their avenging arm the flaming double-edged sword. In that civil and social death, you lost the best part of your value; your incomplete and defenseless self was henceforth the prey of errant forces; you became the empty house by the roadside whose walls are soiled by vagabonds and in which beasts lurk.

  “The names that you took at hazard created vague identities for you, but the day when you took mine, everything that survived me, acts and thoughts like, was fatally bound to take possession of your being. Your fate, from that moment on, became exactly similar to mine, and, as you bore within you the crime that I have committed, the crime that your past forbade you to carry out, it was necessary, in order for you to be justly punished, that you also take my place.”

  He wakes up with a start. Dull rumors seem to reach him.

  No regret agitates him, but a nervous anxiety torments him. He fears that his courage and his pride might abandon him; he is afraid of showing the slightest sign of weakness.

  A noise of bolts; the door grates and opens; eyes full of pity gaze at him, surprising him still in bed.

  A brief moment of anguish grips him. He makes an energetic effort, sits up, and then stands up, having mastered himself completely

  “The time has come, hasn’t it?” he says, anticipating the customary words.

  He puts on his civilian clothing while the representatives of the law accomplish the formalities. A magistrate asks him whether he has any revelation to make or any last wishes to express.

  “I want my cadaver to be delivered as quickly as possible to the Faculté,” he replies. “The simulacrum of inhumation is an unnecessary legal hypocrisy.” Then he manifests the desire not to be tied too tightly and to escape the brutality of his aides; he will place his head on the bascule himself and put his neck into the inferiors semicircle of the lunette.

  “My body will serve for physiological experiments,” he adds. “It is vital that the separation be made quickly. With the system of the bascule, the strangulation of the lunette and the jostling of the aides, one arrives at oblique sections that spoil a head.”

  A painful shudder takes possession of the assistants, even though they are accustomed to these supreme conversations. Even the executioner looks with an amazement mingled with respect at a condemned man giving proof of competence and the concern for being guillotined properly.

  “Yes, yes,” he murmurs. “We’ll be careful; I’ll take personal charge of the oper...” The word sticks in his mouth.

  “The operation of social surgery,” the condemned man continues, with an imperceptible smile. “I’m counting on you, and I thank you in advance—all the more so,” he adds, with the same smile, “as it will be difficult for me to thank you afterwards.”

  The strange condemned man goes on: “The first time I was decapitated, the section was perfect and I couldn’t help thinking about the deplorable results obtained by the blade of the guillotine... Don’t be too astonished by my words; I’m not mad; I’m speaking figuratively.”

  The priest keeps discreetly to the rear; he fears that Companion Bilan might receive his offers with a few coarse rebukes.

  Divining his embarrassment, he says: “Excuse me, Monsieur l’Abbé; I have nothing in particular to confess to you. If we professed the same religious ideas, I’d be honored to have recourse to your ministry.”

  “I will pray for you, Monsieur,” the priest replied, quietly. “Only permit me to accompany you.”

  “If you wish. Nevertheless, I recommend you not to hide the guillotine from me; I need to look it in the face.”

  He is taken to the registry; he transfer of the prisoner to the executor takes place; the aides proceed with the toilette; cold scissors cut into the shirt, freeing the nape of the neck. He shivers involuntarily.

  “Don’t go so quickly,” he murmurs. “You’re doing me more harm than the blade is going to do.”

  Monsieur de Paris scolds his employee.

  His hands and feet are tied.

  “At leas
t give me enough slack to let me walk,” he requests. “You can see that I have no desire to flee. That march with short, jerky steps, has always produced a painful impression in me.”

  A cord is passed around his waist. That detail intrigues him; he interrogates. Monsieur Deibler simulates the action of taking a cadaver and throwing it into the basket.

  In the square, dawn has just broken; the guillotine confusedly outlines its banal silhouette of a great frame on the bare gray walls of the old prison; the plane trees exhale a scent of spring buds. The privileged seated around the funereal instrument of justice are chatting discreetly among themselves.

  In the distance, the Rue de La Roquette is swarming with people; the keepers of order have difficulty containing the lovers of capital executions outside the barriers. Clusters of human heads fill the window-frames and groups of enlaced human beings are clinging to the chimneys on the roofs. Late diners in suits and girls in bright dresses emerge from the first rows, standing on fiacres or ladders. All those people are almost certain of seeing nothing; perhaps it is the odor of blood that attracts them.

  The squadrons of mounted police, fearing some anarchist manifestation, charge at the slightest pretext, driving back men in working clothes into the adjacent streets. Rumors and cries are born of the collisions.

  The doors of the somber vault have suddenly opened wide; a command rings out, followed by shrill shrieks of steel; the gleam of sabers surges forth in the pallid down; the journalists and the curious remove their hats; the tumultuous rumbling from the distant crowd is immediately followed by a great silence. The cortege has just appeared.

  Jacques Bilan is pale, but his gait and his gaze are assured. The sight of the guillotine seems to stimulate him; his eyes shine; he walks toward it, fascinated; he seems glad to be finally going to die.

  A few anxious moments of expectation go by. The blade slides in the grooves and falls heavily upon the flesh. A long exclamation of horror rises from the turbulent populace.