The Count of Monte Cristo (Unabridged Penguin) (68 page)

‘By gad, yes, with great pleasure,’ said Albert. ‘Because those Italian cigars of yours are even worse than the ones sold by the state monopoly at home. When you come to Paris, I shall have the opportunity to repay you for all this.’

‘I shall not refuse your invitation. I hope to go to Paris one day and, since you give me leave to do so, I shall knock on your door. Now, Messieurs, come, we have no time to lose. It is half-past twelve. Let’s be going.’

All three went downstairs. There the coachman took his master’s latest orders and set off down the Via del Babuino, while the pedestrians went up through the Piazza di Spagna and along the Via Frattina, which led them directly between the Palazzo Fiano and the Palazzo Rospoli. Franz kept looking at the windows of the latter: he had not forgotten the signal agreed in the Colosseum between the man in the cloak and the Trasteveran.

‘Which windows are yours?’ he asked the count in the most natural manner he could.

‘The last three,’ he replied, with an entirely unaffected lack of concern, for he could not have guessed the reason for the question.

Franz immediately looked at the windows. Those on each side were hung with yellow damask and the one in the middle in white damask with a red cross. The man in the cloak had kept his word to the other, and there was no longer any doubt: the man in the cloak was the count.

The three windows were still empty.

Meanwhile on all sides preparations were being made, chairs
were being set out, scaffolding put up and windows decorated. The masks could appear and the carriages start to drive around only at the sound of a bell, but you could sense the masks behind every window and the carriages behind every door.

Franz, Albert and the count continued on their way down the Corso. As they approached the Piazza del Popolo, the crowd became more dense and, above the heads of the people, they could see two things: the obelisk, surmounted by a cross, that stands in the centre of the square, and, in front of the obelisk, precisely at the point where the lines of sight of the three streets, Babuino, Corso and Ripetta, meet, the two highest beams of the scaffold with, burning between them, the rounded blade of the
mandaïa
.

They met the count’s steward at the corner of the street, waiting for his master. The window that had been hired at what was doubtless an exorbitant price (which the count had not wished to communicate to his guests) was on the second floor of the great palazzo, between the Via del Babuino and the Monte Pincio. It was a sort of dressing-room opening on to a bedroom. By closing the bedroom door, the inhabitants of the dressing-room could be on their own. Clowns’ costumes in white and blue satin, most elegantly cut, had been laid across the chairs.

‘As you left the choice of costumes to me,’ the count told the two friends, ‘I had these made for you. Firstly, they are the best that will be worn this year, and then they are the most convenient design for confetti, because flour doesn’t show up on them.’

Franz took in what the count was saying only very partially and may not have appreciated this new mark of courtesy at its true value, for all his attention was drawn by the spectacle of the Piazza del Popolo and the awful implement that on this occasion was its chief ornament.

It was the first time that Franz had seen a guillotine – we say guillotine, because the Roman
mandaïa
is constructed on more or less the same pattern as our instrument of death, the only difference being that the knife is shaped like a crescent, cutting with the convex part of the blade, and falls from less of a height.

Two men, seated on the tipping plank on which the condemned person lies, were waiting and eating a lunch that, as far as Franz could make out, consisted of bread and sausage. One of them lifted the plank and brought out a flagon of wine from under it, took a
drink and passed it to his companion. These two men were the executioner’s assistants!

Just looking at them, Franz felt the sweat burst out at the roots of his hair.

The condemned prisoners had been brought, the previous evening, from the Carceri Nuove to the little church of Santa Maria del Popolo and had spent the night, each attended by two priests, in a chapel of rest, secured with an iron grating and in front of which sentries marched, being relieved every hour.

A double row of
carabinieri
extended from each side of the church door to the scaffold, widening out on reaching it to leave a path some ten feet across and, around the guillotine, a clear space of some hundred yards in circumference. The whole of the rest of the square was carpeted with the heads of men and women. Many of the women had children seated on their shoulders. These children, who were a good head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd, would have an excellent view.

The Monte Pincio seemed like a huge amphitheatre with all of its terraces crowded with spectators. The balconies of the two churches at the corners of the Via del Babuino and the Via di Ripetta were overflowing with privileged onlookers. The steps of the peristyles had the appearance of swelling, many-coloured waves, driven towards the portico by the flow of an unceasing tide. Every protuberance on the wall capable of supporting a man had a living statue attached to it.

So what the count said was true: there is no more interesting spectacle in life than the spectacle of death.

And yet, instead of the silence that the solemnity of the occasion would seem to demand, a great noise rose from the crowd, a noise made up of laughter, booing and joyful cries. It was clear, as the count had also said, that the execution was nothing more for the people than the start of carnival.

Suddenly the noise ceased as if by enchantment; the church door had just opened.

First to appear was a company of penitents, each of them dressed in a grey sack which covered him entirely except for the holes for the eyes, and each holding a lighted candle in his hand. At the front marched the head of the order.

Behind the penitents came a tall man. He was naked except for linen trunks, on the left side of which was attached a huge knife
concealed in its scabbard. Over his shoulder he carried a heavy iron mace. This man was the executioner. He also had sandals fastened around the lower part of the leg with thongs.

Behind the executioner, in the order in which they were to be executed, came Peppino, then Andrea. Each of them was accompanied by two priests. Neither of them was blindfolded.

Peppino was walking with quite a firm step. No doubt he had been told what to expect. Andrea was supported under each arm by a priest. From time to time each of them would kiss the crucifix that a confessor held out to him.

At the mere sight of this, Franz felt his legs ready to fold under him. He looked at Albert. The latter had gone as white as his shirt and mechanically tossed away his cigar, even though it was only half smoked.

Only the count appeared impassive. More than that: a faint blush of red seemed to be appearing beneath the livid pallor of his cheeks. His nose was dilating like that of a wild beast at the smell of blood, and his lips, slightly parted, showed his white teeth, as small and sharp as a jackal’s. Yet, despite that, his face had an expression of smiling tenderness that Franz had never before seen on it; his black eyes, above all, were compellingly soft and lenient.

Meanwhile, the two condemned men continued to proceed towards the scaffold and, as they approached, one could make out their faces. Peppino was a handsome young man of between twenty-four and twenty-six, with a wild and free look on his sunburnt face. He carried his head high and seemed to be sniffing the wind to see from which direction his liberator would come.

Andrea was short and fat. His face was mean and cruel, of no definite age, though he was probably about thirty. He had let his beard grow in prison. His head was falling over on one shoulder and his legs were giving way beneath him; his whole being appeared to be driven by some mechanical force in which his own will no longer played any part.

‘I thought you told me,’ Franz said to the count, ‘that there would be only one execution.’

‘That was the truth,’ he replied coldly.

‘But there are two condemned men here.’

‘Yes – but, of those two, one is at the point of death, while the other has many years yet to live.’

‘It would seem to me that, if a pardon is to come, there is not much time to be lost.’

‘And it is coming. Look,’ said the count.

Just as Peppino reached the foot of the
mandaïa
, a penitent, who seemed like a late arrival, broke through the wall of soldiers without them attempting to stop him and, going up to the head of the order, gave him a sheet of paper folded in four. Peppino’s sharp eyes had missed none of this. The head of the order unfolded the paper, read it and raised his hand.

‘The Lord be blessed and His Holiness be praised!’ he said loudly and clearly. ‘There is a pardon for the life of one of the condemned prisoners.’

‘A pardon!’ the crowd cried in unison. ‘There is a pardon!’

At this word, ‘pardon’, Andrea seemed to stiffen and raise his head. ‘A pardon for whom?’ he cried.

Peppino remained silent, motionless, panting.

‘There is a pardon from the death penalty for Peppino, alias Rocca Priori,’ said the head of the order. And he passed the sheet of paper to the captain in charge of the
carabinieri
, who read it and handed it back.

‘A pardon for Peppino!’ yelled Andrea, entirely roused from the state of torpor into which he had seemed to be plunged. ‘Why a pardon for him and not for me? We were to die together. I was promised that he would die before me. You have no right to make me die alone. I don’t want to die alone!’ And he broke away from the two priests, twisting, shouting, bellowing and making insane efforts to break the ropes binding his hands.

The executioner made a sign to his two assistants, who jumped off the scaffold and seized the prisoner.

‘What’s wrong?’ Franz asked the count.

‘What is wrong?’ the count repeated. ‘Don’t you understand? What’s wrong is that this human being who is about to die is furious because his fellow creature is not dying with him and, if he were allowed to do so, he would tear him apart with his nails and his teeth rather than leave him to enjoy the life of which he himself is about to be deprived. Oh men! Men! Race of crocodiles, as Karl Moor says,’ the count exclaimed, brandishing his two clenched fists towards the heads of the crowd. ‘How well I know you by your deeds and how invariably you succeed in living down to what one expects of you!’

Andrea and the two assistant executioners were rolling around in the dust, the prisoner still crying out: ‘He must die, I want him to die! You do not have the right to kill me alone!’

‘Look, look,’ the count continued, grasping each of the two young men by the hand. ‘Look, because I swear to you, this is worthy of your curiosity. Here is a man who was resigned to his fate, who was walking to the scaffold and about to die like a coward, that’s true, but at least he was about to die without resisting and without recriminations. Do you know what gave him that much strength? Do you know what consoled him? Do you know what resigned him to his fate? It was the fact that another man would share his anguish, that another man was to die like him, that another man was to die before him! Put two sheep in the slaughter-house or two oxen in the abattoir and let one of them realize that his companion will not die, and the sheep will bleat with joy, the ox low with pleasure. But man, man whom God made in His image, man to whom God gave this first, this sole, this supreme law, that he should love his neighbour, man to whom God gave a voice to express his thoughts – what is man’s first cry when he learns that his neighbour is saved? A curse. All honour to man, the masterpiece of nature, the lord of creation!’

He burst out laughing, but such a terrible laugh that one realized he must have suffered horribly to be able to laugh in such a way.

Meanwhile the struggle continued, and it was awful to watch. The two assistants were carrying Andrea on to the scaffold, but the crowd had taken against him and twenty thousand voices were crying: ‘Death! Death!’

Franz stepped back, but the count seized his arm and kept him in front of the window.

‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘Is this pity? In faith, it is well placed! If you heard someone cry: “mad dog”, you would take your gun, rush out into the street and kill the poor beast by shooting it point blank, without mercy; yet the animal would, after all’s said and done, be guilty of nothing more than having been bitten by another dog and doing the same as was done to it. And yet now you are taking pity on a man who was bitten by no other man, but who killed his benefactor and who now, unable to kill anyone else because his hands are tied, wants more than anything to see his companion in captivity, his comrade in misfortune, die with him! No, no! Watch!’

The injunction was almost unnecessary. Franz was, as it were, mesmerized by the horrible scene. The two assistants had carried the condemned man on to the scaffold and there, despite his efforts, his bites and his cries, they had forced him to his knees. Meanwhile the executioner had taken up his position on one side and raised the mace. Then, on a sign, the two assistants stepped aside. The prisoner wanted to get to his feet but, before he had time to do so, the club struck him on the left temple. There was a dull, muffled sound, the victim fell like a stricken bull, face downwards, then on the rebound turned over on his back. At this the executioner dropped his mace, pulled the knife out of his belt, cut open his throat with a single stroke and, immediately stepping on his belly, began as it were to knead the body with his feet. At each stamping of the foot, a jet of blood spurted from the condemned man’s neck.