Twenty years after
“Come, count,” said Raoul, who seemed instinctively to dislike the
vicinity of the Augustine; “come, I feel ill here,” and the two young
men spurred on.
The litter, borne by two servants, now entered the house. The host and
his wife were standing on the steps, whilst the unhappy man seemed to
suffer dreadful pain and yet to be concerned only to know if he was
followed by the monk. At sight of this pale, bleeding man, the wife
grasped her husband’s arm.
“Well, what’s the matter?” asked the latter, “are you going to be ill
just now?”
“No, but look,” replied the hostess, pointing to the wounded man; “I
ask you if you recognize him?”
“That man—wait a bit.”
“Ah! I see you know him,” exclaimed the wife; “for you have become pale
in your turn.”
“Truly,” cried the host, “misfortune is coming on our house; it is the
former executioner of Bethune.”
“The former executioner of Bethune!” murmured the young monk, shrinking
back and showing on his countenance the feeling of repugnance which his
penitent inspired.
Monsieur d’Arminges, who was at the door, perceived his hesitation.
“Sir monk,” said he, “whether he is now or has been an executioner,
this unfortunate being is none the less a man. Render to him, then, the
last service he can by any possibility ask of you, and your work will
be all the more meritorious.”
The monk made no reply, but silently wended his way to the room where
the two valets had deposited the dying man on a bed. D’Arminges and
Olivain and the two grooms then mounted their horses, and all four
started off at a quick trot to rejoin Raoul and his companion. Just as
the tutor and his escort disappeared in their turn, a new traveler
stopped on the threshold of the inn.
“What does your worship want?” demanded the host, pale and trembling
from the discovery he had just made.
The traveler made a sign as if he wished to drink, and then pointed to
his horse and gesticulated like a man who is brushing something.
“Ah, _diable!_” said the host to himself; “this man seems dumb. And
where will your worship drink?”
“There,” answered the traveler, pointing to the table.
“I was mistaken,” said the host, “he’s not quite dumb. And what else
does your worship wish for?”
“To know if you have seen a young man pass, fifteen years of age,
mounted on a chestnut horse and followed by a groom?”
“The Viscount de Bragelonne?
“Just so.”
“Then you are called Monsieur Grimaud?”
The traveler made a sign of assent.
“Well, then,” said the host, “your young master was here a quarter of
an hour ago; he will dine at Mazingarbe and sleep at Cambrin.”
“How far is Mazingarbe?”
“Two miles and a half.”
“Thank you.”
Grimaud was drinking his wine silently and had just placed his glass on
the table to be filled a second time, when a terrific scream resounded
from the room occupied by the monk and the dying man. Grimaud sprang
up.
“What is that?” said he; “whence comes that cry?”
“From the wounded man’s room,” replied the host.
“What wounded man?”
“The former executioner of Bethune, who has just been brought in here,
assassinated by Spaniards, and who is now being confessed by an
Augustine friar.”
“The old executioner of Bethune,” muttered Grimaud; “a man between
fifty-five and sixty, tall, strong, swarthy, black hair and beard?”
“That is he, except that his beard has turned gray and his hair is
white; do you know him?” asked the host.
“I have seen him once,” replied Grimaud, a cloud darkening his
countenance at the picture so suddenly summoned to the bar of
recollection.
At this instant a second cry, less piercing than the first, but
followed by prolonged groaning, was heard.
The three listeners looked at one another in alarm.
“We must see what it is,” said Grimaud.
“It sounds like the cry of one who is being murdered,” murmured the
host.
“_Mon Dieu!_” said the woman, crossing herself.
If Grimaud was slow in speaking, we know that he was quick to act; he
sprang to the door and shook it violently, but it was bolted on the
other side.
“Open the door!” cried the host; “open it instantly, sir monk!”
No reply.
“Unfasten it, or I will break it in!” said Grimaud.
The same silence, and then, ere the host could oppose his design,
Grimaud seized a pair of pincers he perceived in a corner and forced
the bolt. The room was inundated with blood, dripping from the
mattresses upon which lay the wounded man, speechless; the monk had
disappeared.
“The monk!” cried the host; “where is the monk?”
Grimaud sprang toward an open window which looked into the courtyard.
“He has escaped by this means,” exclaimed he.
“Do you think so?” said the host, bewildered; “boy, see if the mule
belonging to the monk is still in the stable.”
“There is no mule,” cried he to whom this question was addressed.
The host clasped his hands and looked around him suspiciously, whilst
Grimaud knit his brows and approached the wounded man, whose worn, hard
features awoke in his mind such awful recollections of the past.
“There can be no longer any doubt but that it is himself,” said he.
“Does he still live?” inquired the innkeeper.
Making no reply, Grimaud opened the poor man’s jacket to feel if the
heart beat, whilst the host approached in his turn; but in a moment
they both fell back, the host uttering a cry of horror and Grimaud
becoming pallid. The blade of a dagger was buried up to the hilt in the
left side of the executioner.
“Run! run for help!” cried Grimaud, “and I will remain beside him
here.”
The host quitted the room in agitation, and as for his wife, she had
fled at the sound of her husband’s cries.
Chapter XXXII.
The Absolution.
This is what had taken place: We have seen that it was not of his own
free will, but, on the contrary, very reluctantly, that the monk
attended the wounded man who had been recommended to him in so strange
a manner. Perhaps he would have sought to escape by flight had he seen
any possibility of doing so. He was restrained by the threats of the
two gentlemen and by the presence of their attendants, who doubtless
had received their instructions. And besides, he considered it most
expedient, without exhibiting too much ill-will, to follow to the end
his rôle as confessor.
The monk entered the chamber and approached the bed of the wounded man.
The executioner searched his face with the quick glance peculiar to
those who are about to die and have no time to lose. He made a movement
of surprise and said:
“Father, you are very young.”
“Men who bear my robe have no age,” replied the monk, dryly.
“Alas, speak to me more gently, father; in my last moments I need a
friend.”
“Do you suffer much?” asked the monk.
“Yes, but in my soul much more than in my body.”
“We will save your soul,” said the young man; “but are you really the
executioner of Bethune, as these people say?”
“That is to say,” eagerly replied the wounded man, who doubtless feared
that the name of executioner would take from him the last help that he
could claim—“that is to say, I was, but am no longer; it is fifteen
years since I gave up the office. I still assist at executions, but no
longer strike the blow myself—no, indeed.”
“You have, then, a repugnance to your profession?”
“So long as I struck in the name of the law and of justice my
profession allowed me to sleep quietly, sheltered as I was by justice
and law; but since that terrible night when I became an instrument of
private vengeance and when with personal hatred I raised the sword over
one of God’s creatures—since that day——”
The executioner paused and shook his head with an expression of
despair.
“Tell me about it,” said the monk, who, sitting on the foot of the bed,
began to be interested in a story so strangely introduced.
“Ah!” cried the dying man, with all the effusiveness of a grief
declared after long suppression, “ah! I have sought to stifle remorse
by twenty years of good deeds; I have assuaged the natural ferocity of
those who shed blood; on every occasion I have exposed my life to save
those who were in danger, and I have preserved lives in exchange for
that I took away. That is not all; the money gained in the exercise of
my profession I have distributed to the poor; I have been assiduous in
attending church and those who formerly fled from me have become
accustomed to seeing me. All have forgiven me, some have even loved me;
but I think that God has not pardoned me, for the memory of that
execution pursues me constantly and every night I see that woman’s
ghost rising before me.”
“A woman! You have assassinated a woman, then?” cried the monk.
“You also!” exclaimed the executioner, “you use that word which sounds
ever in my ears—‘assassinated!’ I have assassinated, then, and not
executed! I am an assassin, then, and not an officer of justice!” and
he closed his eyes with a groan.
The monk doubtless feared that he would die without saying more, for he
exclaimed eagerly:
“Go on, I know nothing, as yet; when you have finished your story, God
and I will judge.”
“Oh, father,” continued the executioner, without opening his eyes, as
if he feared on opening them to see some frightful object, “it is
especially when night comes on and when I have to cross a river, that
this terror which I have been unable to conquer comes upon me; it then
seems as if my hand grew heavy, as if the cutlass was still in its
grasp, as if the water had the color of blood, and all the voices of
nature—the whispering of the trees, the murmur of the wind, the lapping
of the wave—united in a voice tearful, despairing, terrible, crying to
me, ‘Place for the justice of God!’”
“Delirium!” murmured the monk, shaking his head.
The executioner opened his eyes, turned toward the young man and
grasped his arm.
“‘Delirium,’” he repeated; “‘delirium,’ do you say? Oh, no! I remember
too well. It was evening; I had thrown the body into the river and
those words which my remorse repeats to me are those which I in my
pride pronounced. After being the instrument of human justice I aspired
to be that of the justice of God.”
“But let me see, how was it done? Speak,” said the monk.
“It was at night. A man came to me and showed me an order and I
followed him. Four other noblemen awaited me. They led me away masked.
I reserved the right of refusing if the office they required of me
should seem unjust. We traveled five or six leagues, serious, silent,
and almost without speaking. At length, through the window of a little
hut, they showed me a woman sitting, leaning on a table, and said,
‘there is the person to be executed.’”
“Horrible!” said the monk. “And you obeyed?”
“Father, that woman was a monster. It was said that she had poisoned
her second husband; she had tried to assassinate her brother-in-law;
she had just poisoned a young woman who was her rival, and before
leaving England she had, it was believed, caused the favorite of the
king to be murdered.”
“Buckingham?” cried the monk.
“Yes, Buckingham.”
“The woman was English, then?”
“No, she was French, but she had married in England.”
The monk turned pale, wiped his brow and went and bolted the door. The
executioner thought that he had abandoned him and fell back, groaning,
upon his bed.
“No, no; I am here,” said the monk, quickly coming back to him. “Go on;
who were those men?”
“One of them was a foreigner, English, I think. The four others were
French and wore the uniform of musketeers.”
“Their names?” asked the monk.
“I don’t know them, but the four other noblemen called the Englishman
‘my lord.’”
“Was the woman handsome?”
“Young and beautiful. Oh, yes, especially beautiful. I see her now, as
on her knees at my feet, with her head thrown back, she begged for