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.
32
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 role 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 life. I have never understood how I
could have laid low a head so beautiful, with a face so
pale."
The monk seemed agitated by a strange emotion; he trembled
all over; he seemed eager to put a question which yet he
dared not ask. At length, with a violent effort at
self-control:
"The name of that woman?" he said.
"I don't know what it was. As I have said, she was twice
married, once in France, the second time in England."
"She was young, you say?"
"Twenty-five years old."
"Beautiful?"
"Ravishingly."
"Blond?"
"Yes."
"Abundance of hair -- falling over her shoulders?"
"Yes."
"Eyes of an admirable expression?"
"When she chose. Oh, yes, it is she!"
"A voice of strange sweetness?"
"How do you know it?"
The executioner raised himself on his elbow and gazed with a
frightened air at the monk, who became livid.
"And you killed her?" the monk exclaimed. "You were the tool
of those cowards who dared not kill her themselves? You had
no pity for that youthfulness, that beauty, that weakness?
you killed that woman?"
"Alas! I have already told you, father, that woman, under
that angelic appearance, had an infernal soul, and when I
saw her, when I recalled all the evil she had done to me
---- "
"To you? What could she have done to you? Come, tell me!"
"She had seduced and ruined my brother, a priest. She had
fled with him from her convent."
"With your brother?"
"Yes, my brother was her first lover, and she caused his
death. Oh, father, do not look in that way at me! Oh, I am
guilty, then; you will not pardon me?"
The monk recovered his usual expression.
"Yes, yes," he said, "I will pardon you if you tell me all."
"Oh!" cried the executioner, "all! all! all!"
"Answer, then. If she seduced your brother -- you said she
seduced him, did you not?"
"Yes."
"If she caused his death -- you said that she caused his
death?"
"Yes," repeated the executioner.
"Then you must know what her name was as a young girl."
"Oh, mon Dieu!" cried the executioner, "I think I am dying.
Absolution, father! absolution."
"Tell me her name and I will give it."
"Her name was ---- My God, have pity on me!" murmured the
executioner; and he fell back on the bed, pale, trembling,
and apparently about to die.
"Her name!" repeated the monk, bending over him as if to
tear from him the name if he would not utter it; "her name!
Speak, or no absolution!"
The dying man collected all his forces.
