A solemn and impressive spectacle was the confession of this martyr, who had naught to disclose but the crimes of others, and who prayed for his enemies instead of asking pardon for himself.
Unimaginative as was Jacques Aubry, he fell upon his knees, and remembered the prayers of his childhood, which he thought he had forgotten.
When the prisoner had finished his confession, the priest bowed before him and asked his blessing.
The old man's face lighted up with a smile as radiant as the smile of God's elect; he extended one hand over the priest's head and the other toward Aubry, drew a deep breath, and fell back upon his pillow. That breath was his last.
The priest went out as he had come, attended by his subordinates, and the dungeon, lighted for a moment by the flickering flame of the candles, became dark once more.
Jacques Aubry was alone with the dead. It was a very depressing situation, especially in the light of the reflections to which it gave rise. The man who lay lifeless before him had been consigned to prison an innocent man, had remained there twenty years, and went out at last only because Death, the great liberator, came in search of him.
The light-hearted student could not recognize himself: for the first time he found himself confronted by stern reality; for the first time he looked in the face the bewildering vicissitudes of life, and the calm profundity of death.
Then a selfish thought began to take shape in his heart. He thought of himself, innocent like the dead man, and like him involved in the complications of one of those royal passions which crush and consume and destroy a life. Ascanio and he might disappear, as Etienne Raymond had disappeared, who would think of them?
Gervaise perhaps, Benvenuto Cellini certainly.
But the former could do nothing but weep; and the other confessed his own powerlessness when he cried so loudly for the letter in Ascanio's possession.