His miserable wife came alone, to drop weeping at his feet, and implore his dying forgiveness for the part she had had in bringing him to this awful pass.
Governor, partially aroused from his torpor, awoke sufficiently to put his arm around her shoulders, and say:
"Don't cry, chile; I doesn't bear you no malice. You couldn't help it, chile, no more 'an I could; things was too much for us bofe. Don't cry; I loves you same as ever."
This gentleness almost broke the penitent woman's heart, and she went away weeping bitterly, wringing her hands and wishing most sincerely it were possible for her, the most guilty one, to die in her husband's stead. After this visit Governor sank into a still deeper stupor of despair, from which nothing had power to arouse him.
Directly after this followed the last interview between Valentine and his little family.
Phædra and Fannie came in, accompanied by old Elisha, who carried little Coralie in his arms. I cannot describe the anguish of this parting.
Phædra perhaps bore it best of all, with a strange hopeless fortitude that reminded one of Governor's stolidity, only saying that though life was sorrowful even at its happiest, it was, thank Heaven! short at its longest; and that she should not be many days behind her son.
But Fannie was wild with sorrow, and utterly inconsolable. When the moment of final separation arrived, she fainted, and was borne from the cell, as one dead, in the arms of the old preacher. Phædra followed, leading little Coralie.
The execution was to be a public one. And the authorities published a card in the daily papers, formally inviting the masters of the city and the surrounding country to give their slaves a holiday upon this day, to enable the latter to attend the execution of Valentine and Governor. And as the morning advanced toward noon so numerous was the multitude of negroes that gathered in from all parts of the country, and so great was the excitement that prevailed among them, that the powers saw the mistake they had made by issuing this general invitation, and felt great alarm as to the result.
The marshal called upon the militia and the city guards to turn out and muster around the scaffold to insure the safe custody of the prisoners and the execution of the sentence.