The Knights of England, France, and Scotland

by Henry William Herbert

The death-train passed on its way, however, unmolested by any further show of temper on the part of the crowd; and the crowd itself, following the progress of the hurdle to the place of execution, was soon out of sight of the windows occupied by the family of the count de St. Renan.

“Alas! unhappy Kerguelen!” exclaimed the count, with a deep and painful sigh, as the fearful procession was lost to sight in the distance. “He knows not yet half the bitterness of that which he has to undergo.”

The boy looked up into his father’s face with an inquiring glance, which he answered at once, still in the same subdued and solemn voice which he had used from the first.

“By the arrangement of his hair and dress I can see that he imagines he is to die as a nobleman, by the axe. May Heaven support him when he sees the disgraceful wheel.”

“You seem to pity the wretch, Louis,” cried the lady, who had not hitherto spoken, nor even looked toward the criminal as he was passing by the windows—“and yet he was assuredly a most atrocious criminal. A cool, deliberate, cold-blooded poisoner! Out upon it! out upon it! The wheel is fifty times too good for him!”

“He was all that you say, Marie,” replied her husband gravely; “and yet I do pity him with all my heart, and grieve for him. I knew him well, though we have not met for many years, when we were both young, and there was no braver, nobler, better man within the limits of fair France. I know, too, how he loved that woman, how he trusted that man—and then to be so betrayed! It seems to me but yesterday that he led her to the altar, all tears of happiness, and soft maiden blushes. Poor Kerguelen! he was sorely tried.”

“But still, my son, he was found wanting. Had he submitted him as a Christian to the punishment the good God laid upon him—”

“The world would have pronounced him a spiritless, dishonored slave, father,” said the count, answering the ecclesiastic’s speech before it was yet finished, “and gentlemen would have refused him the hand of fellowship.”

“Was he justified then, my father?” asked the boy eagerly, who had been listening with eager attention to every word that had yet been spoken. “Do you think, then, that he was in the right; that he could not do otherwise than to slay her? I can understand that he was bound to kill the man who had basely wronged his honor—but a woman!—a woman whom he had once loved too!—that seems to me most horrible; and the mode, by a slow poison! living with her while it took effect! eating at the same board with her! sleeping by her side! that seems even more than horrible, it was cowardly!”

“God forbid, my son,” replied the elder nobleman, “that I should say any man was justified who had murdered another in cold blood; especially, as you have said, a woman, and by a method so terrible as poison. I only mean exactly what I said, that he was tried very fearfully, and that under such trial the best and wisest of us here below can not say how he would act himself. Moreover, it would seem, that mistaken as he was perhaps in the course which he seems to have imagined that honor demanded at his hands, he was more mistaken in the mode which he took of accomplishing his scheme of vengeance. It was made very evident upon his trial that he did nothing, even to that wretched traitress, in rage or revenge, but all as he thought in honor. He chose a drug which consumed her by a mild and gradual decay, without suffering or spasm; he gave her time for repentance, nay, it is clearly proved that he convinced her of her sin, reconciled her to the part he had taken in her death, and exchanged forgiveness with her before she passed away. I do not think myself that to commit a crime himself can clear one from dishonor cast upon him by another’s act, but at the same time I can not look upon Kerguelen’s guilt as of that brutal and felonious nature which calls for such a punishment as this—to be broken alive on the wheel, like a hired stabber—much less can I assent to the stigma which is attached to him on all sides, while that base, low-lived, treacherous, cogging miscreant, who fell too honorably by his honorable sword, meets pity—God defend us from such justice and sympathy!—and is entombed with tears and honors, while the avenger is crushed, living, out of the very shape of humanity by the hands of the common hangman.”