The Headsman; Or, The Abbaye des Vignerons

by James Fenimore Cooper

"Thy answer agrees with thy character; thou art said to have more wit than honesty, Maso, and thou art described as one that can form a desperate resolution and act up to its decision at need?"

"I am as Heaven willed at the birth, Signor Castellano, and as the chances of a pretty busy life have served to give the work its finish. That I am not wanting in manly qualities on occasion, perhaps these noble travellers will be willing to testify, in consideration of some activity that I may have shown on the Leman, during their late passage of that treacherous water."

Though this was said carelessly, the appeal to the recollection and gratitude of those he had served was too direct to be overlooked. Melchior de Willading, the pious clavier, and the Signor Grimaldi all testified in behalf of the prisoner, freely admitting that, without his coolness and skill, the Winkelried and all she held would irretrievably have been lost. Sigismund was not content with so cold a demonstration of his feelings. He owed not only the lives of his father and him self to the courage of Maso, but that of one dearer than all; one whose preservation, to his youthful imagination, seemed a service that might nearly atone for any crime, and his gratitude was in proportion.

"I will testify more strongly to thy merit, Maso, in face of this or any tribunal;" he said, grasping the hand of the Italian. "One who showed so much bravery and so strong love for his fellows, would be little likely to take life clandestinely and like a coward. Thou mayest count on my testimony in this strait--if thou art guilty of this crime, who can hope to be innocent?"

Maso returned the friendly grasp till their fingers seemed to grow into each other. His eye, too, showed he was not without wholesome native sympathies, though education and his habits might have warped them from their true direction. A tear, in spite of his effort to suppress the weakness started from its fountain, rolling down his sunburnt cheek like a solitary rivulet trickling through a barren and rugged waste.

"This is frank, and as becomes a soldier, Signore," he said, "and I receive it as it is given, in kindness and love. But we will not lay more stress upon the affair of the lake than it deserves. This keen-sighted châtelain need not be told that I could not be of use in saving your lives, without saving my own; and, unless I much mistake the meaning of his eye, he is about to say that we are fashioned like this wild country in which chance has brought us together, with our spots of generous fertility mingled with much unfruitful rock, and that he who does a good act to-day may forget himself by doing an evil turn to-morrow."

"Thou givest reason to all who hear thee to mourn that thy career has not been more profitable to thyself and the public," answered the judge; "one who can reason so-well, and who hath this clear insight into his own disposition, must err less from ignorance than wantonness!"

"There you do me injustice, Signor Castellano, and the laws more credit than they deserve. I shall not deny that justice--or what is called justice--and I have some acquaintance. I have been the tenant of many prisons before this which has been furnished by the holy canons, and I have seen every stage of the rogue's progress, from him who is still startled by his first crime, dreaming heavy dreams, and fancying each stone of his cell has an eye to reproach him, to him who no sooner does a wrong than it is forgotten in the wish to find the means of committing another; and I call Heaven as a witness, that more is done to help along the scholar in his study of vice, by those who are styled the ministers of justice, than by his own natural frailties, the wants of his habits, or the strength of his passions. Let the judge feel a father's mildness, the laws possess that pure justice which is of things that are not perverted, and society become what it claims to be, a community of mutual support, and, my life on it, châtelain, thy functions will be lessened of most of their weight and of all their oppression."

"This language is bold, and without an object. Explain the manner of thy quitting Vévey, Maso, the road thou hast travelled, the hours of thy passages by the different villages, and the reason why thou wert discovered near the Refuge, alone, and why thou quittedst the companions with whom thou hadst passed the night so early and so clandestinely?"

The Italian listened attentively to these several interrogatories; when they were all put, he gravely and calmly set about furnishing his answers. The history of his departure from Vévey, his appearance at St. Maurice, Martigny, Liddes, and St. Pierre, was distinctly given, and it was in perfect accordance with the private information that had been gleaned by the authorities. He had passed the last habitation on the mountain, on foot and alone, about an hour before the solitary horseman, who was now known to be Jacques Colis, was seen to proceed in the same direction; and he admitted that he was overtaken by the latter, just as he reached the upper extremity of the plain beneath Vélan, where they were seen in company, though at a considerable distance, and by a doubtful light, by the travellers who were conducted by Pierre.