During this speech of the young headsman the criminal was observed to tremble convulsively, as if struggling to speak, but the assistant executioner grasped the handkerchief still tighter round his head and repeated the signals impatiently.
"Did you hear?" said one of the foremost in the crowd. "Did you hear how he cursed his father? He actually reproached him in his last moments for having brought him up a Scharfrichter! Oh! the unfeeling young villain! What a heart he must have."
"Ah! neighbour," answered another, "these executioners are not like other mortals; they do not know what it is to feel. They are brought up to kill their fellow creatures as butchers are to kill cattle, and they think nothing of it. Bless you, there is nothing these men would not do for money."
"'Tis strange, too," said another close by. "I always thought young Leo loved his father. I never thought so bad of him as to think that he would curse him in his dying moments, wretch though he may have been."
"Take my word for it, neighbour," said a sturdy inhabitant of ——dorf, "that young Leo does not know yet that it is his father."
At this moment everyone suddenly broke short his discourse, and the crowd again was silent for a moment. The two-handed weapon was raised high in the air, glittered for a moment in the rays of the rising sun, then descended with the rapidity of lightning, while the head of the murderer having slipped out of the handkerchief with the force of the blow, fell with a crash on the platform.
A loud cheer is raised by the crowd, and young Leo having thrown away his sword and pushed aside the assistant executioner, has seized the head of the criminal and torn off the bandage from his eyes. He holds it high in the air by its purple locks and gloats with fiendish satisfaction on its writhing features. The muscles of the face are fearfully convulsed, as if the spirit had not as yet quite departed, but still lingered about the corpse, being loth to leave its tenement. The eyes roll hideously and appear to gaze reproachfully upon the face of the young executioner. Suddenly a change comes over the features of the young man. His countenance, the moment before so flushed with triumph and revenge, now assumes a ghastly pallor; a cold sweat breaks out on his forehead, his matted locks stand on end. His eyes start from his head, his jaw drops low. Then, with a preternatural shriek, he drops the head, which rolls down the hillock of earth among the crowd, staggers and falls heavily upon the platform, gasping out "Oh, Gott! mein Vater!"
No words can describe the sensation created among the crowd at this horrible scene. Questions and explanations ensued, and a rush was made towards the scaffold. Assistance was at length procured, and the son of the late executioner was lifted from the ground and driven toward his own house in the cart that he had set out in that morning to execute his fearful mission. A doctor was sent for, who declared that he was in an apoplectic fit. In time, however, he recovered, and the doctor left someone with him to attend to him and keep him quiet. Nevertheless, when he came to reflect upon what had happened that morning, in spite of all restraint, he rushed wildly into the chamber where his poor paralytic mother lay on her death-bed, and losing all caution and reflection in his emotion, he related in a wild and excited manner the dreadful events of the day. The result may be anticipated. The poor woman, long given up by the doctors, sank under the startling news, and expired almost instantaneously.
Young Leo, who, with the exception of his drunkenness had really nothing very bad in him, now gave way to the most excessive grief, for he loved his mother tenderly. He felt himself now guilty of the murder of both his parents, and refused all consolation. What had he now to live for, thought he. His father he had murdered with his own hands and sent with curses to the tomb; his mother, so dear to him he had hurried to the grave through his insane want of self-restraint. His lady-love, false (as he thought), for secretly they had plighted their troth together. What was life to him now but a burden? He loathed it. These gloomy thoughts clouded his mind with a profound melancholy, a deep incurable despair. On the following morning Leo Wenzel, the young executioner, fell upon his own sword, yet moist with the blood of his father, by him so unconsciously shed on the day before.
With the death of Leo Wenzel the family became extinct, and the profession of the Scharfrichter went begging. But who was the assistant executioner? Nobody could find out. He had disappeared as mysteriously as he had made his appearance. Some said it was one, and some another, while the most settled belief was that it could be none other than the arch-fiend himself who had come to carry off the Henker's soul. In the confusion that followed the swoon of young Leo he had vanished, and no one had seen whither. No human being could have passed through a crowd without being seen by someone, therefore it must have been the arch-enemy of mankind. Thus reasoned the people of ——dorf.