Valentine Kalondai declared, however, that he would only hold office till the new order of things had been established; then they must elect them a new sheriff in his place.
After this weighty matter had thus been satisfactorily settled, the recorder and the fiscal procurator brought in sundry official documents, which only needed the signature of the sheriff, the council having already passed them; they were urgent criminal cases, in which every delay would be cruel. In all penal matters a swift execution is merciful. Not till all this business had been disposed of could Valentine quit the council-chamber.
The first document presented for his signature was a death-warrant.
It was the first sentence of death he had ever signed; his heart beat violently.
To kill a man in the battlefield, in the heat of the combat; to manfully grapple with a man who is already mowing his way through the ranks, sword in hand, first bidding him defend himself or surrender; to cut down with a strong hand and dash to pieces a man who breaks into the land as an enemy, and ravages it like a wild beast—all that he had often and cheerfully done, as became a soldier. But to sit in a soft armchair and kill a man in cold blood, a man in fetters who cannot fly, who cannot defend himself; a man of the same town as yourself, a fellow-citizen, perhaps an acquaintance, who, pale with mortal agony, begs you for mercy; to kill such a man by breaking the staff of office over him—in such a thing as that he was quite a novice.
He asked what crime this man had committed.
"He has killed his wife."
A terrible crime!
"He killed his wife, and she, too, big with child."
A horrible, unnatural crime. Such a wound as that none but the headsman can heal.