EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.
Veneno was placed, as is usual, the day before his execution, “en capilla” in a chapel or cell set apart for the condemned, where the last comforts of religion are administered. This was a small room in the prison, and the most melancholy in that dwelling of woe, for such indeed, as Cervantes from sad experience knew, and described a Spanish prison to be, it still is. An iron grating formed the partition of the corridor, which led to the chamber. This passage was crowded with members of a charitable brotherhood, who were collecting alms from the visitors, to be expended in masses for the eternal repose of the soul of the criminal. There were groups of officers, and of portly Franciscan friars smoking their cigars and looking carefully from time to time into the amount of the contributions, which were to benefit their bodies, quite as much as the soul of the condemned. The levity of those assembled without formed, meantime, a heartless contrast with the gloom and horror of the melancholy interior. A small door opened into the cell, over which might well be inscribed the awful words of Dante—
“Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate!”
EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.
At the head of this room was placed a table, with a crucifix, an image of the Virgin, and two wax tapers, near which stood a silent sentinel with a drawn sword; another soldier was stationed at the door, with a fixed bayonet. In a corner of this darkened apartment was the pallet of Veneno; he was lying curled up like a snake, with a striped coverlet (the Spanish manta) drawn closely over his mouth, leaving visible only a head of matted locks, a glistening dark eye, rolling restlessly out of the white socket. On being approached he sprung up and seated himself on a stool: he was almost naked; a chaplet of beads hung across his exposed breast, and contrasted with the iron chains around his limbs:—Superstition had riveted her fetters at his birth, and the Law her manacles at his death. The expression of his face, though low and vulgar, was one which once seen is not easily forgotten,—a slouching look of more than ordinary guilt: his sallow complexion appeared more cadaverous in the uncertain light, and was heightened by a black, unshorn beard, growing vigorously on a half-dead countenance. He appeared to be reconciled to his fate, and repeated a few sentences, the teaching of the monks, as by rote: his situation was probably more painful to the spectator than to himself—an indifference to death, arising rather from an ignorance of its dreadful import, than from high moral courage: he was the Bernardine of Shakspere, “a man that apprehends death no more dreadfully than a drunken sleep, careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s past, present, and to come, insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal.”
EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.
Next morning the triple tiers of the old balconies, roofs, and whole area of the Moorish and most picturesque square were crowded by the lower orders; the men wrapped up in their cloaks—(it was a December morning)—the women in their mantillas, many with young children in their arms, brought in the beginning of life to witness its conclusion. The better classes not only absent themselves from these executions, but avoid any allusion to the subject as derogatory to European civilization; the humbler ranks, who hold the conventions of society very cheap, give loose to their morbid curiosity to behold scenes of terror, which operates powerfully on the women, who seem impelled irresistibly to witness sights the most repugnant to their nature, and to behold sufferings which they would most dread to undergo; they, like children, are the great lovers of the horrible, whether in a tale or in dreadful reality; to the men it was as a tragedy, where the last scene is death—death which rivets the attention of all, who sooner or later must enact the same sad part.[10] They desire to see how the criminal will conduct himself; they sympathise with him if he displays coolness and courage, and despise him on the least symptom of unmanliness. An open square was then formed about the scaffold by lines of soldiers drawn up, into which the officers and clergy were admitted. As the fatal hour drew nigh, the increasing impatience of the multitude began to vent itself in complaints of how slowly the time passed—that time of no value to them, but of such precious import to him, whose very moments were numbered.
EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.
When at length the cathedral clock tolled out the fatal hour, a universal stir of tiptoe expectation took place, a pushing forward to get the best situations. Still ten minutes had to elapse, for the clock of the tribunal is purposely set so much later than that of the cathedral, in order to afford the utmost possible chance of a reprieve. When that clock too had rung out its knell, all eyes were turned to the prison-door, from whence the miserable man came forth, attended by some Franciscans. He had chosen that order to assist at his dying moments, a privilege always left to the criminal. He was clad in a coarse yellow baize gown, the colour which denotes the crime of murder, and is appropriated always to Judas Iscariot in Spanish paintings. He walked slowly on his last journey, half supported by those around him, and stopping often, ostensibly to kiss the crucifix held before him by a friar, but rather to prolong existence—sweet life!—even yet a moment. When he arrived reluctantly at the scaffold, he knelt down on the steps, the threshold of death;—the reverend attendants covered him over with their blue robes—his dying confession was listened to unseen. He then mounted the platform attended by a single friar; addressed the crowd in broken sentences, with a gasping breath—told them that he died repentant, that he was justly punished, and that he forgave his executioner. “Mi delito me mata, y no ese hombre,”—my offence puts me to death, and not this fellow; as “Ese hombre” is a contemptuous expression, and implies insult, the ruling feeling of the Spaniard was displayed in death against the degraded functionary. The criminal then exclaimed, “Viva la fé! viva la religion! viva el rey! viva el nombre de Jesus!” All of which met no echo from those who heard him. His dying cry was “Viva la Virgen Santisima!” at these words the devotion to the goddess of Spain burst forth in one general acclamation, “Viva la Santisima!” So strong is their feeling towards the Virgin, and so lukewarm their comparative indifference towards their king, their faith, and their Saviour! Meanwhile the executioner, a young man dressed in black, was busied in the preparations for death. The fatal instrument is simple: the culprit is placed on a rude seat; his back leans against a strong upright post, to which an iron collar is attached, enclosing his neck, and so contrived as to be drawn home to the post by turning a powerful screw. The executioner bound so tightly the naked legs and arms of Veneno, that they swelled and became black—a precaution not unwise, as the father of this functionary had been killed in the act of executing a struggling criminal. The priest who attended Veneno was a bloated, corpulent man, more occupied in shading the sun from his own face, than in his ghostly office; the robber sat with a writhing look of agony, grinding his clenched teeth. When all was ready, the executioner took the lever of the screw in both hands, gathered himself up for a strong muscular effort, and, at the moment of a preconcerted signal, drew the iron collar tight, while an attendant flung a black handkerchief over the face—a convulsive pressure of the hands and a heaving of the chest were the only visible signs of the passing of the robber’s spirit. After a pause of a few moments, the executioner cautiously peeped under the handkerchief, and after having given another turn to the screw, lifted it off, folded it up, carefully put it into his pocket, and then proceeded to light a cigar
——— “with that air of satisfaction
Which good men wear who’ve done a virtuous action.”