The concluding words of the venerable priest fell like healing balm upon the wounded spirit of Florian, who returned home an altered and a saddened, but a sustained and a devout man: deeply conscious that the ways of Providence, however intricate, are just; and more resigned to a vocation, to which he now conceived that he had been for especial purposes appointed. He followed, too, the advice of the friendly priest, in leaving the public belief of his own death uncontradicted; and, as he had not actually witnessed the murder in the grove near D., he felt himself justified in withholding his evidence against an individual, of whose innocence there was a remote possibility.
The mental agony of the unfortunate young headsman had been so acute, that a reaction upon his bodily health was inevitable. Symptoms of serious indisposition appeared the next day, and were followed by a long and critical malady, which, however, eventually increased his domestic happiness, by unfolding in his Madelon nobler and higher attributes than he had yet discovered in her character. No longer the giddy and laughter-loving Frenchwoman, she had, for some years, become a devoted wife and mother; but it was not until she saw her husband’s gentle spirit for ever blighted, and his life endangered for some weeks by a wasting fever, that she felt all his claims upon her, and bitterly reproached herself as the sole cause of his heaviest calamities. During this long period of sickness, when all worldly objects were waning around this man of sorrows, she watched, and wept, and prayed over him with an untiring assiduity and self-oblivion, which developed to the grateful Florian all the unfathomable depths of woman’s love, and proved her consummate skill and patience in all the tender offices and trying duties of a sick-chamber. Her health was undermined, and her fine eyes were dimmed for ever by long-continued vigilance; but her assiduities were at length rewarded by a favourable crisis; and when the patient sufferer was sufficiently restored to bear the disclosure, she kneeled to him in deep humility, and acknowledged, what the reader has doubtless long conjectured, that she had, from an upper window, caused that ominous jarring of the sword and axe which induced her father to suspect and follow him, and which eventually led to their marriage.
Florian started in sudden indignation; but his gentle nature, and the hallowed influences of recent sickness and calamity, soon prevailed over his wrath. What could he say? How could he chide the lovely and devoted woman, whose fraud had grown out of her affection for him! In an instant he forgot his own sorrows; and, as he listened to the mournful and beseeching accents of her who was the mother of his children, and had been unto him, in sickness and in health, a ministering angel, his anger melted into love. He had no words; but, like the father of the humbled prodigal, he had compassion, and fell upon her neck and kissed her, and forgave her entirely, and for ever.
The old headsman survived these events several years; and, while his strength continued equal to the effort, he spared his son-in-law from the trying duties of his office. After his death, however, his successor was compelled to encounter the dreadful task. For some time before and after each execution, sadness sat heavy on his soul, but yielded gradually to the sustaining influence of fervent prayer, and to the caresses of his wife and children. In the intervening periods he regained comparative tranquillity, and devoted himself unceasingly to the education of his boys, and to the labours of his field and vineyard. I have been told, however, that since the execution of Bartholdy he was never seen to smile; and that, when gazing on the joyous sports of his unconscious children, his eyes would often fill with tears of sorrowing anticipation. Thus many years elapsed: his boys have become men, and the recent training and nomination of one of them as his successor, have renewed in the heart of the fond father all those bitter pangs which the soothing agency of time and occupation had lulled to comparative repose.
Here the interesting narrator paused. Towards the conclusion of his recital his mournful voice had quivered with suppressed emotion; and, as he finished, his eyes were clouded with tears.
His companions had listened to this affecting narrative with a sympathy which, for some moments, subdued all power of utterance, and the silence which ensued was interrupted only by involuntary and deep-drawn sighs. At length the Professor roused himself, and, prompted by a friendly wish to draw out a more explanatory conclusion, he put the leading question, “Had he, then, no alternative?”
“You forget, my dear sir,” replied Julius, rallying with sudden effort, “that by the French laws the son of an executioner must succeed his father, or see the family estate transferred to strangers. When the old headsman was near his end, his son-in-law pledged himself by oath to train a son as his own successor. His eldest boy, who blended with his father’s gentle manners some portion of his mother’s courage, evinced, from an early age, such determined antipathy to this vocation, that the appointment was transferred to the second son, who had inherited the masculine spirit and prompt decision of his mother. Unhappily, however, soon after his nomination, he died of a malignant fever. His sorrowing mother, who had for some time observed symptoms of declining health in her husband, and was indescribably solicitous to see him relieved from his official duties, prevailed upon her youngest son, in absence of her first-born, to accept the appointment. But this youth, not then nineteen, and in mind and person the counterpart of his timid father, was equally unsuited to this formidable calling. Well knowing, however, that his refusal would deprive his parents of the home and the support so essential to their growing infirmities, he strung his nerves to the appalling task, and, at the next execution, he mounted the scaffold as his father’s substitute. But, alas! at the decisive moment his strength and resolution failed him. His sight grew dim with horror, and he performed his trying duty so unskilfully, that the people groaned with indignation at the protracted sufferings of the unfortunate criminal, and the town authorities pronounced him unqualified. The consequence of this disastrous failure was an immediate summons to the eldest son, who had for several years thought himself finally released from this terrible appointment. So unexpected a change in his destination fell upon him like a death-blow; and, as he read the fatal summons, he felt the sword and axe grating on his very soul.”
“And do you think it possible,” exclaimed one of the students, “that after such long exemption he will submit to a life so horrible?”