But now,—I am a Captive! Bodily in irons in a dungeon, and mentally imprisoned in one idea,—one horrible, one hideous, one unconquerable idea! I have only one thought, one conviction, one certitude,—
Condemned to death!
Whatever I do, that frightful thought is always here, like a spectre, beside me,—solitary and jealous, banishing all else, haunting me for ever, and shaking me with its two icy hands whenever I wish to turn my head away or to close my eyes. It glides into all forms in which my mind seeks to shun it; mixes itself, like a horrible chant, with all the words which are addressed to me; presses against me even to the odious gratings of my prison. It haunts me while awake, spies on my convulsive slumbers, and re-appears, a vivid incubus, in my dreams!
I have just started from a troubled sleep in which I was pursued by this thought, and I made an effort to say to myself, “Oh, it was but a dream!”
Well, even before my heavy eyes could read the fatal truth in the dreadful reality which surrounds me,—on the damp and reeking dungeon-walls, in the pale rays of my night-lamp, in the rough material of my prison-garb, on the sombre visage of the sentry, whose cap gleams through the grating of the door,—it seems to me that already a voice has murmured in my ear,—
SECOND PAPER.
FIVE weeks have now elapsed since I was tried,—found guilty,—sentenced.
Let me endeavour to recall the circumstances which attended that fatal day.
It was a beautiful morning at the close of August. My trial had already lasted three days; my name and accusation had collected each morning a knot of spectators, who crowded the benches of the Court, as ravens surrounded a corpse. During three days all the assembly of judges, witnesses, lawyers, and officers had passed and repassed as a phantasmagoria before my troubled vision.