LITERARY SPECTATOR.

THE LAST DAY OF A PRISONER CONDEMNED TO DEATH.*

THis is a small volume, by a writer who at this moment attracts the chief attention of Paris, VICTOR HUGO: partly from the celebrity of the author, partly from the claims of the piece itself, the work has run through three editions in less than so many \yeas. It is conceived in a style new to our neighbours, but familiar to tin; and we doubt not that the author has chiefly nourished his peculiar turn of thinking upon some very modern English writers. Without, however, discussing the question now, we may just observe, that the Day rf Execution is written precisely in the exaggerated but striking style of apaper which appeared sometime ago in Blackwood's Magazine, recordingthe supposed emotions of a man who had accidentally got confined in the hollow of a church-bell. We forget the exact title, but we remember a singular circumstance connected with it—viz. that it was translated from Blackwood by a German writer, and published in a German periodical, the Morgan Matt. Some Englishman finding it there, and taking it to be of German original—which was natural enough (except that it was

too good)—re-translated it, and it figured in a new dress before the

admiring eyes of the author one morning—the same and not the same—in a weekly review lore, since extinct, called the Museum.

This paper, like many others in Blackwood, was composed in a spirit and mood which it is perhaps easier to say how it was compounded than how it was characterized : it had the poetical gloom of BYRON in his Manfred ; it had the mysterious vagueness which men love to call German ; it had moreover that play of thought, that sly humour, that in se ipse intuens habit of reflection, which marks the writings above those of till other men of CHARLES LAMB. VICTOR HUGO, we are well convinced, is impregnated from the same sources of inspiration with these persons—it maybe that he has even taken more direct means to arrive at it. Had CHARLES LAMB attempted the subject of the Last Day of a Malefactor left for Execution, he would—(we are not sure that he has not—we remember only at this moment his inimitable paper on the inconveniencies of being hanged)—have written a far deeper and more searching work than this, but. many would have been the points of similarity, and close the resemblance of the general effect. No Frenchman has ever come so near to nature in its agony : indeed, at any epoch before the present, it would have been deemed ill-bred to do so ; and now there is an outcry against the author for cruelly agitating the feelings of his readers. Hitherto such works have been forbidden the realms of taste, for the same reason that the spilling of blood was banished from the French stage—that undoubtedly the person who would take pleasure in frequenting executions must be grievously in want of excitement : while the nerves are well strung, and the blood circulating in wholesome currents, no man is disposed to disturb the course of his well-founded satisfaction by so severe a shock. It is only a morbid character who requires a galvanic application of this kind. In this morbid state, however, in certain countries and certain states of civilization, are men found ; and the analogous epoch in literature happens when writers brood upon the horrible events of life, imagine themselves suirounded by them, exaggerate their proportions and deepen their colouring, and when readers are found who are greedy of these pictures—when the world loves to have its feelings harrowed up, and judges its favourite authors by the measure of their power of agonizing. The French are not yet arrived at this point, but they are in full march towards it. The immediate spring, however; of this last effort of M. Hiroo (a writer whom, by the by, we have an extreme admiration for in his quality of poet) has been the perusal of the Memoirs of VIDOCQ. It is written in the vein of that person's remarkable prison-scenes. Hiroo, like Vinoco, has occasionally lighted up the darkness of his picture by the lurid flash of dungeon wit ; his tone is frequently in that bitter and sarcastic vein of jocularity which speaks more plainly of deep suffering and utter despair than the more direct expressions of anguish. But we will proceed to enable our readers to judge in part for themselves. It opens thus.

" Bicetre.

" Cone ?pined to death !

" For five weeks have I dwelt alone with this idea ; its presence has chilled me ; it has bent me down under its weight.

He proceeds to compare his former state of mind with his present condition. After which lie goes on.]

"Butt now I am a prisoner: my body is in chains—in a dungeon. My soul is in the dungeon of an idea; a horrible, a bloody, an implacable idea. I have but one thought, one convietion,one certainty—Condemned to (btiih

"Whatever I do, it is always there, this infernal thought, like a leaden spectre at my side, alone and jealous, driving off all distraction, and laying upon me its icy hand when I would turn away my head or shut my eyes. It slides in all forms into my mind, it is the burden of all I hear, mixing itself up with every speech addressed to me. It slips to the grating of my dungeon, it besieges me when awake, and when I sleep it watches my convulsive slumbers, and re-appears in my dreams."

"It was a fine day in August.

"My trial had lasted three days; three days had my name and crime attracted a crowd of spectators, who settled down on the benches of the court like crows about a corpse ; three days did all this phantasmagoria (fledges, witnesses, lawyers, prosecutors, pass and repass before my eyes, one while grotesque, at another sanguinary, elwes's dark and fatal. The two hint nights I could not close my eyes from anetiety and affright On the third 1 was overpowered by weariness and fatigue. At midnight I had left the jury deliberating. They brought me back to the straw in my dungeon, and I fell immediately into a profound sleep—a sleep et oblivion. This was the first repose I had had for many days.

*Le Bernier JO: e (run Condamml. Pvt. Victor Hugo. Deuxiilue Faris, 162e. "I was still in the depth of this deep sleep when they came to awake me. This time I was not to be roused by the heavy step of the gaoler, the tramping of his nailed shoes, the jingling of his bunch of keys, nor yet by the harsh jarring of the bolt : be was obliged to put his mouth.to my ear, and his rough land on my :shoulder—' Get up, I say.' I opened my eyes and sat upright in affright. At this moment I caught a sight of a patch of light on the roof of the adjoining gallery, throogh the narrow slit in my dungeon wall : this was the only sky I was permitted to have a glimpse of, and well does the prisoner know how to recognize the sun by the yellow reflection of his rays.—' Fine day !' said I, to the turnkey. He was some time before he answered me, as if he was considering whether it was worth while ; however, with an effort, he muttered surlily, Very likely.'

"I sat still, half asleep, my eyes fixed upon the gilded patch of sun on the i roof, my features relaxing into a smile: Here s a fine day,' I repeated.

Yes,' answered the man, 'they are waitina.° for you.' "These few words, like the string which checks the flight of the poor bird in the hands of a mischevious boy, brought me back to the reality with V lence. All of a sudden I saw again, as in a flash of lightning, the gloomy assize coert before me, the borse.shoe bench, judges in their 'blood-coloured garments, the three rows of witnesses with their stupid faces, the two gendarmesa t each end of my bench ; I fancied the black robes rustling about me, and the busy hive of heads below in the shade, and the fixed stare of the jurors upon my countenance, and who bad watched while I had been sleeping. "I got up : my teeth chattered, my hands trembled and could not lay hold of my clothes, my legs were weak; at the first step! staggered like a porter under his burden too heavy for him. However, I followed the gaoler.

"The two gendarmes were waiting for me at the door of my cell. They put on the handcuff's. They were fastened by an intricate lock, which they closed with care. I let them do as they pleased, it was machine upon a machine.

"We crossed the inner court. The fresh air or morning revived me. I raised my head : thb sky was blue,and the warm rays of the sun, intercepted by the lofty chimnies, traced great angles of light upon the top of the high prison-walls. We ascended a winding staircase; we traversed a gallery— then another—then a third : at last a low door was opened. The warm air, mingled with the hum, met me as I entered: it was the breath of the crowd in the ball of assize. I entered.

" As I appeared there was a bustle, the jingling of arms and the sound of voices. The benches were noisily cleared, the doors clashed, and while I crossed the long court between the two massee of people, along an opening lined with soldiers, it seemed as if I was the centre to which was attached the thread that moved all these gaping countenances. " Not until this instant did I perceive that I was without chains : I could not recollect either how or when they had taken them off. "There was a deep silence in the court. I had ..arrived at my place. When the tumult ceased in the crowd it ceased in my ideas : I clearly conceived that whilst hitherto I had only had a confused glimpse of that, Iliad come there to hear my sentence pronounced. " Somehow or other, the idea did not affect me. The windows were open ; the air and noise of the town came in freely from without ; the hall was as bright as if it had been for a wedding; the cheerful beams of the sun were tracing here and there the luminous figures of the windows, one while lengthened on the floor, at another spread upon the tables or broken upon the angle of the walls, ant' from each of the diamond-shaped panes, there flowed a brilliant prism of tue golden dust of the atmosphere.

" The judges at the bottom of the hall had an air of satisfaction, prooably from the pleasure of having nearly finished. The countenance of the president, faintly lighted up with the reflection from a pane of the window, had something in it calm and benevolent' and a young assessor was talking almost gaily as he played with his band, with a fine woman placed by favour behind him.

The jury alone appeared wan and depressed; but it was apparently with the fatigue of having sat up all night. Some of them gaped ; nothing in their countenances indicated that they had brought in a sentence of death : I could divine nothing in the faces of these good citizens, except a strong desire to sleep."

HI.

"Condemned to death ! Wellshy not? Men, I remember to have read somewhere, men are all condemned to death, and reprieved from time to time. What then is so changed in my situation ? "From the hour when my sentence was pronounced, how many are dead who were preparing for a long life ! Hcw many have preceded me who, young, free, and healthy, were reckoning upon such, or such a day on going to the Greve to sec my bead fall ! How many are there, who now are walking at liberty, breathing the open air, and going in and out at pleasure, will still go before me ! Ix.

"I have just made my will. To what end ? I am condemned in coals, and all that I have will scarcely pay them. The guillotine is very dear.

" I leave a mother ; I leave a wife ; I leave a child—a little girl of three years old, gentle, rosy, delicate, with large black eyes, and hair of chestnut. She was two years old and a month when I last saw her.

"Thus after my death three females without son, without husband, without father : three orphans of a different kind three widows by one deed of law. xi.

"Since the day did not yet:appear, what was Ito do with the night ? An idea has just occurred to me. I arose and carried my lamp round the four -walls of my dungeon. They are covered with scrawls, rude drawings, droll figures, names one upon another. It would seem that each prisoner had wished to leave some trace behind him, here at least. Here is pencil, chalk, charcoal, letters black, white, and gray, some lines deep cut in the stone, here and there ruddy characters, as if drawn in blood. Assuredly if my mind were less occupied I should take some interest in the strange history which opens upon me page by page as I go from stone to stone. On a level with my pillow there are two flaming hearts pierced with an arrow ; above them the words 'Love jiff lift:: The unhappy man did not engage for long. On one side a sort of three-cornered hat, with a little figure coarsely drawn, and beneath these words, Vive l'Empereur,

"Again flaming hearts, with this inscription characteristic of a prison, 'I love and I adore Matthew Danvin. James'.' On the opposite wall is the name of Papavoine; the large P ornamented with all sorts of fine flourishes.

"The stanza of an obscene 'song. A cap of liberty deeply cut in the stone—with 'Boi.ies.' below. 'The Republic.' This was one of the subalterns who joined in the affair of La Rochelle. Poor young man ! Oh, these political necessities are hideous: for an idea, a dream, an abstraction, this

horrible reality called the guillotine.—And I, I pretend to complain ! I who have committed a real crime, who have shed blood!

XXX.

THE ORDINARY.

" No ; low as I may be fallen, I am no unbeliever. God is my witness that I believe in him. But what is it that the old Ordinary has said to me ? I felt nothing, I was not affected, I never wept; nothing laid hold of my soul ; nothing came from his heart to mine, nothing which was his and then mine. On the contrary, all was vague, monotonous, applicable to all and everybody ; emphatic where he ought to have been impressive, flat where he should have been simple ; a sort of sentimental sermon or theological elegy. Here and there a Latin quotation ; St. Augustin, St. Gregory, or what not. And then he had the air of repeating a lesson for the twentieth time, of running over a theme obliterated from his memory by the mere force of familiarity. Not a glance in the eye, accent in the voice, or gesture in the hands. And how should it be otherwise ? This Priest is the official clergyman of the gaol. His business is to console and exhort, and he lives by so doing. The prisoners, the patients, are the wheels on which his eloquence runs. He confesses them, and supports them because it is his place to do so. For a long time he has been habituated to that which would make another shudder : his well-powdered hair never stands erect: the galleys and the scaffold are every-day circumstances for him. He is blunted. Perhaps he keeps a book, on one side the service for those who are to be transported, and on the other for those who are to be executed. He is informed in the evening who is to be consoled at such an hour : he asks whether he is to be transported or to suffer death ; and he reads the page, and then he comes. Then both they who are going to Toulon, and they who go to the Greve are but a commonplace for him, and thus he is but a commonplace for them.

" Oh ! let them go seek for me some young curate, or worthy vicar, as it may chance, in the first parish they arrive at : let them take bins from the corner of his hearth, reading his book, and never expecting that he is about to he told, 'There is a man who is going to die, and it is you who must console him—you must be there when they tie his hands behind, there when they cut off his hair—you must go with him in the cart, and hide the executioner from him with the cross—you must traverse with him the horrid and bloodthirsty crowd, embrace him at the foot of the scaffold, and remain till his head is here and his body there.' Then let them bring him to me, palpitating, shuddering from head to foot : let me throw myself into his arms, on his knees, and he will weep and I whi weep ; and he shall be eloquent and I shall be consoled ; my bursting heart will subside into his, and he will take my soul and I will take his God !

"But this good old man, what is he to me ? what am Ito him ?—an individual of an unhappy class, a shadow such as he has seen many, a unit to add to the number of his exertions. * 4 * 4 *

"It is extraordinary that I am incessantly thinking of the King. I cannot help it ; in vain I try to drive the idea away : there is always a voice whispering in my ear thus :—' In this same town, at this very hour, and not far from here, in another palace, there is a man who also has his guards at all his doors, a man unique like thyself among the people, with this difference, that he is as high as thou art low. His whole life, minute by minute, is nothing but glory, grandeur, delight, intoxication. All about him is love, respect, veneration. The loudest voices whisper in his presence, and the fiercest brow lays aside its terrors. Under his eyes there is nothing but silk and gold. At this hour he bolds some council of ministers where all are of his opinion, or perhaps he dreams of the hunt to-morrow, of the ball this evening, sure that the fete will come at its hour, and that others will take upon themselves the labour of preparing his pleasures. Well ! this man is nothing but flesh and blood like thyself. In order that at the very instant the scaffold should crumble under your feet, and that life, liberty, fortune, and family should be restored to you, he only need write the seven letters of his name at the foot of a morsel of paper.'

• * 4 4 41 XL1V.

"The priest is good ; the gaoler also. I think they each shed a tear when I told them that my child had been taken away. "It is done. Now I must brace myself up against the event. I must think without flinching of the executioner, of the cart, of the gendarmes, of the crowd on the bridge, on the quay, at the windows; and all this is on purpose for me, on the dismal place of the Greve, which might be paved with the heads it has witnessed fall.

" I think I have one hour to reconcile me to ell that—"

M. HUGO professes that he has written his book with a motive— it is to appeal against the punishment: he deems that if men would sympathize more nearly with their fellows, they would never put a living man in such a position. There is some force in the argument. We have only been able to pick out an insulated portion here and there ; but we cannot help thinking that no one can read the whole without feeling that if he should ever have life within his power, his responsibility would be awfully increased.