The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo

Author:Victor Hugo [Hugo, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780486120966
Publisher: INscribe Digital
Published: 2012-10-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter XIII

A few days ago I saw a horrible sight.

It happened before daylight. The prison was very noisy. I heard the opening and closing of the heavy gates, the turning of the locks and the iron bolts, the clank of the heavy bunches of keys hanging from the jailers’ waists, the stairs creaking from top to bottom beneath hurried steps, and voices calling and answering from one end of the long corridors to the other. My neighbors in the cell of correction were more gay than usual. All Bicêtre seemed to be laughing, singing, running, and dancing.

I, the only quiet one in all this hubbub, the only still being in all the uproar, sat wondering and on the alert, listening to every sound.

A jailer passed.

I ventured to call and ask him if there was a fête going on in the prison.

“You may call it a fête if you like!” he replied. “To-day they are going to put the irons on the convicts who start to-morrow for Toulon. Do you want to see them? It will amuse you.”

A show of any kind, however disagreeable, was a lucky thing for a solitary prisoner, and I accepted the fellow’s offer.

The jailer took the usual precautions, to make sure of me, and then led me into a small empty cell, which contained not an article of furniture. It had a grated window, but a real window nevertheless, breast-high, and from which the real sky was visible.

“Here,” said he, “you can see and hear. You will be alone in your box, like a king.”

He went out, drawing after him the locks, bolts, and bars.

The window looked out upon a good-sized square court, around the four sides of which, like a wall, rose a great stone structure six stories high. Nothing could be more disagreeable, more forlorn, nor more wretched-looking than that façade with its many barred gratings, behind which peered out, above and below, a crowd of thin, white faces, one over the other, like the stones in a wall, and all framed, as it were, between the iron bars. They were the prisoners, watching the ceremony in which some day they were to take part. They looked like souls who were undergoing the punishment of purgatory, on their way to hell.

They were watching in silence the empty court. They were waiting. Among the tired, heavy faces, here and there shone out wild, piercing eyes, like sparks of fire.

The prison which surrounded the four sides of the square was not an unbroken wall. One of the four sides (the one looking to the east) was separated near the centre, and was connected to the other part by an iron railing. This railing opened on to a second court, smaller than the first, and, like it, flanked with walls full of black holes.

Around the walls of the main court were placed stone benches. In the centre was an iron pole for holding a lantern.

Noon struck. A large porte-cochère hidden behind a projection was suddenly opened. A

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