Unfeeling I deemed the note that everywhere
was struck by man and Nature, so discordant was it with my gloomy
outlook. If you would have food for reflection upon the evanescent
quality of life, upon the nothingness of man, upon the empty,
heartless egoism implicit in human nature, get yourselves sentenced
to death, and then look around you. With such a force was all this
borne in upon me, and with such sufficiency, that after the first
pang was spent I went near to rejoicing that things were as they
were, and that I was to die, haply before sunset. It was become
such a world as did not seem worth a man's while to live in: a world
of vainness, of hollowness, of meanness, of nothing but illusions.
The knowledge that I was about to die, that I was about to quit all
this, seemed to have torn some veil from my eyes, and to have
permitted me to recognize the worthless quality of what I left.
Well may it be that such are but the thoughts of a man's dying
moments, whispered into his soul by a merciful God to predispose him
for the wrench and agony of his passing.
I had been a half-hour in my cell when the door was opened to admit
Castelroux, whom I had not seen since the night before. He came
to condole with me in my extremity, and yet to bid me not utterly
lose hope.
"It is too late to-day to carry out the sentence," said he, "and as
to-morrow will be Sunday, you will have until the day after. By
then much may betide, monsieur.
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