THE LAST DAY OF A CONDEMNED MAN

Translated by Eugenia De B.

I.

Bicêtre

Condemned to death!

These five weeks have I dwelt with this idea: always alone with it, always frozen by its presence; always bent under its weight.

Formerly — for it seems to me rather years than weeks since I was a being like any other: each day, each hour, each minute had its idea. My mind, youthful and rich, was full of fancies, which it developed successively, without order or aim, but weaving inexhaustible arabesques on the poor and coarse web of life. Sometimes it was of young girls, sometimes of unbounded possessions, then of battles gained, next of theatres full of sound and light, and then again the young girls and shadowy walks at night beneath spreading chestnut-trees. There was a perpetual revel in my imagination: I might think on what I chose, I was free.

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 forever, 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 reappears, a viv