blood, dripping from the mattresses upon which lay the
wounded man, speechless; the monk had disappeared.
“The monk!” cried the host; “where is the monk?”
Grimaud sprang toward an open window which looked into the
courtyard.
“He has escaped by this means,” exclaimed he.
“Do you think so?” said the host, bewildered; “boy, see if
the mule belonging to the monk is still in the stable.”
“There is no mule,” cried he to whom this question was
addressed.
The host clasped his hands and looked around him
suspiciously, whilst Grimaud knit his brows and approached
the wounded man, whose worn, hard features awoke in his mind
such awful recollections of the past.
“There can be no longer any doubt but that it is himself,”
said he.
“Does he still live?” inquired the innkeeper.
Making no reply, Grimaud opened the poor man’s jacket to
feel if the heart beat, whilst the host approached in his
turn; but in a moment they both fell back, the host uttering
a cry of horror and Grimaud becoming pallid. The blade of a
dagger was buried up to the hilt in the left side of the
executioner.
“Run! run for help!” cried Grimaud, “and I will remain
beside him here.”
The host quitted the room in agitation, and as for his wife,
she had fled at the sound of her husband’s cries.
32
The Absolution.
This is what had taken place: We have seen that it was not
of his own free will, but, on the contrary, very
reluctantly, that the monk attended the wounded man who had
been recommended to him in so strange a manner. Perhaps he
would have sought to escape by flight had he seen any
possibility of doing so. He was restrained by the threats of
the two gentlemen and by the presence of their attendants,
who doubtless had received their instructions. And besides,
he considered it most expedient, without exhibiting too much
ill-will, to follow to the end his role as confessor.
The monk entered the chamber and approached the bed of the
wounded man. The executioner searched his face with the
quick glance peculiar to those who are about to die and have
no time to lose. He made a movement of surprise and said:
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Dumas, Alexandre – Twenty Years After
“Father, you are very young.”
“Men who bear my robe have no, age,” replied the monk,
dryly.
“Alas, speak to me more gently, father; in my last moments I
need a friend.”
“Do you suffer much?” asked the monk.
“Yes, but in my soul much more than in my body.”
“We will save your soul,” said the young man; “but are you
really the executioner of Bethune, as these people say?”
“That is to say,” eagerly replied the wounded man, who
doubtless feared that the name of executioner would take
from him the last help that he could claim — “that is to
say, I was, but am no longer; it is fifteen years since I
gave up the office. I still assist at executions, but no
longer strike the blow myself — no, indeed.”
“You have, then, a repugnance to your profession?”
“So long as I struck in the name of the law and of justice
my profession allowed me to sleep quietly, sheltered as I
was by justice and law; but since that terrible night when I
became an instrument of private vengeance and when with
personal hatred I raised the sword over one of God’s
creatures — since that day —- ”
The executioner paused and shook his head with an expression
of despair.
“Tell me about it,” said the monk, who, sitting on the foot
of the bed, began to be interested in a story so strangely
introduced.
“Ah!” cried the dying man, with all the effusiveness of a
grief declared after long suppression, “ah! I have sought to
stifle remorse by twenty years of good deeds; I have
assuaged the natural ferocity of those who shed blood; on
every occasion I have exposed my life to save those who were
in danger, and I have preserved lives in exchange for that I
took away. That is not all; the money gained in the exercise