The Last Day of a Condemned Man

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2009, is an unabridged republication of the work published by Thomas Crowell and Company, New York, in 1896. A new Foreword by David Dow has been prepared for this edition.

Copyright

Foreword copyright © 2009 by David Dow All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Gataloging-in-Publication Data

Hugo, Victor, 1802—1885.
[Dernier jour d’un condamné. English]
The last day of a condemned man / Victor Hugo ; translated from the French
by Arabella Ward.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York : Thomas Crowell & Co., 1896.

9780486120966

I. Ward, Arabella. II. Title.
PQ2285.D413 2009
843’.7—dc22
2008053681

Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

Table of Contents

Title Page
Bibliographical Note
Copyright Page
Foreword
Preface
THE LAST DAY OF A CONDEMNED MAN - A COMEDY
Chapter I - Bicêtre
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII - In the Conciergerie
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Chapter XLVI
Chapter XLVII - My Story
Chapter XLVIII - A Room in the Hotel de Ville
Chapter XLIX
Four o’clock
Note on “The Last Day of a Condemned Man”

Foreword

We do not know his name or exactly what he did. We know little about his present, less about his past, and nothing of his childhood. We do not know the name of his victim, or even with certainty that there was a victim. A book about the death penalty that does not tell us the details of the death of the victim is a rare (perhaps unprecedented) volume, yet that is the book Victor Hugo has written. We know nothing that Hugo believes to be unessential to our judgment, yet we nevertheless know everything Hugo thinks we need to know to conclude that capital punishment is an abomination.

Hugo was forthright about his intention in writing The Last Day of a Condemned Man. He abhorred capital punishment. He said the idea for writing the book came to him at the site of an execution: in the public square, as an execution was taking place, a scene Hugo says he walked upon “casually.”1 Hugo wanted to see the death penalty abolished. He did not live to see that happen, but he played a role in its demise. His instrument was this novella.

To make his radical case, Hugo adopted a radical approach. Visit any abolitionist website in the U.S. or peruse any abolitionist tract and you will learn excruciating details of travesties of justice, for the American approach is to focus on particulars. I do not mean this observation as a criticism. On the contrary, the American abolitionist strategy is sensible, because it is undoubtedly true that the death penalty favors white skin over skin of color and dramatically favors wealthy defendants over poor ones. It is true that defense lawyers in capital cases are often abysmally bad. It is true that racism pervades the criminal justice system, and inserts itself most insidiously in the death penalty domain. It is true that a significant percentage, perhaps as much as a quarter, of the death row population comprises men with serious mental illness; and a handful, perhaps 3 percent, perhaps a bit more, committed no crime at all. Attention to the particulars is a sound tactic—I have used it often myself—because people who care about equality and fairness may have their support of capital punishment eroded upon learning of the inequality and inequity that characterize our death penalty regime.

In the United States, therefore, in literature as well as political discourse, discussions of the death penalty almost invariably pivot on the facts of the specific crime or the particular criminal. Briefs written by prosecutors to justify imposing a death sentence, and opinions written by judges upholding the punishment, recite in punctilious and gory detail the facts of the brutal murder (and what murder is not?)—facts that typically have nothing whatsoever to do with the legal issue before the courts. Yet our moral sense is quieted, or, if not entirely quieted, at least numbed, by these recitations.