He preferred to wait, and see if his views were understood. They were; and today he can unmask the political and social ideas which he wished to make popular in this innocent and clearly stated story. He declares, or rather he acknowledges frankly, that the Last Day of a Condemned Man is nothing more than a plea, direct or indirect as one pleases, for the abolishment of capital punishment. His idea was to make posterity see in his book, should they read it, not the special plea of such or such a convict, of such or such a criminal (which is always an easy and transient thing), but the general and permanent plea of all criminals, now and forever; it was the great right of humanity urged and pleaded by every voice before mankind, which is the highest court of appeals; it was the ultimate principle, abhorrescere a sanguine, established before the existence of the criminal courts themselves; it was the sombre and fatal question which trembles at the foundation of every capital prosecution, under the triple thickness of pathos with which the bloody rhetoric of the people of the king is covered; it was the question of life and death, I say, naked, unclothed, freed from the sonorous subterfuge of the court-room, cruelly brought into the light, laid where it can and must be seen, and where it really is, in its rightful place, its horrible place, not in the court-room, but on the scaffold, not before the judge, but before the hangman.

This is what he aimed to do; and if posterity should ever grant him the glory of having accomplished it, and he hardly dares hope that it will, he would ask for no other crown.

He says, and he repeats it, that he works in the name of every possible prisoner, innocent or guilty, before every court, before every judge, every jury, and every feeling of justice. This book is dedicated to any and every judge. And that the plea may be as great as the cause, he had (and this is why the story was written as it is) to eliminate from the consideration of the subject the discussion of remote cause and inevitable accident, particular case and special exception, precedent, mitigating circumstances, story, anecdote, issue, and title; and limit it, if this is limiting, to pleading the condemned man’s cause, whensoever he be condemned and whatsoever be his crime. Happy, if without other instrument than his idea, he has searched sufficiently to make a heart bleed under the aes triplex of a judge! Happy, if he has roused sympathy for those who believe themselves in the right! Happy, if by searching deep within the heart of the judge, he has occasionally succeeded in finding a man!

When the book appeared, three years ago, there were some who imagined that it was worth while to question if the idea was the author’s. Some thought it was taken from an English book, others from an American. Strange mania, to look for the origin of things in a thousand places, and to make the stream which runs through your street start from the mouths of the Nile! No! It was taken neither from an English nor an American nor a Chinese book. The author found the idea of The Last Day of a Condemned Man not in any book,—he is not in the habit of going so far for his ideas; but he found it where you all may find it, where, perhaps, you have found it, (for who in his own mind has not written or dreamed of The Last Day of a Condemned Man?) on the public Place, on the Place de Grève. It was there that, passing by one day, he found the dread idea lying in a pool of blood, beneath the crimson arms of the guillotine.

Ever after, each time that at the will of the fatal Thursdays, in the Court of Appeals, one of the days arrived when the cry of a death-sentence was heard in Paris; every time that the author heard beneath his windows those hoarse criers calling the spectators to La Grève,—every time, the dread thought came back to him, took possession of him, filled his mind with gendarmes and hangmen, and crowds of spectators; explained to him hour after hour the last agonies of the wretched sufferer, while he confesses, while his hair is cut off, while his hands are bound; called upon him, the poor poet, to tell it all to the world, which goes on unmindful, attending to its own affairs, while this frightful thing is taking place; urged him, begged him, shook him, snatched away from him his humorous verses if he happened to be writing, and killed them before they were half begun; stopped all his work, intercepted itself between him and all else, surrounded and beset him on all sides. It was a torture,—a torture which began with the dawn, and which lasted, like that of the wretch who was being murdered at that very moment, until four o’clock. Only then, when the ponens caput expiravit, announced by the fatal voice of the clock, was the author able to breathe again, and find some peace of mind. Finally, one day,—it was, he thinks, the one after the execution of Ulbach,—he began to write this book. From that moment he found comfort. When one of those public crimes, called legal executions, was committed, his conscience told him that he was not conjointly liable; and he no longer felt that drop of blood on his forehead which spurted from La Grève upon the head of every member of the social community.

But this was not enough. To wash one’s hands is good, but to stop the flow of the blood is better.

He knows no higher, no holier, no nobler aim than this,—to strive for the abolishment of capital punishment. And it is from his heart that he adheres to the wishes and the efforts of the generous men of every nation, who for several years have worked to overthrow the gallows, the only tree which is not uprooted by the Revolution. It is with joy that it comes his turn, his, the poor poet, to apply his axe, and enlarge as much as possible the gash made by Beccaria, sixty years ago, on the old gallows which has stood for so many centuries over Christendom.

We have said that the scaffold is the only thing which Revolutionists do not demolish. It is seldom indeed that a revolution spares human life; and coming, as it does, to prune, cut, hack, and behead society, capital punishment is one of the instruments which it is most loath to give up.

We will admit, however, that if ever a revolution seemed to us worthy and capable of abolishing capital punishment, it was the Revolution of July. It seems to belong to the kindest popular movement of modern times to blot out the barbarous punishment of Louis XI, Richelieu, and Robespierre, and to inscribe on the face of the law the sacredness of human life. 1830 deserved to break the chopper of ’93.

We hoped so for an instant. In August, 1830, there was so much generosity, such a spirit of gentleness and progress among the people, and their hearts were looking forward to such a bright future, that it seemed as if, from the very first, capital punishment were abolished from a sense of justice, and by a tacit and general consent, like the other evils which had annoyed us. The people had just made a bonfire of the rubbish of the ancient régime. These were the bloody rags. We thought they had been burned in the pile, like the others. And for several weeks, confident and credulous, we trusted in the future, and in the sacredness of life as in the sacredness of liberty.

Scarcely had two months elapsed before an attempt was made to dissolve the sublime legal Utopia of César Bonesana.

Unfortunately the attempt was awkward, clumsy, almost hypocritical, and was made in other interests than the general one.

In October of the year 1830, we remember, that a few days after the Chamber had set aside, by order of the day, the proposition to bury Napoleon under the column, every member began to cry and scream. The question of capital punishment was again brought on the tapis, on which occasion we were going to say something, when it seemed that every fibre of every lawyer was seized with a sudden and wonderful pity for any one who spoke or groaned, or raised his hands to heaven. Capital punishment, great God! what a horrible thing! One old attorney-general grew pale in his scarlet robe, he who all his life had eaten bread that had been soaked in the blood of the requi-sitors, and all at once raised a piteous cry, and called the gods to witness that he was indignant at the guillotine. For two days the court-house was filled with crying haranguers.