The Seven Who Were Hanged | Page 5

given to any living being-man or beast -to know the day and hour of death. Here had he been ill not long ago and the physicians told him that he must expect the end, that he should make his final arrangements-but he had not believed them and he remained alive. In his youth he had become entangled in an affair and had resolved to end his life; he had even loaded the revolver, had "written his letters, and had fixed upon 'the hour for suicide-but before the very end he had suddenly changed his mind. It would always be thus-at the very last moment something would change, an unexpected accident would befall-no one could tell when he would die.
"At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!" those kind asses had said to him, and although they had told him of it only that death might he averted, the mere knowledge of its possibility at a certain hour again filled him with horror. It was probable that some day he should be assassinated, but it would not happen to-morrow-it would not happen to-morrow-and he could sleep undisturbed, as if he were really immortal. Fools-they did not know what a great law they had dislodged, what an abyss they had opened, when they said in their idiotic kindness: "At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!"
"No, not at one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency, but no one knows when. No one knows when! What?"
"Nothing," answered Silence, "nothing."
"But you did say something."
"Nothing, nonsense. I say: to-morrow, at one o'clock in the afternoon!"
There was a sudden, acute pain in his heart-and he understood that he would have neither sleep, nor peace, nor joy until that accursed black hour standing out of the dial should have passed. Only the shadow of the knowledge of something which no living being could know stood there in the corner, and that was enough to darken the world and envelop him with the impenetrable gloom of horror. The once disturbed fear of death diffused through his body, penetrated into his bones.
He no longer feared the murderers of the next day-they had vanished, they had been forgotten, they had mingled with the crowd of hostile faces and incidents which surrounded his life. He now feared something sudden and inevitable-an apoplectic stroke, heart failure, some foolish thin little vessel which might suddenly fail to withstand the pressure of the blood and might burst like a tight glove upon swollen fingers.
His short, thick neck seemed terrible to him. It became unbearable for him to look upon his short, swollen ringers-to feel how short they were and how they were filled with the moisture of death. And if before, when it was dark, he had had to stir in order not to resemble a corpse, now in the bright, cold, inimical, dreadful light he was so filled with horror that he could not move in order to get a cigarette or to ring for some one. His nerves were giving way. Each one of them seemed as if it were a bent wire, at the top of which there was a small head with mad, wide-open frightened eyes and a convulsively gaping, speechless mouth. He could not draw his breath.
Suddenly in the darkness, amidst the dust and cobwebs somewhere upon the ceiling, an electric bell came to life. The small, metallic tongue, agitatedly, in terror, kept striking the edge of the ringing cap, became silent-and again quivered in an unceasing, frightened din. His Excellency was ringing his bell in his own room.
People began to run. Here and there, in the shadows upon the walls, lamps flared up -there were not enough of them to give light, but there were enough to cast shadows. The shadows appeared everywhere; they rose in the corners, they stretched across the ceiling; tremulously clinging to each and every elevation, they covered the walls. And it was hard to understand where all these innumerable, deformed silent shadows- voiceless souls of voiceless objects-had been before.
A deep, trembling voice said something loudly. Then the doctor was hastily summoned by telephone; the dignitary was collapsing. The wife of his Excellency was also called.
CHAPTER II
CONDEMNED TO BE HANGED
Everything befell as the police had foretold. Four terrorists, three men and a woman, armed with bombs, infernal machines and revolvers, were seized at the very entrance of the house, and another woman was later found and arrested in the house where the conspiracy had been hatched. She was its mistress. At the same time a great deal of dynamite and half finished bomb explosives were seized. All those arrested were very young; the eldest of the men was twenty-eight years old, the younger of the women was only nineteen. They were tried in the same fortress in which they were imprisoned after the arrest;