* * * * * What! sunshine, spring, fields full of flowers and birds, the clouds, trees, nature, liberty, life,--these are to be mine no more! Ah, it is myself I must try to save! Is it really true that this cannot be, that I must die soon,--to-morrow, to-day perhaps; is it all thus? Oh, heavens! what a dreadful idea,--of destroying myself against the prison wall! EIGHTH PAPER. Let me consider what time generally elapses between the condemnation and the execution of a prisoner. Three days of delay, after sentence is pronounced, for the prisoner’s final plea to annul it. The plea forgotten for a week in a Court of Assize, before it is sent to the Minister; a fortnight forgotten at the Minister’s, who does not even know that there are such papers, although he is supposed to transmit them, after examination, to the “Cour de Cassation.” Then classification, numbering, registering; the guillotine-list is loaded, and none must go before their turn! A fortnight more waiting; then the Court assembles, rejects twenty pleas together, and sends all back to the Minister, who sends them back to the Attorney-General, who sends them back to the executioner: this would take three more days. On the morning of the fourth day the Deputies of the Attorney-General and Recorder prepare the order of execution; and the following morning, from day-break, is heard the noise of erecting the scaffold, and in the cross-streets a commotion of hoarse voices. Altogether _six weeks_. The young girl’s calculation was right! I have now been at least five weeks (perhaps six, for I dare not reckon) in this fatal prison; nay, I think I have been even three days more. NINTH PAPER. I have just made my will; what was the use of this? I have to pay my expenses, and all I possess will scarcely suffice. A forced death is expensive. I leave a mother, I leave a wife, I leave a child,--a little girl of three years old, gentle, delicate, with large black eyes and chesnut hair. She was two years and one month old when I saw her the last time. Thus after my death there will be three women without son, without husband, without father,--three orphans in different degrees; three widows by act of law. I admit that I am justly punished; but these innocent creatures, what have they done? No matter; they will be dishonoured, they will be ruined; and this is justice! It is not so much on account of my poor old mother that I feel thus wretched; she is so advanced in years, she will not survive the blow; or if she still linger a short time, her feelings are so blunted that she will suffer but little. Nor is it for my wife that I feel the most. She is already in miserable health, and weak in intellects; her reason will give way, in which case her spirit will not suffer while the mind slumbers as in death.