Oh! can it be true that I shall die before the close of day? Those distant shouts which I hear, that mass of animated spectators who are already hastening to the Quays, those gendarmes preparing in their barracks,--is it all for me? Yes, I--myself am going to die?--this actual self which is here, which lives, moves, breathes,--this self which I touch and can feel! TWENTY-SIXTH PAPER. If I even knew how _it_ is built, and in what way one dies upon it; but it is horrible, I do not know this. The very name of it is frightful, and I cannot understand how I have hitherto been able to write and utter it. The idea I attach to this hateful name is vague, undefined, and therefore more sinister. I construct and demolish in my mind continually its hideous scaffolding. I dare not ask a question about it; yet it is dreadful not to know what it is, and how to act. I fancy there is a sort of hollow, and that you are laid on your face, and-- Ah, my hair will be white before my head falls! TWENTY-SEVENTH PAPER. I had a glimpse of _it_ once. I was passing by the Grêve in a carriage, about eleven o’clock, one morning, when a crowd impeded our progress. I looked out of the window; a dense throng of men, women, and children filled the place and the neighbouring streets. Above the crowd I saw a kind of frame of red wood, which three men were building. I turned away my head with disgust. Close to the carriage there was a woman who said to a child, “Now, look! the axe slides badly; they are going to grease the slide with a candle-end.” They are probably doing the same now. Eleven o’clock has just struck. No doubt they are greasing the slide. Oh, unhappy creature! this time I shall not turn away my head. TWENTY-EIGHTH PAPER. Oh for a pardon! My reprieve! Perhaps I shall be pardoned. The King has no dislike to me. I wish to see my lawyer! He was right, and I should prefer the galleys. Five years of the galleys,--nay, twenty years, or even the galleys for life. Yes, and to be branded with letters! But it would let me have a reprieve of my life! A galley-slave can move, come and go, and see the sunshine. Oh! I must see my lawyer; he shall discover some new plea to urge in mitigation of my sentence. [Illustration: _The Priest and the Condemned Man._ Photo-Etching.--From drawing by J. F. Raffaelli.] How can I thus write when every point of his eloquence has already failed, and been unanswerably refuted! TWENTY-NINTH PAPER. The Priest returned. He has white hair, a very gentle look, a good and respectable countenance, and is a charitable man. This morning I saw him empty his purse into the hands of the prisoners. Whence is it then that his voice causes no emotion, and he does not ever seem affected by his own theme? Whence is it that he has as yet said nothing which has won on my intellect or my heart?