Then I replaced her on my knees, devouring her with my eyes, and continued,-- “Mary, canst thou read?” “Yes,” she answered, “I can read very well. Mamma makes me read my letters.” “Well, then, read a little to me,” said I, pointing to a printed paper which she held crumpled in one of her dimpled hands. She shook her pretty head, saying,-- “Oh, dear me! I can only read fables.” “But try, my darling: come, open your paper.” She unfolded the paper, and began to spell with her finger, “S E N--sen,--T E N C E--tence,--_Sentence_.” I snatched it from her hands. It was my own sentence of death she was reading to me! Her nurse had bought the paper for a penny. To me it had cost more. No words can convey what I felt; my violence had alarmed the child, who was ready to cry. Suddenly she said to me,-- “Do give me back my paper; I want to play with it!” I restored her to her nurse. “Take her hence!” and I fell back in my chair, gloomy, desolate, in despair! Now they may come: I care for nothing more; the last fibre of my heart is broken. FORTY-SECOND PAPER. The Priest is kind; so is the jailor: tears came in their eyes when I sent away my child. It is done. Now I must fortify myself, and think firmly of the Executioner, the cart, the gendarmes, the crowd in the street and the windows. I have still an hour to familiarize myself with these ideas. All the people will laugh and clap their hands, and applaud; yet among those men, now free, unknown to jailors, and who run with joy to an execution,--in that throng there is more than one man destined to follow me sooner or later, on the scaffold. More than one who is here to-day on my account, will come hereafter on his own. FORTY-THIRD PAPER. My little Mary. She is gone away to play; she will look at the crowd from the coach-window, and already she thinks no more of the “Gentleman.” Perhaps I may still have time to write a few pages for her, so that she may read them hereafter, and weep, in fifteen years hence, the sorrows of to-day. Yes, she shall know my history from myself, and why the name I leave her is tarnished. FORTY-FOURTH PAPER. MY HISTORY. [NOTE. The pages which immediately followed this have not been found. Perhaps, as the next chapter seems to indicate, the Condemned had not time to write his history, as it was so late when he thought of it.] FORTY-FIFTH PAPER. From a Chamber of the Town Hall.