LET me count how much time remains to me. Three days of delay after sentence has been given, to enable me to appeal in. Eight days of forgetfulness in the office of the court, after which the statement of the case will be sent to the Minister. Fifteen days waiting at the Minister’s, who does not even know that the affair is before him, and yet he is supposed to send it up to the Court of Appeal after examining it. Then it has to be classed, numbered, and registered; for there is plenty of work for the guillotine, and each one must await his turn. Fifteen days of watching and waiting. At last the Court of Appeal assembles—generally upon a Thursday—and rejects twenty appeals in a lump, and sends all the papers to the Minister, who sends them to the Public Prosecutor, who communicates with the executioner. Three days. On the morning of the fourth day the assistant to the Public Prosecutor says to himself, as he ties his neckcloth, “It is time that this affair was finished.” Then, if the assistant to the clerk of the court has not a few friends to breakfast who prevent him from attending to his duties, the order for the execution is noted, dated, registered, and sent out, and the next morning, at the break of day, a scaffold is erected in the Place de Grêve, and all through the city are heard the hoarse voices of the newsvendors calling out a full, true, and particular account of the execution. And all this in six weeks! That young girl was right. So that five weeks, perhaps six, remain; but I dare not rely upon this, and I am in a cell in the Bicêtre, and it seems to me that Thursday has passed three days ago. CHAPTER IX. I AM going to make my will; but no, it is useless. I am condemned to pay the costs of the trial, and all that I possess will hardly be sufficient to meet the expenses. The guillotine is an expensive luxury. I have a mother, a wife, and a child. A little girl three years of age, gentle, rosy, and delicate, with large black eyes and long chestnut hair. She was just two years and a month old when I last saw her. Thus, after my death there will be three women without son, husband, or father; three orphans of different kinds, three widows made by the hand of the law. I allow that I am justly punished; but what have _these_ innocent creatures done? No; these are dishonoured and ruined for no fault of their own: and this is justice! It is not the thought of my poor old mother that disquiets me; she is sixty-four; the blow will kill her at once, or even if she lingers on for a little while, as long as she has a little fire to warm her feet at she will not complain. Nor am I uneasy regarding my wife; she is an invalid, and her mind is not very strong; she will die too. Unless, indeed, she goes mad. They say that mad people live a long while; but if her intellect goes she will not suffer: she will sleep, she is as good as dead.