In such a state I fell to the ground; and, at that moment, would have bartered all my hopes of liberation for twelve hours profound repose, as Esau sold his birthright for a small but indispensible refreshment. I was not to enjoy even this repose long. My companion was sleeping too. Sleeping! great God! what was his sleep?—that in whose neighbourhood no one could close an eye, or, worse, an ear. He talked as loudly and incessantly as if he had been employed in all the active offices of life. I heard involuntarily the secret of his dreams. I knew he had murdered his father, but I did not know that the vision of parricide haunted him in his broken visions. My sleep was first broken by sounds as horrible as any I ever had heard at my bedside in the convent. I heard sounds that disturbed me, but I was not yet fully awake. They increased, they redoubled—the terrors of my habitual associations awoke me. I imagined the Superior and the whole community pursuing us with lighted torches. I felt the blaze of the lights in contact with my very eyeballs. I shrieked. I said, “Spare my sight, do not blind me, do not drive me mad, and I will confess all.”
A deep voice near me muttered, “Confess.”
I started up fully awake—it was only the voice of my sleeping companion. I stood on my feet, I viewed him as he lay. He heaved and wallowed on his bed of stone, as if it had been down. He seemed to have a frame of adamant. The jagged points of stone, the hardness of the floor, the ruts and rudenesses of his inhospitable bed, produced no effect on him. He could have slept, but his dreams were from within. I have heard, I have read, of the horrors attending the dying beds of the guilty. They often told us of such in the convent.
One monk in particular, who was a priest, was fond of dwelling on a deathbed scene he had witnessed, and of describing its horrors. He related that he had urged a person, who was sitting calmly in his chair, though evidently dying, to entrust him with his confession. The dying person answered, “I will, when those leave the room.” The monk, conceiving that this referred to the relatives and friends, motioned them to retire. They did so, and again the monk renewed his demands on the conscience of the penitent. The room was now empty. The monk renewed his adjuration to the dying man to disclose the secrets of his conscience. The answer was the same—“I will, when those are gone.”
“Those!”
“Yes, those whom you cannot see, and cannot banish—send them away, and I will tell you the truth.”
“Tell it now, then; there are none here but you and me.”
“There are,” answered the dying man.
“There are none that I can see,” said the monk, gazing round the room.
“But there are those that I do see,” replied the dying wretch, “and that see me; that are watching, waiting for me, the moment the breath is out of my body. I see them, I feel them—stand on my right side.” The monk changed his position. “Now they are on the left.” The monk shifted again. “Now they are on my right.”
The monk commanded the children and relatives of the dying wretch to enter the room, and surround the bed. They obeyed the command.
“Now they are everywhere,” exclaimed the sufferer, and expired.21
This terrible story came freshly to my recollection, accompanied by many others. I had heard much of the terrors that surrounded the dying bed of the guilty, but, from what I was compelled to hear, I almost believe them to be less than the terrors of a guilty sleep. I have said my companion began at first with low mutterings, but among them I could distinguish sounds that reminded me too soon of all I wished to forget, at least while we were together. He murmured, “An old man?—yes—well, the less blood in him. Grey hairs?—no matter, my crimes have helped to turn them grey—he ought to have rent them from the roots long ago. They are white, you say?—well, tonight they shall be dyed in blood, then they will be white no longer. Aye—he will hold them up at the day of judgment, like a banner of condemnation against me. He will stand at the head of an army stronger than the army of martyrs—the host of those whose murderers have been their own children. What matter whether they cut their parents’ hearts or their throats. I have cut one through and through, to the very core—now for the other, it will give him less pain, I feel that,”—and he laughed, shuddered, and writhed on his stony bed. Trembling with horror ineffable, I tried to awake him. I shook his muscular arms, I rolled him on his back, on his face—nothing could awake him. It seemed as if I was only rocking him on his cradle of stone. He went on, “Secure the purse, I know the drawer of the cabinet where it lies, but secure him first. Well, then, you cannot—you shudder at his white hairs, at his calm sleep!—ha! ha! that villains should be fools. Well, then, I must be the man, it is but a short struggle with him or me—he may be damned, and I must. Hush—how the stairs creak, they will not tell him it is his son’s foot that is ascending?—They dare
