It is good that my
secret must die with me--that there will be no extenuating
circumstances, no recommendation to mercy, no commutation of the swift
penalty of death.
"File, file... File sa corde au bourreau!"
By such monotonous thoughts, and others as dreary and hopeless,
recurring again and again in the same dull round, I beguiled the
terrible time that intervened between Ibbetson's death and my trial at
the Old Bailey.
It all seems very trivial and unimportant now--not worth
recording--even hard to remember.
But at the time my misery was so great, my terror of the gallows so
poignant, that each day I thought I must die of sheer grief before
another twenty-four hours could possibly pass over me.
The intolerable strain would grow more and more severe till a climax of
tension was reached, and a hysterical burst of tears would relieve me
for a while, and I would feel reconciled to my fate, and able to face
death like a man.... Then the anguish would gradually steal over me
again, and the uncontrollable weakness of the flesh....
And each of these two opposite moods, while it lasted, made the other
seem impossible, and as if it never could come back again; yet back it
came with the regularity of a tide--the most harrowing seesaw that
ever was.
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