But my teeth went on chattering; nothing would stop them.
Still, obviously, one can’t be sensible all the time.
Another equally ridiculous fancy of mine was to frame new laws, altering the penalties.
What was wanted, to my mind, was to give the criminal a chance, if only a dog’s chance; say, one chance in a thousand.
There might be some drug, or combination of drugs, which would kill the patient (I thought of him as “the patient”) nine hundred and ninety times in a thousand.
That he should know this was, of course, essential.
For after taking much thought, calmly, I came to the conclusion that what was wrong about the guillotine was that the condemned man had no chance at all, absolutely none.
In fact, the patient’s death had been ordained irrevocably.
It was a foregone conclusion.
If by some fluke the knife didn’t do its job, they started again.
So it came to this, that—against the grain, no doubt—the condemned man had to hope the apparatus was in good working order!
This, I thought, was a flaw in the system; and, on the face of it, my view was sound enough.
On the other hand, I had to admit it proved the efficiency of the system.
It came to this; the man under sentence was obliged to collaborate mentally, it was in his interest that all should go off without a hitch.
Another thing I had to recognize was that, until now, I’d had wrong ideas on the subject.
For some reason I’d always supposed that one had to go up steps and climb on to a scaffold, to be guillotined.
Probably that was because of the 1789 Revolution; I mean, what I’d learned about it at school, and the pictures I had seen.
Then one morning I remembered a photograph the newspapers had featured on the occasion of the execution of a famous criminal.
Actually the apparatus stood on the ground; there was nothing very impressing about it, and it was much narrower than I’d imagined.
It struck me as rather odd that picture had escaped my memory until now.
What had struck me at the time was the neat appearance of the guillotine; its shining surfaces and finish reminded me of some laboratory instrument.
One always has exaggerated ideas about what one doesn’t know.
Now I had to admit it seemed a very simple process, getting guillotined; the machine is on the same level as the man, and he walks toward it as he steps forward to meet somebody he knows.
In a sense, that, too, was disappointing.
The business of climbing a scaffold, leaving the world below, so to speak, gave something for a man’s imagination to get hold of.
But, as it was, the machine dominated everything; they killed you discreetly, with a hint of shame and much efficiency.
There were two other things about which I was always thinking: the dawn and my appeal.
However, I did my best to keep my mind off these thoughts.
I lay down, looked up at the sky, and forced myself to study it.
When the light began to turn green I knew that night was coming.
Another thing I did to deflect the course of my thoughts was to listen to my heart.
I couldn’t imagine that this faint throbbing which had been with me for so long would ever cease.
Imagination has never been one of my strong points.
Still, I tried to picture a moment when the beating of my heart no longer echoed in my head.
But, in vain.
The dawn and my appeal were still there.
And I ended by believing it was a silly thing to try to force one’s thoughts out of their natural groove.
They always came for one at dawn; that much I knew.
So, really, all my nights were spent in waiting for that dawn.
I have never liked being taken by surprise.
When something happens to me I want to be ready for it.
That’s why I got into the habit of sleeping off and on in the daytime and watching through the night for the first hint of daybreak in the dark dome above.
The worst period of the night was that vague hour when, I knew, they usually come; once it was after midnight I waited, listening intently.
Never before had my ears perceived so many noises, such tiny sounds.
Still, I must say I was lucky in one respect; never during any of those periods did I hear footsteps.
Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for.
And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.
Because I might just as well have heard footsteps, and felt my heart shattered into bits.
Even though the faintest rustle sent me hurrying to the door and, pressing an ear to the rough, cold wood, I listened so intently that I could hear my breathing, quick and hoarse like a dog’s panting—even so there was an end; my heart hadn’t split, and I knew I had another twenty-four hours’ respite.
Then all day there was my appeal to think about.