Nisida

A >> Alexandre Dumas, Pere >> Nisida


Gabriel saw his last day dawn, serenely and calmly. His sleep had been
deep; he awoke full of unknown joy; a cheerful ray of sunlight, falling
through the loophole, wavered over the fine golden straw in his cell; an
autumn breeze playing around him, brought an agreeable coolness to his
brow, and stirred in his long hair. The gaoler, who while he had had him
in his charge had always behaved humanely, struck by his happy looks,
hesitated to announce the priest's visit, in fear of calling the poor
prisoner from his dream. Gabriel received the news with pleasure; he
conversed for two hours with the good priest, and shed sweet tears on
receiving the last absolution. The priest left the prison with tears in
his eyes, declaring aloud that he had never in his life met with a more
beautiful, pure, resigned, and courageous spirit.

The fisherman was still under the influence of this consoling emotion
when his sister entered. Since the day when she had been carried,
fainting, from the room where her brother had just been arrested, the
poor girl, sheltered under the roof of an aunt, and accusing herself of
all the evil that had befallen, had done nothing but weep at the feet of
her holy protectress. Bowed by grief like a young lily before the storm,
she would spend whole hours, pale, motionless, detached from earthly
things, her tears flowing silently upon her beautiful clasped hands.
When the moment came to go and embrace her brother for the last time,
Nisida arose with the courage of a saint. She wiped away the traces of
her tears, smoothed her beautiful black hair, and put on her best white
dress. Poor child, she tried to hide her grief by an angelic deception.
She had the strength to smile! At the sight of her alarming pallor
Gabriel felt his heart wrung, a cloud passed over his eyes; he would have
run to meet her, but, held back by the chain which fettered him to a
pillar of his prison, stepped back sharply and stumbled. Nisida flew to
her brother and upheld him in her arms. The young girl had understood
him; she assured him that she was well. Fearing to remind him of his
terrible position, she spoke volubly of all manner of things--her aunt,
the weather, the Madonna. Then she stopped suddenly, frightened at her
own words, frightened at her own silence; she fixed her burning gaze upon
her brother's brow as though to fascinate him. Little by little
animation returned to her; a faint colour tinted her hollowed cheeks, and
Gabriel, deceived by the maiden's super human efforts, thought her still
beautiful, and thanked God in his heart for having spared this tender
creature. Nisida, as though she had followed her brother's secret
thoughts, came close to him, pressed his hand with an air of
understanding, and murmured low in his ear, "Fortunately our father has
been away for two days; he sent me word that he would be detained in
town. For us, it is different; we are young, we have courage!"

The poor young girl was trembling like a leaf.

"What will become of you, my poor Nisida?"

"Bah! I will pray to the Madonna. Does she not watch over us?" The
girl stopped, struck by the sound of her own words, which the
circumstances so cruelly contradicted. But looking at her brother, she
went on in a low tone: "Assuredly she does watch over us. She appeared
to me last night in a dream. She held her child Jesus on her arm, and
looked at me with a mother's tenderness. She wishes to make saints of
us, for she loves us; and to be a saint, you see, Gabriel, one must
suffer."

"Well, go and pray for me, my kind sister; go away from the view of this
sad place, which will eventually shake your firmness, and perhaps mine.
Go; we shall see each other again in heaven above, where our mother is
waiting for us--our mother whom you have not known, and to whom I shall
often speak of you. Farewell, my sister, until we meet again!"

And he kissed her on the forehead.

The young girl called up all her strength into her heart for this supreme
moment; she walked with a firm step; having reached the threshold, she
turned round and waved him a farewell, preventing herself by a nervous
contraction from bursting into tears, but as soon as she was in the
corridor, a sob broke from her bosom, and Gabriel, who heard it echo from
the vaulted roof, thought that his heart would break.

Then he threw himself on his knees, and, lifting his hands to heaven,
cried, "I have finished suffering; I have nothing more that holds me to
life. I thank Thee, my God! Thou hast kept my father away, and hast
been willing to spare the poor old man a grief that would have been
beyond his strength."

It was at the hour of noon, after having exhausted every possible means,
poured out his gold to the last piece, and embraced the knees of the
lowest serving man, that Solomon the fisherman took his way to his son's
prison. His brow was so woebegone that the guards drew back, seized with
pity, and the gaoler wept as he closed the door of the cell upon him.
The old man remained some moments without advancing a step, absorbed in
contemplation of his son. By the tawny gleam of his eye might be divined
that the soul of the man was moved at that instant by some dark project.
He seemed nevertheless struck by the-beauty of Gabriel's face. Three
months in prison had restored to his skin the whiteness that the sun had
turned brown; his fine dark hair fell in curls around his neck, his eyes
rested on his father with a liquid and brilliant gaze. Never had this
head been so beautiful as now, when it was to fall.

"Alas, my poor son!" said the old man, "there is no hope left; you must
die."

"I know it," answered Gabriel in a tone of tender reproach, "and it is
not that which most afflicts me at this moment. But you, too, why do you
wish to give me pain, at your age? Why did you not stay in the town?"

"In the town," the old man returned, "they have no pity; I cast myself at
the king's feet, at everybody's feet; there is no pardon, no mercy for
us."

"Well, in God's name, what is death to me? I meet it daily on the sea.
My greatest, my only torment is the pain that they are causing you."

"And I, do you think, my Gabriel, that I only suffer in seeing you die?
Oh, it is but a parting for a few days; I shall soon go to join you. But
a darker sorrow weighs upon me. I am strong, I am a man." He stopped,
fearing that he had said too much; then drawing near to his son, he said
in a tearful voice, "Forgive me, my Gabriel; I am the cause of your
death. I ought to have killed the prince with my own hand. In our
country, children and old men are not condemned to death. I am over
eighty years old; I should have been pardoned; they told me that when,
with tears, I asked pardon for you; once more, forgive me, Gabriel; I
thought my daughter was dead; I thought of nothing else; and besides, I
did not know the law."

"Father, father!" cried Gabriel, touched, "what are you saying? I would
have given my life a thousand times over to purchase one day of yours.
Since you are strong enough to be present at my last hour, fear not; you
will not see me turn pale; your son will be worthy of you."

"And he is to die, to die!" cried Solomon, striking his forehead in
despair, and casting on the walls of the dungeon a look of fire that
would fain have pierced them.

"I am resigned, father," said Gabriel gently; "did not Christ ascend the
cross?"

"Yes," murmured the old man in a muffled voice, "but He did not leave
behind a sister dishonoured by His death."

These words, which escaped the old fisherman in spite of himself, threw a
sudden and terrible light into the soul of Gabriel. For the first time
he perceived all the infamous manner of his death: the shameless populace
crowding round the scaffold, the hateful hand of the executioner taking
him by the Hair, and the drops of his blood besprinkling the white
raiment of his sister and covering her with shame.

"Oh, if I could get a weapon!" cried Gabriel, his haggard eyes roaming
around.

"It is not the weapon that is lacking," answered Solomon, carrying his
hand to the hilt of a dagger that he had hidden in his breast.

"Then kill me, father," said Gabriel in a low tone, but with an
irresistible accent of persuasion and entreaty; "oh yes, I confess it
now, the executioner's hand frightens me. My Nisida, my poor Nisida, I
have seen her; she was here just now, as beautiful and as pale as the
Madonna Dolorosa; she smiled to hide from me her sufferings. She was
happy, poor girl, because she believed you away. Oh, how sweet it will
be to me to die by your hand! You gave me life; take it back, father,
since God will have it so. And Nisida will be saved. Oh, do not
hesitate! It would be a cowardice on the part of both of us; she is my
sister, she is your daughter."

And seeing that his powerful will had subjugated the old man, he said,
"Help! help, father!" and offered his breast to the blow. The poor
father lifted his hand to strike; but a mortal convulsion ran through all
his limbs; he fell into his son's arms, and both burst into tears.

"Poor father!" said Gabriel. "I ought to have foreseen that. Give me
that dagger and turn away; I am young and my arm will not tremble."

"Oh no!" returned Solomon solemnly, "no, my son, for then you would be a
suicide! Let your soul ascend to heaven pure! God will give me His
strength. Moreover, we have time yet."

And a last ray of hope shone in the eyes of the fisherman.

Then there passed in that dungeon one of those scenes that words can
never reproduce. The poor father sat down on the straw at his son's side
and laid his head gently upon his knees. He smiled to him through his
tears, as one smiles to a sick child; he passed his hand slowly through
the silky curls of his hair, and asked him countless questions,
intermingled with caresses. In order to give him a distaste for this
world he kept on talking to him of the other. Then, with a sudden change,
he questioned him minutely about all sorts of past matters. Sometimes he
stopped in alarm, and counted the beatings of his heart, which were
hurriedly marking the passage of time.

"Tell me everything, my child; have you any desire, any wish that could
be satisfied before you die? Are you leaving any woman whom you loved
secretly? Everything we have left shall be hers."

"I regret nothing on earth but you and my sister. You are the only
persons whom I have loved since my mother's death."

"Well, be comforted. Your sister will be saved."

"Oh, yes! I shall die happy."

"Do you forgive our enemies?"

"With all the strength of my heart. I pray God to have mercy on the
witnesses who accused me. May He forgive me my sins!"

"How old is it that you will soon be?" the old man asked suddenly, for
his reason was beginning to totter, and his memory had failed him.

"I was twenty-five on All Hallows' Day."

"True; it was a sad day, this year; you were in prison."

"Do you remember how, five years ago, on that same day I got the prize in
the regatta at Venice?"

"Tell me about that, my child."

And he listened, his neck stretched forward, his mouth half open, his
hands in his son's. A sound of steps came in from the corridor, and a
dull knock was struck upon the door. It was the fatal hour. The poor
father had forgotten it.

The priests had already begun to sing the death hymn; the executioner was
ready, the procession had set out, when Solomon the fisherman appeared
suddenly on the threshold of the prison, his eyes aflame and his brow
radiant with the halo of the patriarchs. The old man drew himself up to
his full height, and raising in one hand the reddened knife, said in a
sublime voice, "The sacrifice is fulfilled. God did not send His angel
to stay the hand of Abraham."

The crowd carried him in triumph!

[The details of this case are recorded in the archives of the Criminal
Court at Naples. We have changed nothing in the age or position of the
persons who appear in this narrative. One of the most celebrated
advocates at the Neapolitan bar secured the acquittal of the old man.]