Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 11moment. This woman, this love of his, had been till the last
moment, till the very instant of his arrest, a being unat-
tainable, passionately desired by him but unattainable. Yet
why did he not shoot himself then, why did he relinquish
his design and even forget where his pistol was? It was just
that passionate desire for love and the hope of satisfying it
that restrained him. Throughout their revels he kept close
to his adored mistress, who was at the banquet with him
and was more charming and fascinating to him than ever
— he did not leave her side, abasing himself in his homage
before her.
‘His passion might well, for a moment, stifle not only the
fear of arrest, but even the torments of conscience. For a
moment, oh, only for a moment! I can picture the state of
mind of the criminal hopelessly enslaved by these influenc-
es — first, the influence of drink, of noise and excitement, of
the thud of the dance and the scream of the song, and of her,
flushed with wine, singing and dancing and laughing to
him! Secondly, the hope in the background that the fatal end
might still be far off, that not till next morning, at least, they
would come and take him. So he had a few hours and that’s
much, very much! In a few hours one can think of many
things. I imagine that he felt something like what criminals
feel when they are being taken to the scaffold. They have
another long, long street to pass down and at walking pace,
past thousands of people. Then there will be a turning into
another street and only at the end of that street the dread
place of execution! I fancy that at the beginning of the jour-
ney the condemned man, sitting on his shameful cart, must