The doctor was very pale as he stammered:
“My God, I am not infallible… Nowadays this idea of tuberculosis has become an obsession, creeps into everything… It influences one unconsciously… one is apt to give importance to a sound that may be accidental, something temporary… I may have been wrong… the greatest physicians have made mistakes in their diagnoses… I will examine you again…”
The man burst into a terrible laugh:
“You will, will you!… For what kind of a fool do you take me? You run yourself on to the point of a sword, and you think you can get free by a graceful twist? There is nothing wrong with me! You have told me so. Nothing, nothing, nothing! This time—and for the best of reasons—I will accept your word without question.
“But you have made me into an assassin, and you are my accomplice. Unconscious accomplice? I agree with you. You were the brain, and I, I was the arm. And as Justice is everlastingly the same, I—‘the highly strung, the essentially nervous!’—I judge, I condemn and I execute. You first. Myself afterwards.”
Two shots rang out. The servants rushed in to find the two bodies lying on their backs.
Some brain and blood had splashed on the table and made a crimson mark on an unfinished prescription that ran:
Bromide 15 grams
Distilled water….
Extenuating Circumstances
IT WAS from the newspapers that Françoise learned that her son had been arrested.
At first she was unable to believe it; it was too monstrous.
Her lad, her little lad, so well-behaved, so shy, who just a month ago had spent his Easter leave with her; her son a thief and a murderer?… She seemed to see him standing before her again in his soldier’s uniform, his round young face smiling and kind; she felt again on her wrinkled cheeks his hearty goodbye kisses, and, filled with happy and peaceful memories of him, she shrugged her shoulders, repeating:
“Of course it’s a mistake. It’s someone else.”
Still, there it was, written with a big headline: “Crime of a Soldier.” It had happened in his barracks, and his name was there in full.
Bewildered, she crouched in her chair, her spectacles pushed up on her forehead, her hands clasped, her mouth trembling as she talked to herself in the warm silence of the kitchen, her eyes looking vaguely at the old dog lying by the open door, at the tall clock whose slow tick-tock gravely marked the time.
Someone came in. She started violently, crying: “Who’s there?” Recognizing a neighbor and wishing to hide her agitation, she added:
“I was asleep… It’s hot…”
Habitually reserved and silent, today she went on talking, talking, asking questions and making replies, fearing that she herself might be questioned. As she uttered her disjointed sentences, her one thought was: “Does she know?”
Unable at last to think of anything else to say, she relapsed into silence. With an odd expression, the neighbor said:
“Is it long since you had news of your son?”
“No… This morning.”
She did not say how! But as she spoke there came to her an overwhelming desire to be reassured, to be comforted, to hear a voice echo her indignant: “It’s a mistake! It’s not my lad—how could it be?…”
She held out the paper, and trying to speak easily:
“Have you seen this?… Queer, isn’t it?” Her throat dry, the tears welling up in her eyes, she added:
“I was so stupid… When I saw it first, it gave me quite a turn!… What a fool!…”
The neighbor still remained silent. She repeated:
“But it’s strange, isn’t it?… It’s strange!…”
“Yes, it’s odd there should be two of the same name in the same regiment.”
With a great sigh of relief, the old woman cried:
“That’s just what I say!… That’s it!… there are two of them… It’s not mine!…”
“I don’t know anything about that,” answered the woman. “I’m only asking you… It’s to be hoped there are… because if it’s your lad… They are saying it was him that robbed the cooper… yes, the three hundred francs that were stolen when he was home at Easter.”
The mother drew herself up stiffly, white as death, her fists clenched:
“How dare they!… He never did it… never, never!… Aren’t you ashamed of yourself ?… What have we done to you that you put everything on us?… My poor little lad… Oh, but you shall all see!…”
And without shutting the door behind her, without even putting on her sabots, she hurried, almost running, to the railway station.
She arrived at the town just as it was striking seven. In the train, instead of diminishing, her fears had grown. She was no longer saying: “It is impossible!” but “Suppose it is true!…” The journey had seemed endless, with the villages and fields rushing past her, the telegraph poles rising and falling giddily like a swing. When the train stopped she began to tremble, almost feeling that the moment to know the truth had come too quickly. She was murmuring Paters and Aves, adding her own supplications to the prayers that came mechanically to her lips:
“O, Kind Virgin, you could never have let such a thing happen, could you?… The beautiful prayers I shall say to you presently!…”
Behind the iron gate the courtyard of the barracks stretched white in front of the square buildings. Soldiers were sitting on the steps, chatting in the evening calm. Her boy had taught her the different ranks. She stopped, saying timidly:
“Excuse me, Sergeant, I want to ask you something. I want to know…”
She hesitated, not daring to show her fear.
“It’s this. It’s about my son… Jules Michon of the 3rd Company… I want to know if… if I can see him…”
She tried to smile:
“I am his mother… his mother… No? But why?… Where is he?… Is he ill?… Then why can’t I?… Yes, I know… No, I don’t know… He has been arrested… At the police station?… No?… In… in prison… you say?… He is to be tried by court-martial?…”
She hid her face in her hands.
Holy Virgin, it was true then! Holy Virgin…
Staggering, she turned away. At the military prison she learned that her son was in solitary confinement, and the word “solitary” increased her terror. She imagined him alone, forever shut away from everyone, fastened in. They told her to go and see a lawyer. From him she learned the exact state of affairs. There was no possible doubt about it. Her boy had killed someone to rob him; they had found the money—nearly six three hundred francs—in his mattress. He had confessed.
After much weeping and useless begging to be allowed to see him, she went back to the village. Everyone knew. Shrinking from what they might say to her, dreading their looks, she did not go home till midnight. Like a poor animal who fears blows and hides itself, she no longer dared to go out, keeping her shutters closed, trembling as she lifted the paper that was pushed under her door every morning. From it she learned not only all the details of the crime, but that her son was accused of something else. All the evidence seemed to prove that it really was he who had robbed the cooper. But that—never! She would swear it was not true… But eventually she began to have doubts about even that.
At the end of a month she went back to the lawyer. She no longer asked to see her son. Not, great God, that she had ceased to love him… She was ashamed…
“What will they do with him, Monsieur? You won’t let them take him from me…”
“My poor woman, I am very much afraid they will… If only I could find some extenuating circumstance…”