A Tramp's Wallet Part 15

A clatter was heard from the city side, and a body of mounted police galloped along the high road, halted at the gallows, and formed themselves into a hollow square around it. The gibbet was unlike our own, it had no platform, and no steps; but was a simple frame formed by two strong upright, and one horizontal beam. There was a little entanglement of pulleys and ropes, which I learned to understand at a later hour.

Still the rain came pouring down, in one uninterrupted flood, that nothing but the excitement of a public execution could withstand. And still the people cl.u.s.tered together in a dense crowd, under the open air and pelting rain, s.h.i.+fting and reeling, splas.h.i.+ng and staggering, till the field became trodden into a heavy, clinging paste of a full foot deep. But no one left the spot; they had come for the sight, and see it they would. Over the whole field and bank, and rising ground, a perfect sea of umbrellas waved and swayed with the crowd, as they vainly sought a firmer resting place among the clogging clay. An hour went by, but there was no change, except a continued accession to the crowd. It was wonderful how patiently they stood under the watery hurricane; helplessly embedded in a slimy swamp; feverish and anxious; with no thought but the looming gallows, towards which all eyes were turned, and the miserable culprit, whose sudden end they were awaiting to see.

f.a.gged, at length, and soaked with rain, I left the slough, and gaining the highroad, pressed towards the city to meet the cavalcade. A rus.h.i.+ng of people, and a confused cry, told me of its approach. "There he is!"

Yes, there! in that open cart, surrounded by mounted police, and pressed on all sides by a hurrying crowd. On either side of him sit the prison officials; while in front, an energetic priest, with all the vehemence and gesticulation of the wildest religious fervour, is evidently urging him to repentance.

It is the law of Austria, that no criminal, however distinctly his crime may have been proved by circ.u.mstantial evidence, can suffer death, till he has himself confirmed the evidence by confession. But any artifice can be lawfully employed to entrap him into an acknowledgment of his guilt; therefore, although the sentence of the law may often be deferred, it is rare indeed that its completion is averted. Fickte had of course confessed. A flush was on his face; but there was no life or intellectual spirit there.

Another battle with the crowd, and I stood in the rear of the gibbet.

After a weary interval, the scharfrichter-executioner-mounted, by means of a ladder, to the cross beam of the gallows. By the action of a wheel the culprit slowly rose into the air, but still unhurt. Three broad leathern straps confined his arms; and perfectly motionless, held in a perpendicular position by cordage fixed to the ground, and to the beam above, he awaited his death. No cap covered his face. A looped cord pa.s.sing through another pulley, was placed under his chin, the cord running along the cross-beam, and the end fixed to a wheel at the side of the gibbet.

The culprit kissed the crucifix; a single turn of the wheel; a hoa.r.s.e cry of "Down with the umbrellas!" and his life had pa.s.sed away; though no cry, no struggle, announced its departure. The scharfrichter laid his hand upon the heart of the criminal, then, a.s.sured of his death, descended. And still, amid the incessant rain, with eager eyes bent upon the dead, the crowd waited, gloating on the sight. According to the sentence of the law, the corpse, with nothing to hide its discoloured and distorted features, remained hanging till the setting of the sun.

Ashamed, wearied, and horrified, I hurried home; only halting on my way to purchase the "Todesurtheil," or "Death-sentence," which was being cried about the streets. This is an official doc.u.ment, and indeed the only one with which the people of Vienna are gratified on such a subject.

Trials are not public, nor can they be reported; and although the whole of the details invariably ooze out through the police, no authentic account appears before the public till the sentence is carried out.

The "Todesurtheil" appears, like our "Last Dying Speech," at the time of the execution, but contains no verses; being a simple, and very brief narrative of the life and crime of the condemned. He is designated by his initials only, out of delicacy to his relatives, although his real name is, somehow or other, already well known.

Six months later there occurred another execution, but I had no curiosity to witness it. The condemned was a soldier, who, in a fit of jealousy, had fired upon his mistress; but killed a bystander instead. There was no mystery about the affair, and he was condemned to death.

On the day previous to his execution, he was allowed to receive the visits of his friends and the public. Only a single person was admitted at a time. He awaited his visitor (in this instance, an acquaintance of my own), with calmness and resolution; advanced with outstretched hand to meet him; greeting him with a hearty salutation. The visitor, totally unprepared for this, trembled with a cold shudder, as he received the pressure of the murderer's hand; murmured a blessing; dropped a few coin into the box for the especial benefit of his soul, and hurriedly withdrew.

On the following morning the condemned quitted his prison for the gibbet.

But the soldier, unlike the civilian-the soldier who has forfeited his right to a military execution-must walk to his death. The civilian rides in the felon's cart; the soldier, in undress, must pace the weary way on foot. Imagine a death-condemned criminal walking from the Old Bailey to Copenhagen Fields to the gallows, and you have a parallel case.

CHAPTER XX.

A JAIL EPISODE.

While in the full enjoyment of that luxury, "A Taste of Austrian Jails,"

already related in these pages, I met with a man whose whole life would seem to signify perversion; a "dirty, villanous-looking fellow, with but one eye, and very little light in that." A first glance at this fellow would call up the reflection, "Here is the result of bad education, and bad example, induced perhaps by natural misfortunes, but the inevitable growth of filth and wretchedness in a large city."

With thin, straggling wisps of hair thrown, as it were, on his head, a dull glimmer only in his one eye, and his whole features of a crafty, selfish character-such he was; clad in a long, threadbare, snuff-coloured great-coat, reaching almost to his heels, and which served to hide the trowsers, the frayed ends of which explained their condition; on his bare feet he wore a pair of trodden-down slippers, with upper leathers gaping in front with open mouths; a despicable rascal to look at, and yet this was a brother of one of the magistrates of Vienna.

It was soon evident to me that this individual was held in great respect by the rest of the prisoners; such an influence has education,-for he was an educated man,-even in such a place as a common jail.

I was soon informed of the peculiar talent which gave him a prominent position. He was an inexhaustible teller of stories; and, added my informant, "he can drink as much beer as any three men in Vienna."

This was saying a great deal.

On the second night of my incarceration in Punishment Room No. 1, I had an opportunity of judging of his powers; for, on our retiring to our boards and rugs, which, according to prison regulations, we were bound to do at the ringing of the eight o'clock bell, I heard his peculiar voice announce from the other side of the room, where he lay, propped up against the wall by the especial indulgence of his comrades, that he was about to tell a story. I could not sleep, but lay upon the hard planks listening, as he recounted with a wonderful power of language, and no mean amount of elocutionary dignity, some princ.i.p.al incidents in the life of Napoleon. His companions lay entranced; they did not sleep, for I could hear their whispers, and, now and then, their uneasy s.h.i.+ftings on the relentless wood. And so he went on, and I fell off to sleep before he had come to a conclusion.

This was repeated each night of my confinement, for which he received his due payment in beer from his fellow prisoners.

He professed to have a great affection for me; would take my arm, and walk with me up and down the ward, telling me of his acquirements, little sc.r.a.ps of his history, and invariably making a request for a little beer.

On one occasion it was suggested by the "Vater" that he should tell us his own story.

"My story!" chuckled the unashamed rascal. "Why, all Vienna knows my story. I am the brother of Rathherr Lech, of the Imperial-royal-city-police-bureau of Vienna. My brother is a great man; I am a vagabond. _He_ deserves it, and _I_ deserve it; but he is my brother for all that, and I put him in mind of it now and then.

"My brother, by his zeal and talent, has acquired great learning, and raised himself to a position of honour and independence. And why have I not done the same? Because I am lazy, have got weak eyes, and am fond of beer. I do not care for your wine; good Liesinger beer is the drink for me.

"My brother wished me to attain a lofty position in the world. I am the younger. He paid teachers to instruct me, and I learned a great deal; but it was dry work, and I sought change, after days of study, in beer-cellars, among a few choice boosers. And my eyes were weak, and close study made them worse; and many a day I stole from my lessons on the plea of failing sight. My brother, who is a good fellow, only that he does not sufficiently consider my weakness, employed physicians and oculists out of number; and among them I lost the sight of one eye. It was of no use; I did not like the labour of learning, and I made my weak eyes an excuse for doing less than I could have done.

"At last I gave it up altogether, and my brother got me into the 'Inst.i.tute for the Blind.' _That_ would not do for me at all; I was not blind enough for _that_. So, one day, when the door was open, and the weather fine, I strolled home again to my brother. This vexed him greatly; but he got over it, and then he placed me in the 'Imperial Bounty.' A stylish place, I can tell you, where few but n.o.bles were allowed.

"But how could I, a l.u.s.ty young fellow, be happy among that moping, musty, crampt-up lot of old respectables? Not I! so, as I could not easily get out in the day-time, I ran away one night, and went back to my old quarters. At first my brother would not see me; but that pa.s.sed over, for he could not let me starve. He then obtained for me a post in the 'Refuge for the Aged;' about the dullest place in all Vienna. I was too young to be one of the members, so they gave me a birth, where I did nothing. But what was the use of that? I could not live among that company of mumbling, bible-backed old people; and if I could, it was all the same, for they kicked me out at the end of a month for impropriety.

"It was lucky for me that I tumbled into a legacy about this time, of eighty gulden munz. I enjoyed myself while it lasted, and never troubled my brother with my presence.

"It did not last long; for, what with drinking beer, and wearing fine clothes, and taking a das.h.i.+ng lodging on the Glacis, I found my eighty guldens gone, just as I was in a position to enjoy them most. But I was never very proud; so, seeing that there was nothing to be done, but to go without beer, or to humble myself to my brother, the rath, I chose the latter course as the most reasonable, and made my peace with him at once.

"And what do you suppose he did for me? He said I had disgraced myself and him at all the other places, so he could do nothing but send me to the 'Asylum for the Indigent.' But I did not stay there long. There was no beer there; nothing but thin soup and rind-fleish (fresh boiled beef) all the year round. And a pretty lot of ill-bred, miserable ignoramuses they were-the indigent! Not a spark of life or jollity in the place.

"One day I coolly walked out of the 'Asylum,' made off to a house I well knew, and ran up a credit account in my brother's name of good eight guldens for beer and tobacco. A glorious day! for I forgot all about the 'asylum,' and the 'indigent,' and every mortal pain and trouble in this inconvenient world.

"I was awakened from a deep dream by a heavy hand on my shoulder, and a loud voice in my ear.

"'Holloa! friend Lech.'

"'What's the matter?' inquired I, gaping.

"'Get up, and I'll tell you.'

"'Who are you?'

"'You'll know that soon enough; I am a police officer.'

"'And where am I, in G.o.d's name?'

"'Why, lying on your back, on the open Glacis.'

"That was pleasant, was it not? So they took me to the police-bureau, in the first case, for lying out in the open air; and when they found that I had used my brother's name to incur a debt, without his permission, they gave me two months for fraudulent intentions.

"'Why did you not stay at the "Bounty?"' expostulated my friend, the police-a.s.sistant, as we were talking the matter over.

"'Because it was too aristocratic and uncomfortable,' answered I.

"'Perhaps the Rathherr, your brother, will be able to get you into the "Refuge,"' said he, in a consoling way.

"'G.o.d bless you! they have kicked me out of there long ago.'

"'Then I know of nothing but the "Indigent" left for you.'

"'My worthy friend,' said I, 'that is the very last place I came from.'