It Is Very Unusual To Execute In Lent;
But His Crime Being A Very Bad One, It Was Deemed Advisable To Make
An Example Of Him At That Time, When Great Numbers Of Pilgrims Were
Coming Towards Rome, From All Parts, For The Holy Week.
I heard of
this on the Friday evening, and saw the bills up at the churches,
calling on the people to pray for the criminal's soul.
So, I
determined to go, and see him executed.
The beheading was appointed for fourteen and a-half o'clock, Roman
time: or a quarter before nine in the forenoon. I had two friends
with me; and as we did not know but that the crowd might be very
great, we were on the spot by half-past seven. The place of
execution was near the church of San Giovanni decollato (a doubtful
compliment to Saint John the Baptist) in one of the impassable back
streets without any footway, of which a great part of Rome is
composed--a street of rotten houses, which do not seem to belong to
anybody, and do not seem to have ever been inhabited, and certainly
were never built on any plan, or for any particular purpose, and
have no window-sashes, and are a little like deserted breweries,
and might be warehouses but for having nothing in them. Opposite
to one of these, a white house, the scaffold was built. An untidy,
unpainted, uncouth, crazy-looking thing of course: some seven feet
high, perhaps: with a tall, gallows-shaped frame rising above it,
in which was the knife, charged with a ponderous mass of iron, all
ready to descend, and glittering brightly in the morning sun,
whenever it looked out, now and then, from behind a cloud.
There were not many people lingering about; and these were kept at
a considerable distance from the scaffold, by parties of the Pope's
dragoons. Two or three hundred foot-soldiers were under arms,
standing at ease in clusters here and there; and the officers were
walking up and down in twos and threes, chatting together, and
smoking cigars.
At the end of the street, was an open space, where there would be a
dust-heap, and piles of broken crockery, and mounds of vegetable
refuse, but for such things being thrown anywhere and everywhere in
Rome, and favouring no particular sort of locality. We got into a
kind of wash-house, belonging to a dwelling-house on this spot; and
standing there in an old cart, and on a heap of cartwheels piled
against the wall, looked, through a large grated window, at the
scaffold, and straight down the street beyond it until, in
consequence of its turning off abruptly to the left, our
perspective was brought to a sudden termination, and had a
corpulent officer, in a cocked hat, for its crowning feature.
Nine o'clock struck, and ten o'clock struck, and nothing happened.
All the bells of all the churches rang as usual. A little
parliament of dogs assembled in the open space, and chased each
other, in and out among the soldiers. Fierce-looking Romans of the
lowest class, in blue cloaks, russet cloaks, and rags uncloaked,
came and went, and talked together. Women and children fluttered,
on the skirts of the scanty crowd. One large muddy spot was left
quite bare, like a bald place on a man's head. A cigar-merchant,
with an earthen pot of charcoal ashes in one hand, went up and
down, crying his wares. A pastry-merchant divided his attention
between the scaffold and his customers. Boys tried to climb up
walls, and tumbled down again. Priests and monks elbowed a passage
for themselves among the people, and stood on tiptoe for a sight of
the knife: then went away. Artists, in inconceivable hats of the
middle-ages, and beards (thank Heaven!) of no age at all, flashed
picturesque scowls about them from their stations in the throng.
One gentleman (connected with the fine arts, I presume) went up and
down in a pair of Hessian-boots, with a red beard hanging down on
his breast, and his long and bright red hair, plaited into two
tails, one on either side of his head, which fell over his
shoulders in front of him, very nearly to his waist, and were
carefully entwined and braided!
Eleven o'clock struck and still nothing happened. A rumour got
about, among the crowd, that the criminal would not confess; in
which case, the priests would keep him until the Ave Maria
(sunset); for it is their merciful custom never finally to turn the
crucifix away from a man at that pass, as one refusing to be
shriven, and consequently a sinner abandoned of the Saviour, until
then. People began to drop off. The officers shrugged their
shoulders and looked doubtful. The dragoons, who came riding up
below our window, every now and then, to order an unlucky hackney-
coach or cart away, as soon as it had comfortably established
itself, and was covered with exulting people (but never before),
became imperious, and quick-tempered. The bald place hadn't a
straggling hair upon it; and the corpulent officer, crowning the
perspective, took a world of snuff.
Suddenly, there was a noise of trumpets. 'Attention!' was among
the foot-soldiers instantly. They were marched up to the scaffold
and formed round it. The dragoons galloped to their nearer
stations too. The guillotine became the centre of a wood of
bristling bayonets and shining sabres. The people closed round
nearer, on the flank of the soldiery. A long straggling stream of
men and boys, who had accompanied the procession from the prison,
came pouring into the open space. The bald spot was scarcely
distinguishable from the rest. The cigar and pastry-merchants
resigned all thoughts of business, for the moment, and abandoning
themselves wholly to pleasure, got good situations in the crowd.
The perspective ended, now, in a troop of dragoons. And the
corpulent officer, sword in hand, looked hard at a church close to
him, which he could see, but we, the crowd, could not.
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