To this workman succeeded one of the guests whom Sand had met on the staircase directly after Kotzebue's death.He asked him whether he acknowledged his crime and whether he felt any repentance.Sand replied,"I had thought about it during a whole year.I have been thinking of it for fourteen months,and my opinion has never varied in any respect:I did what I should have done."After the departure of this last visitor,Sand sent for Mr.G--,the governor of the prison,and told him that he should like to talk to the executioner before the execution,since he wished to ask for instructions as to how he should hold himself so as to render the operation most certain and easy.Mr.G--made some objections,but Sand insisted with his usual gentleness,and Mr.G--at last promised that the man in question should be asked to call at the prison as soon as he arrived from Heidelberg,where he lived.
The rest of the day was spent in seeing more visitors and in philosophical and moral talks,in which Sand developed his social and religious theories with a lucidity of expression and an elevation of thought such as he had,perhaps,never before shown.The governor of the prison from whom I heard these details,told me that he should all his life regret that he did not know shorthand,so that he might have noted all these thoughts,which would have formed a pendant to the Phaedo.
Night came.Sand spent part of the evening writing;it is thought that he was composing a poem;but no doubt he burned it,for no trace of it was found.At eleven he went to bed,and slept until six in the morning.Next day he bore the dressing of his wound,which was always very painful,with extraordinary courage,without fainting,as he sometimes did,and without suffering a single complaint to escape him:he had spoken the truth;in the presence of death God gave him the grace of allowing his strength to return.The operation was over;Sand was lying down as usual,and Mr.G--was sitting on the foot of his bed,when the door opened and a man came in and bowed to Sand and to Mr.G--.The governor of the prison immediately stood up,and said to Sand in a voice the emotion of which he could not conceal,"The person who is bowing to you is Mr.Widemann of Heidelberg,to whom you wished to speak."Then Sand's face was lighted up by a strange joy;he sat up and said,"Sir,you are welcome."Then,****** his visitor sit down by his bed,and taking his hand,he began to thank him for being so obliging,and spoke in so intense a tone and so gentle a voice,that Mr.Widemann,deeply moved,could not answer.Sand encouraged him to speak and to give him the details for which he wished,and in order to reassure him,said,"Be firm,sir;for I,on my part,will not fail you:I will not move;and even if you should need two or three strokes to separate my head from my body,as I am told is sometimes the case,do not be troubled on that account."Then Sand rose,leaning on Mr.G--,to go through with the executioner the strange and terrible rehearsal of the drama in which he was to play the leading part on the morrow.Mr.Widemann made him sit in a chair and take the required position,and went into all the details of the execution with him.Then Sand,perfectly instructed,begged him not to hurry and to take his time.Then he thanked him beforehand;"for,"added he,"afterwards I shall not be able."Then Sand returned to his bed,leaving the executioner paler and more trembling than himself.All these details have been preserved by Mr.
G--;for as to the executioner,his emotion was so great that he could remember nothing.
After Mr.Widemann,three clergymen were introduced,with whom Sand conversed upon religious matters:one of them stayed six hours with him,and on leaving him told him that he was commissioned to obtain from him a promise of not speaking to the people at the place of execution.Sand gave the promise,and added,"Even if I desired to do so,my voice has become so weak that people could not hear it."Meanwhile the scaffold was being erected in the meadow that extends on the left of the road to Heidelberg.It was a platform five to six feet high and ten feet wide each way.As it was expected that,thanks to the interest inspired by the prisoner and to the nearness to Whitsuntide,the crowd would be immense,and as some movement from the universities was apprehended,the prison guards had been trebled,and General Neustein had been ordered to Mannheim from Carlsruhe,with twelve hundred infantry,three hundred and fifty cavalry,and a company of artillery with guns.
On,the afternoon of the 19th there arrived,as had been foreseen,so many students,who took up their abode in the neighbouring villages,that it was decided to put forward the hour of the execution,and to let it take place at five in the morning instead of at eleven,as had been arranged.But Sand's consent was necessary for this;for he could not be executed until three full days after the reading of his sentence,and as the sentence had not been read to him till half-past ten Sand had a right to live till eleven o'clock.
Before four in the morning the officials went into the condemned man's room;he was sleeping so soundly that they were obliged to awaken him.He opened his eyes with a smile,as was his custom,and guessing why they came,asked,"Can I have slept so well that it is already eleven in the morning?"They told him that it was not,but that they had come to ask his permission to put forward the time;for,they told him,same collision between the students and the soldiers was feared,and as the military preparations were very thorough,such a collision could not be otherwise than fatal to his friends.Sand answered that he was ready that very moment,and only asked time enough to take a bath,as the ancients were accustomed to do before going into battle.But as the verbal authorisation which he had given was not sufficient,a pen and paper were given to Sand,and he wrote,with a steady hand and in his usual writing:"I thank the authorities of Mannheim for anticipating my most eager wishes by ****** my execution six hours earlier."
