Page:The Head - Keepsake 1834.pdf/20

110 the executioner gathered it up in a rough knot,—he had been told not to sever it from the graceful head. At that moment the prisoner gave a bewildered stare around—a wild gleam of hope illumined her features—she stretched out her arms to some one passionately in the crowd. "Julian, save me!" The executioner forced her to her knee—the axe glittered in the sun, and the head fell into the appointed basket, while a convulsive motion shook the white garments around the quivering trunk.

"I looked on the faces of his judges, and felt there was no hope," said an old man as he led away the promised bride of his son, now a prisoner, doomed to death on the morrow. "Yet the one they call Julian looks so young, so pale, and so sad, there is surely some touch of pity in him; at least, I will kneel at his feet, and implore him for mercy on Frederic." The old man shook his head, but accompanied her to Julian’s hotel, where the eloquence of some golden coins procured her admittance. She found her way to a large and gloomy chamber, where he sat surrounded with books, papers, and charts, mocking himself with a frenzied belief in the coming amelioration of the world, while his own home was a desert and his own heart a desolation. He did not perceive the fair and agitated creature that knelt at his feet, till her supplicating and broken voice roused his attention. He listened till her words died away into the short thick sobs of utter agony, unable to bear the picture it had conjured up of its coming wretchedness.

"Pity from me!" he exclaimed, with a quick fierce laugh; "Pity!—I do not know the meaning of the word. You might as well address your prayers to yonder bust of the stern old Roman, who sealed his country’s freedom with the life-blood of his child."