The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories Read Online Free

were the two judges, Van Spreckdal and Richter. At their feet lay the old woman, supine…her long grey hair dishevelled… her face blue…her eyes open inordinately wide…and her tongue caught in her teeth.
    It was horrendous!
    “Well,” Van Spreckdal said to me solemnly, “what have you got to say for yourself?”
    I chose not to answer.
    “Do you admit to having thrown this woman, Theresa Becker, down this well after strangling her to steal her money?”
    “No!” I shouted. “No! I don’t know this woman! I’ve never seen her before! As God is my witness!”
    “You’ve said enough,” he retorted drily.
    And he strode off, without any further ado, in the company of his colleague.
    The policemen then saw fit to put the handcuffs on me. I was taken back to the Raspelhaus in a catatonic state. I no longer knew what to think…even my conscience was plaguing me. I started to wonder myself if I really had murdered the old woman!
    In my guards’ eyes I was guilty.
    I will not tell you what my emotions were during that night in the Raspelhaus when, sitting on my bale of straw, with a skylight facing me and a gallows to look at, I heard the nightwatchman dissipate the silence with cries of: “Sleep, good people of Nuremberg, the Lord is watching over you! One o’clock!…Two o’clock!…Three o’clock and all’s well!”
    Everyone must have some idea of what such a night is like.
    Daylight came—pale and hesitant at first, it lit the bull’s-eye window with its glimmers and the criss-crossed bars,…then it burst out upon the far wall. Outside the street grew busy. There was a market that day. It was Friday. I could hear the creaking of the carts laden with vegetables and the good country folk burdened by baskets on their backs. A few hens in cages squawked as they passed by and women selling butter chatted among themselves. The market hall opposite was being opened to the public…the stalls were being arranged.
    Finally it was broad daylight and the vast buzz of the swelling crowd, of housewives coming together with their basket under their arm, coming and going, talking and haggling, told me that it was eight o’clock in the morning.
    With the coming of the light, my heart regained a little of its confidence. Some of my darker ideas evaporated. I felt the desire to see what was happening outside.
    Other prisoners before me had raised themselves up as far as the bull’s-eye, having made holes in the wall so as to climb it more easily…I climbed up it in my turn and when, as I sat in the oval hollow, my back bent, my head leaning forward, I was able to see the crowd, life, movement…my tears trickled copiously down my cheeks…I no longer contemplated suicide…I felt a need to live, to breathe in air that was truly extraordinary.
    “Ah!” I said to myself. “To live is to be happy!…They can make me push a wheelbarrow and attach to my leg a ball and chain.… What does it matter? As long as I can go on living!…”
    While I was gazing thus, a man went by, a butcher, bent over double, carrying an enormous side of beef on his shoulders. His arms were bare right up to his elbows, his head was bent forward…A mop of long hair hid from me his face and yet, as soon as I laid eyes on him, I gave a start…
    “He’s the one!” I said to myself.
    All my blood flowed back on my heart…I descended to my cell, trembling to the tips of my fingernails, feeling my cheeks wobble and my face flood with a deathly pallor and I stammered in a muffled voice:
    “It’s him! He’s there…he’s there…and I’m going to die in his place to expiate his crime…Good God!…What shall I do? What shall I do?…”
    I suddenly had an idea, an idea crossed my mind like manna from heaven…My hand went into my jacket pocket!…The box containing my charcoal was there.
    Then, rushing towards the wall, I began to copy the murder scene with unprecedented vigour. No more uncertainty, no more trial and error. I knew the