Mathias Sandorf/Page 05

by Jules Verne

CHAPTER VII.
THE TRIAL.

Istria, which became part of Austria-Hungary in accordance with the treaty of 1815, is a triangular peninsula of which the isthmus forms the base. The peninsula extends from the Gulf of Trieste to the Gulf of Qnarnero; and along its coast line are several harbors. Among others, almost at the extreme southern point, is Pola, which the government was then forming into a dock-yard and arsenal of the first class.

The province, more especially on its western coast, is still Italian, and even Venetian in its customs and language. The Sclave element still struggles with the Italian element, and the German element has some difficulty in maintaining its influence.

There are several important towns on the coast and in the interior. Among these are Capo d'Istria and Pirano, whose population is almost entirely employed in the salt works at the mouths of the Risano and Corna-Lunga; Parenzo, the head-quarters of the Istrian Diet and the residence of the bishop; Rivigno, rich in its olive-trees, and Pola, where tourists find interest in the superb monuments of Roman origin, and which is destined to become the most important military port in the Adriatic.

But neither of these towns has the right to call itself the capital of Istria. The place that bears the title is Pisino, situated almost in the center of the triangle, and thither, unknown to them, the prisoners were about to be taken after their secret arrest.

At the door of Zathmar's house a post-chaise was waiting. The four prisoners entered it, and two of the Austrian police, who were put in charge during the journey, took their places beside them. They were thus prevented from exchanging a word which might in any way compromise them, or lead to a mutual understanding before their appearance in the dock.

An escort of twelve mounted gendarmes, commanded by a lieutenant, took up their positions in front, behind, and at the doors of the carriage, and ten minutes afterward they were out of the town. Borik was taken direct to the prison at Trieste, and there put into solitary confinement.

Where were the prisoners going? In what fortress of the Austrian Government were they to be lodged, since the castle at Trieste was not to receive them? Count Sandorf and his friends would have been glad to know, but they tried to discover in vain!

The night was dark. By the light of the carriage lamps only the first rank of the mounted escort could be seen. The pace was rapid. Sandorf, Bathory and Zathmar remained motionless and silent in their corners. Sarcany did not seek to break the silence, either to protest against his arrest, or to ask why the arrest had been made.

After leaving Trieste the post-chaise made a bend which took it obliquely toward the coast. Count Sandorf, amid the noise of the trotting horses and the jingling sabers, could hear the distant murmur of the surf on the rocks along the shore. For a moment a few lights shone out in the night, and almost immediately disappeared. This was the small town of Muggia, which the post-chaise had just passed without halting. Then Sandorf noticed that the road lay into the interior.

At eleven o'clock the chaise stopped to change horses. It was only at a farm, where the horses were waiting ready to be harnessed. It was not a post-station.

The escort resumed its journey. The carriage passed along a road among the vineyards where the vines interlaced themselves in festoons to the branches of the mulberry-trees. The road was flat and the carriage made rapid progress. The darkness now grew more profound, for heavy clouds, brought up by a violent sirocco from the south-east, covered the sky; and, although the windows were let down from time to time to admit a little fresh air—for the nights are warm in Istria—it was impossible to distinguish anything even close at hand. Although Sandorf and his friends noted every incident on the road, the direction of the wind and the time elapsed since their departure, they could not discover the direction in which the carriage was traveling. The object was doubtless to keep it as secret as possible, so that their place of confinement should not be known to the public.

About two o'clock in the morning they again changed horses. As at the first change, the halt did not last five minutes.

Count Sandorf thought he could make out in the gloom a few houses at the end of a road, as though on the extreme outskirt of a town.

This was Buje, the chief place of a district situated about twenty miles south of Muggia.

As soon as the horses were put to, the lieutenant spoke a few words to the postilion in a low tone, and the chaise set off at a gallop.

About half past three o'clock the day began to dawn. An hour later the position of the rising sun would have shown them the direction in which they were going, but the police shut down the shutters, and the interior of the carriage was plunged into complete darkness. Neither Count Sandorf nor his friends made the least observation. It would not have been replied to; that was quite certain. The best thing to do was to submit and wait.

An hour or two afterward—it was difficult to reckon how the time went—the post-chaise stopped for the last time, and the change of horses was very quickly performed at Visinada.

As they left here all that could be noticed was that the road had become very hard. The shouts of the postilion, the cracking of his whip, incessantly urged the horses forward, and the shoes rattled on the hard, stony ground of a mountainous region. A few hills with little clumps of grayish trees could be made out on the horizon. Two or three times the prisoners heard the sounds of a flute. They came from the young shepherds who were playing their curious tunes as they gathered together their flocks of black goats, but this afforded no sufficient indication of the country the prisoners were passing through. That had to be found out without seeing it.

About nine o'clock the chaise went off in quite a different direction. Unless they were mistaken they were descending rapidly after having reached the highest point of their journey. The speed was much increased, and occasionally the wheels had to be skidded.

In fact, after leading through the hilly country commanded by Mont Majeur, the road drops down obliquely as it approaches Pisino. Although the town is very much above sea level it seems to be in a deep valley to judge from the neighboring hills. Some distance before it is reached the campanile above the houses picturesquely grouped on the hill-side becomes visible.

Pisino is the chief place of the district, and contains about 24,000 inhabitants. It is situated almost in the center of the peninsula, and particularly at fair-time a large business is done among the mixed population of Morlaques, Sclaves of different tribes, and even Tsiganes, who flourish there.

The capital of Istria is an old city, and has retained its feudal character. This strikingly appears in the ancient castle, which towers above several more modern military establishments where the administration of the government is carried on.

It was in the court-yard of this castle that the post-chaise stopped on the 9th of June, about ten o'clock in the morning, after a journey of fifteen hours. Count Sandorf, his two companions and Sarcany left the vehicle, and a few minutes afterward were shown into separate vaulted cells.

Although they had had no communication with each other, and had not been able to exchange ideas in any way, yet Sandorf, Zathmar and Bathory were all engaged in pondering over the same subject. How had the secret of the plot been discovered? Had the police come on the track by chance? There had recently been no correspondence between Trieste and the Hungarian and Transylvanian towns. Was there a traitor in the camp? But who could be the traitor? Confidence had been placed in none. There were no papers to fall into a spy's hands. All the documents had been destroyed. Had they rummaged the most secret corners of the Acquedotto they would not have found a single suspicious note! And that is what had happened. The police had discovered nothing—except the grating, which Zathmar had not destroyed in case he should want it for future use. But unhappily the grating was serious evidence, for it was impossible to explain its use except as a means of ciphered correspondence.

In fact, everything rested on the copy of the message that Sarcany, with Toronthal's connivance, had handed over to the Governor of Trieste after having made out its real meaning. But, unfortunately, that was quite enough to make good the accusation of conspiring against the state; and it had been decided to bring Count Sandorf and his friends before a special tribunal, a military tribunal, which would proceed in military fashion.

Sarcany's game was a deep one, and he played it with the coolness and deliberation that distinguished him. He had allowed himself to be arrested, to be convicted, if need be, on the understanding that he should receive a pardon; and in this way he hoped to disarm suspicion.

Sandorf was completely deceived by him—and who would not have been?—and resolved to do his utmost to clear him of the charge. It would not be difficult, he thought, to show that Sarcany had taken no part in the conspiracy, that he was merely an accountant only recently introduced into Zathmar's house to arrange certain private matters which in no way had reference to the plot. If needful, he could call Silas Toronthal to testify to the young man's innocence. There could be no doubt, therefore, that Sarcany would be found innocent of having been either a principal or accessory, in the event of the prosecution being persisted in.

The Austrian Government knew nothing of the conspiracy beyond what they heard at Trieste. The conspirators in Hungary and Transylvania remained absolutely unknown. There was no trace in existence of their complicity in the plot. Sandorf, Bathory and Zathmar need have felt no anxiety on this head. As far as they were concerned they had made up their minds to deny everything until some material evidence was produced. In that case they knew that their lives were forfeit. Others would one day take up the movement that had now proved abortive. The cause of independence would find new leaders. If they wore convicted they would avow what had been their hopes. They would show the object at which they had aimed, and which one day or the other would be attained.

It was not without some reason that Count Sandorf and his two friends thought that the action of the police had been restricted in the matter. At Buda, at Pesth, at Klausenburg, in all the towns in which the rising was to take place at the signal from Trieste, inquiries had been made in vain. That was why the government had arrested the chiefs so secretly at Trieste. They had sent them to Pisino, and desired that nothing should be known of the matter, in the hope that something would happen to betray the senders of the cipher message. The hope was not realized. The expected signal was not given. The movement was stopped for a time at least. The government had to content itself with trying Sandorf and his companions for high treason.

The inquiries took several days; and it was not till the 20th of June that the proceedings began with the examination of the accused. They were not even confronted with each other, and were only to meet before their judges.

The chiefs of the Trieste conspiracy were, as we have said, to be tried before a court-martial. The proceedings before such a court never take long, the trial is conducted very quickly, and there is no delay in the execution of the sentence.

It was so in this matter.

On the 25th of June the court-martial met in one of the lower rooms of the fortress of Pisino, and the accused were brought before it. The proceedings did not take very long, and nothing startling was discovered.

The court opened at nine o'clock in the morning. Count Sandorf, Count Zathmar, and Professor Bathory, on the one side, and Sarcany on the other, saw each other for the first time since their imprisonment. The clasp of the hand which Sandorf and his friend interchanged as they met, gave yet another proof of their unanimity. A sign from Zathmar, and Bathory gave Sandorf to understand that they left it to him to speak for them. Neither would undertake the defense. All Sandorf had done up till then had been well done. All that he thought fit to say to the judges would be well said.

The hearing was a public one, in the sense that the doors of the room were open. But few persons were present, for the affair had not yet transpired; and the spectators, some twenty in number, belonged to the staff of the castle.

The identity of the accused was first proved. Then immediately afterward, Sandorf asked the president the name of the place to which he and his companion had been brought for trial, but no reply was given to the question.

The identity of Sarcany was likewise established. He still did nothing to distinguish his case from that of his companions.

Then the fac-simile of the message handed over to the police was produced; and the accused were asked if they remembered receiving the original. They replied that it was the duty of the prosecution to prove that they received it.

At this reply the grating which had been found in Zathmar's desk was produced.

Sandorf and his companions could not deny that the grating had been in their possession. They did not try to. To such material evidence there was no reply. The application of the grating permitted the cryptographic letter to be read, and the letter must consequently have been received.

And thus they learned how the secret of the conspiracy was discovered and the basis on which the prosecution was originated.

Prom this time forward question and answer passed rapidly and clearly told the story.

Sandorf denied nothing. He spoke on behalf of his two friends. A movement intended to bring about the separation of Hungary from Austria, and the autonomic reconstitution of the kingdom of the ancient Magyars had been organized by them. Had they not been arrested, it would shortly have broken out, and Hungary would have reconquered its independence. Sandorf claimed to be the chief of the conspiracy, and insisted that his fellow-prisoners were merely his agents. But Zathmar and Bathory protested against this contention, and claimed the Honor of having been his accomplices, and desired to share his fate.

When the president interrogated the prisoners as to their dealings with others they refused to reply. Not a name was given.

“You have now three heads,” said Sandorf, “and that must be enough for you.”

Three heads only, for Sandorf then set himself to exculpating Sarcany, a young clerk employed in Count Zathmar's house on the recommendation of Silas Toronthal.

Sarcany could not confirm what Sandorf stated. He knew nothing of the conspiracy. He had been greatly surprised to learn that in this quiet house on the Acquedotto a plot was in progress against the safety of the state. If he had made no protest when he was arrested, it was because he had no idea what it was all about.

Neither Count Sandorf nor Sarcany had any difficulty in proving this—and it is probable that the court had already made up his mind in the matter. At the suggestion of the judge-advocate the charge against Sarcany was then and there abandoned.

By two o'clock in the afternoon the pleadings were all over, and the sentence was given without even an adjournment.

Count Mathias Sandorf, Count Ladislas Zathmar and Professor Stephen Bathory were found guilty of high treason against the state and sentenced to death.

The prisoners were to be shot in the court-yard of the castle.

The execution was to take place within forty-eight hours. Sarcany was to be kept in custody until the closing of the jail books, which would not take place until after the execution of the sentence.

By the same judgment all the possessions of the prisoners were confiscated.

The prisoners were then removed.

CHAPTER VIII.
AFTER THE SENTENCE.

Sarcany was taken back to the cell he occupied at the bottom of an elliptic corridor on the second floor of the donjon. Sandorf and his two friends, during the last hours of life that remained to them, were quartered in a large cell on the same level, exactly at the end of the major axis of the ellipse which this corridor made. The secret was now known. The condemned were to be left together until their execution.

This was a consolation, even a pleasure for them, when they found themselves alone and allowed to give way to feelings which they could not at first restrain.

“My friends,” said Sandorf, “I am the cause of your deaths! But I have nothing to ask your pardon for! We worked for the independence of Hungary! Our cause was just! It is our duty to defend her! It is an honor to die for her!”

“Mathias,” said Bathory, “we thank you for having associated us with you in the patriotic work which would have been the work of all your life—”

“As we are associated with you in death!” added Zathmar.

Then during a momentary silence the three gazed round the gloomy cell in which they were to spend their last hours. A narrow window some four or five feet high, cut through the thick wall of the donjon, let in a certain amount of light. There were three iron bedsteads, a few chairs, a table and a shelf or two, on which were a few articles of crockery.

Zathmar and Bathory were soon lost in thought.

Sandorf began to walk up and down the cell.

Zathmar was alone in the world, had no family ties and no near relations. There was only his old servant, Borik, to mourn for him.

It was not so with Bathory. His death would not only prove a blow to himself. He had a wife and son whom it would reach. That wife and child might even die! And if they survived him, how were they to live? What was to be the future of a penniless woman and her eight-year-old child? Had Bathory possessed any property, how much of it would remain after a judgment which directed it to be confiscated and sentenced him to death?

As for Sandorf, all his past life returned to him! His wife came to him! His little daughter came a child of two years old, now left to the care of the steward. And there were his friends whom he had led to ruin! He asked himself if he had done well, if he had not gone further than his duty toward his country required? Would that the punishment had fallen on him alone, and not upon those that were innocent!

“No! no! I have only done my duty!” he said to himself. “My country before all and above all!”

At five o'clock a warder entered the cell, placed the dinner on the table, and went out again without saying a word. Sandorf would have liked to know in what fortress he was kept a prisoner, but as the president of the court-martial had not thought fit to answer the question it was quite certain that the warder would not give the information.

The prisoners hardly touched the dinner which had been prepared for them. They passed the rest of the day talking on various matters, in the hope that their abortive attempt would one day be resumed. Very often they returned to the incidents of the trial.

“We now know,” said Zathmar, “why we have been arrested, and how the police discovered us from that letter which they came across.”

“Yes, Ladislas,” said Sandorf, “but into whose hands did that message, which was one of the last we received, at first fall, and who copied it?”

“And when it was copied,” added Bathory, “how did they read it without the grating?”

“The grating must have been stolen,” said Sandorf.

“Stolen! and by whom?” asked Zathmar. “The day we were arrested it was still in the drawer on my desk, whence the police took it.”

This was, indeed, inexplicable. That the letter had been found on the pigeon; that it had been copied before being sent to its destination; that the house where the person to whom it was addressed had been discovered—all that could be explained. But that the cryptographic dispatch could have been deciphered without the grating by which it had been formed was incomprehensible.

“And besides,” continued Sandorf, “we know that the letter was read, and it could not have been read without the grating! It was this letter which put the police on our traces, and it was on it that the whole charge was based.”

“It matters very little, after all,” answered Bathory.

“On the contrary, it does matter,” said Sandorf. “We have been betrayed! And if there has been a traitor—not to know—”

Sandorf suddenly stopped. The name of Sarcany occurred to him; but he abandoned the thought at once without caring to communicate it to his companions.

Far into the night Sandorf and his companions continued their conversation on all that was unintelligible with regard to these matters.

In the morning they were awakened from sound sleep by the entry of the warder. It was the morning of their last day but one. The execution was fixed to take place in twenty-four hours from then.

Bathory asked the warder if he might be permitted to see his family.

The warder replied that he had no orders on the subject. It was not likely that the government would consent to give the prisoners this last consolation, inasmuch as they had conducted the affair throughout with the greatest secrecy, and not even the name of the fortress which served them as a prison had been revealed.

“If we write letters, will they be forwarded?” asked Sandorf.

“I will bring you paper, pens and ink,” replied the warder; “and I promise to give your letters into the governor's hands.”

“We are much obliged to you,” said Sandorf. “If you do that, you do all you can! How shall we reward you?”

“Your thanks are sufficient, gentlemen,” said the warder, who could not conceal his emotion.

He soon brought in the writing materials. The prisoners spent the greater part of the day in making their last arrangements. Sandorf said all that a father's heart could prompt in his instructions regarding his baby girl, who would soon be an orphan; Bathory, all that a husband and father could think of in bidding a loving farewell to his wife and son; Zathmar, all that a master could say to an old servant who remained his only friend.

But during the day, although absorbed in their writing, how many times did they stop to listen! How many times did they seek to discover if some distant noise was not coming along the corridors of the donjon! How many times did it seem to them as though the door of their cell had opened, and that they were to be permitted one last embrace of wife, son or daughter! That would have been some consolation! But, in truth, the pitiless order deprived them of this last adieu and spared them the heart-rending scene.

The door did not open. Doubtless neither Mme. Bathory nor her son, nor the steward, Lendeck, to whose care Sandorf's daughter had been given, knew any more where the prisoners had been taken to after their arrest than Borik in his prison at Trieste. Doubtless, also, neither knew of the doom in store for the conspirators.

Thus passed the earlier hours of the day. Occasionally Sandorf and his friends would talk for awhile. Occasionally they would be silent for some time, and then the whole of their lives would be lived over again in their memories with an intensity of impression quite super-natural. It was not with the past, as affecting the past, that they were entirely concerned; the recollections seemed all to shape themselves with a view to the present. Was it, then, a prescience of that eternity which was about to open on them, of that incomprehensible and incommensurate state of things which is called the infinite?

Bathory and Zathmar abandoned themselves without reserve to their reveries, but Sandorf was invincibly dominated by an idea which had taken possession of him. He could not doubt that there had been treachery in this mysterious affair. For a man of his character to die without punishing the traitor, whoever he was, without knowing even who had betrayed him, was to die twice over. Who had got hold of this message to which the police owed the discovery of the conspiracy and the arrest of the conspirators? Who had read it, who had given it up, who had sold it, perhaps? Pondering over this insoluble problem, Sandorfs excited brain became a prey to a sort of fever. And while his friends wrote on or remained silent and motionless, he strode about, uneasy and agitated, pacing the floor of his cell like a wild beast shut up in a cage.

A phenomenon—strange but not unintelligible, in accordance with acoustical law—came at last to his aid and whispered the secret he had despaired of discovering.

Several times he had stopped short as he turned at the angle which the dividing wall of the cell made with the main wall of the corridor, on to which the different cells opened. In this angle, just where the door was hinged he seemed to hear a murmur of voices, distant and hardly recognizable. At first he paid no attention to this, but suddenly a name was pronounced—his own—and he listened intently. At once he detected an acoustical phenomenon, such as is observable in the interiors of galleries and domes or under vaults of ellipsoidal form. The noise traveling from one point of the ellipse, after following the contour of the walls without being perceptible at any intermediate point, is plainly heard at the other focus. Such is the phenomenon met with in the crypts of the Pantheon in Paris, in the interior of the dome of St. Peter's at Rome, and in the whispering gallery at St. Paul's in London. The faintest word uttered at one focus is distinctly heard at the focus opposite.

There could be no doubt that two or more persons were talking in the corridor or in a cell situated at the end of the diameter, the vocal point of which was close to the door of the cell occupied by Sandorf.

By a sign he called his companions to him. The three stood listening.

Fragments of phrases distinctly reached their ears; phrases broken off and dying away as every now and then the speakers moved from and toward the point whose position determined the phenomenon.

And these are the phrases they heard at different intervals:

“To-morrow, after the execution, you will be free.”

“And then Count Sandorf's goods we share—”

“Without me you never would have deciphered that message.”

“And without me—if I had not taken it from the pigeon, you would never have got hold of it—”

“Well, no one would suspect that the police owe—”

“Even the prisoners have no suspicion—”

“Neither relatives nor friends are coming to see them—”

“To-morrow, Sarcany—”

“To-morrow, Silas Toronthal.”

Then the voices were silent, and the sound of a door being shut was heard.

“Sarcany! Silas Toronthal!” exclaimed Sandorf. “That is where it came from!”

He looked at his friends, and was quite pale. His heart stopped beating in the grip of the spasm.

His eyes dilated, his neck stiffened, his head sunk back to his shoulders—everything showed that his energetic nature was in the grasp of terrible anger, pushed to its furthest extreme.

“Those two! The scoundrels! Those two!” he repeated, with a sort of roar.

Then he corrected himself, looked around him, and strode across the cell.

“Escape! Escape!” he exclaimed. “We must escape!”

And this man, who would have walked bravely to death a few hours later, this man who had never even thought of making an effort for his life, this man had now but one thought—to live, and live to punish those two traitors, Sarcany and Toronthal!

“Yes! To be revenged!” exclaimed Bathory and Zathmar.

“To be revenged? No! To do justice!”

All the Count Sandorf was in these words.