Hans of Iceland, Vol. 2 of 2; The Last Day of a Condemned

Title: Hans of Iceland, Vol. 2 of 2; The Last Day of a Condemned

Author: Victor Hugo

Contributor: Sir Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood

Release date: May 1, 2021 [eBook #65215] Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65215

Credits: David Edwards, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

Contents: HANS OF ICELAND. Chapter XXX., XXXI., XXXII., XXXIII., XXXIV., XXXV., XXXVI., XXXVII., XXXVIII., XXXIX., XL., XLI., XLII., XLIII., XLIV., XLV., XLVI., XLVII., XLVIII., XLIX., L., LI., Conclusion.

THE LAST DAY OF A CONDEMNED.

Preface., First Paper., Second Paper., Third Paper., Fourth Paper., Fifth Paper., Sixth Paper., Seventh Paper., Eighth Paper., Ninth Paper., Tenth Paper., Eleventh Paper., Twelfth Paper., Thirteenth Paper., Fourteenth Paper., Fifteenth Paper., Sixteenth Paper., Seventeenth Paper., Eighteenth Paper., Nineteenth Paper., Twentieth Paper., Twenty-first Paper., Twenty-second Paper., Twenty-third Paper., Twenty-fourth Paper., Twenty-fifth Paper., Twenty-sixth Paper., Twenty-seventh Paper., Twenty-eighth Paper., Twenty-ninth Paper., Thirtieth Paper., Thirty-first Paper., Thirty-second Paper., Thirty-third Paper., Thirty-fourth Paper., Thirty-fifth Paper., Thirty-sixth Paper., Thirty-seventh Paper., Thirty-eighth Paper., Thirty-ninth Paper., Fortieth Paper., Forty-first Paper., Forty-second Paper., Forty-third Paper., Forty-fourth Paper., Forty-fifth Paper., Forty-sixth Paper.

Preface of M. Victor Hugo, to the recent editions of “LE DERNIER JOUR D’UN CONDAMNÉ.”

List of Illustrations (In certain versions of this etext [in certain browsers] clicking on the image will bring up a larger version.)

(etext transcriber's note)

HANS OF ICELAND

Ordener convicts Himself.

Etched by Léopold Flameng.—From drawing by François Flameng.

Hans of Iceland

IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II. The Last Day of a Condemned BY VICTOR HUGO Centenary Edition BOSTON · DANA ESTES & COMPANY · PUBLISHERS

The Centenary Edition LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND COPIES · NUMBER 555

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. VOL. II.

{1}

H A N S O F I C E L A N D.

XXX.

Peter, good fellow, has lost his all at dice.—Régnier.

THE regiment of musketeers from Munkholm was on the march through the narrow passes lying between Throndhjem and Skongen. Sometimes it moved along the brink of a torrent, and the long line of bayonets crept through the ravine like a huge serpent with glittering scales; sometimes it wound around a mountain, making it look like one of those triumphal columns about which curves an army of heroes in bronze.

The soldiers marched with trailing weapons and cloaks dragging in the dust, looking surly and tired, for these noble fellows are averse to anything but battle or inaction. The coarse banter and threadbare jests which delighted them but yesterday had lost their savor. The air was{2} chill, the sky clouded. Nothing would raise a laugh in the ranks, unless one of the sutler-women should get an awkward tumble from her little Barbary horse, or a tin saucepan should happen to roll over the precipice and rebound from rock to rock.

To while away the monotony of the journey, Lieutenant Randmer, a young Danish baron, accosted old Captain Lory, who had risen from the ranks. The captain, moody and silent, moved with a heavy but confident step; the lieutenant, light and agile, played with a twig which he had plucked from the bushes that lined the read.

“Well, Captain, what ails you? You seem depressed.”

“And I should say I had good cause,” replied the old officer, without raising his eyes.

“Come, come, no regrets! Look at me. Am I depressed? And yet I would wager that I have quite as much cause as you.”

“I doubt it, Baron Randmer; I have lost all I possessed; I have lost everything I loved.”

“Captain Lory, our misfortunes are precisely the same. It is not a fortnight since Lieutenant Alberick won my castle and estate at a single deal of the cards. I am ruined; but am I the less gay?”

The captain answered in a very melancholy tone: “Lieutenant, you have only lost your castle; but I have lost my dog.”

At this answer the light-minded baron seemed uncertain whether to laugh or sympathize; but he said: “Be comforted, Captain. Only think, I, who have lost my castle{3}—”

The captain broke in upon his words:—

“What of that? Besides, you may win back another castle.”

“And you may find another dog.”

The old man shook his head.

“I may find another dog, but I shall never find my poor Drake.”

He paused; great tears gathered in his eyes and rolled one by one down his hard, stern face.

“He was all I ever had to love,” he added; “I never knew my parents. God grant them peace, and my poor Drake too! Lieutenant Randmer, he saved my life in the Pomeranian war. I called him Drake in honor of the famous admiral. My good dog! He never changed, as did my fortunes. After the battle of Oholfen, the great General Schack patted him, and said: ‘You’ve a fine dog there, Sergeant Lory!’—for I was only a sergeant then.”

“Ah!” interrupted the young baron, slashing his switch, “how queer it must seem to be a sergeant.”

The old soldier of fortune did not hear him; he appeared to be talking to himself, and Randmer could only catch a word here and there.

“Poor Drake! After surviving so many breaches and trenches, to be drowned like a blind kitten in that confounded Throndhjem fjord! My poor dog! my trusty friend! You deserved to die on the field of battle, as I hope to do.”

“Come, come, Captain!” cried the lieutenant, “how can you be so despondent? We may get a chance to fight to-morrow.{4}”

“Yes,” contemptuously answered the old captain, “with a pretty enemy!”

“What! do you despise those rascally miners, those devilish mountaineers?”

“Stone-cutters, highwaymen, fellows who don’t know the first rudiments of warfare! A fine set of blackguards to face a man like me, who has served in all the wars in Pomerania and Holstein, in the campaigns of Scania and Dalecarlia; who fought under the glorious General Schack and the brave Count Guldenlew!”

“But don’t you know,” interrupted Randmer, “that these fellows are led by a formidable chief,—a giant as big and as brutal as Goliath, a rascal who drinks nothing but human blood, a very Satan incarnate?”

“And who may he be?” asked the captain.

“Why, the famous Hans of Iceland!”

“Pooh! I’ll wager that this great general does not know how to shoulder a musket or handle a carbine properly.”

Randmer laughed.

“Yes, you may laugh,” continued the captain. “It will be very funny, no doubt, to cross swords with scurvy pickaxes, and pikes with pitchforks! Here are worthy foes indeed! My brave Drake would have scorned to snap at their heels!”

The captain was still giving free vent to his indignation, when he was interrupted by the arrival of an officer, who ran up to them all out of breath,—

“Captain Lory! my dear Randmer!”

“Well?” asked both at once.

“My friends, I am faint with horror! D’Ahlefeld,{5} Lieutenant d’Ahlefeld, the lord chancellor’s son! You know, my dear Randmer, that Frederic—such a dandy! such a fop!”

“Yes,” replied the young baron, “a great dandy! Still, at the last ball at Charlottenburg my costume was in much better taste than his. But what has happened to him?”

“I know whom you mean,” said Lory; “you mean Frederic d’Ahlefeld, lieutenant of Company Three. The men wear blue facings. He neglects his duty sadly.”

“You will not have to complain of him again, Captain Lory.”

“Why not?” said Randmer.

“He is garrisoned at Wahlstrom,” coldly added the old officer.

“Exactly,” said the new-comer; “the colonel has just received a message. Poor Frederic!”

“But what has happened? Captain Bollar, you alarm me.”

Old Lory added: “Nonsense! The popinjay was absent from roll-call, I suppose, and the captain has sent the lord chancellor’s son to prison: that is the misfortune which distresses you so sadly; I am sure it is.”

Bollar clapped him on the shoulder.

“Captain Lory, Lieutenant d’Ahlefeld has been devoured alive.”

The two captains looked each other in the face; and Randmer, startled for an instant, suddenly burst out laughing.

“Oh, Captain Bollar, I see you are as fond of a joke as ever! But you can’t fool me in that way, I warn you.{6}”

And the lieutenant, folding his arms, gave way to mirth, swearing that what amused him the most was to see how readily Lory swallowed all Bollar’s ridiculous stories. As for the story, he said it was a capital one; and it was a most clever idea to pretend that Frederic, who took such dainty, such absurd care of his complexion, had been swallowed raw.

“Randmer,” said Bollar, seriously, “you act like a fool. I tell you d’Ahlefeld is dead; I have it from the colonel,—dead!”

“Oh, how well you play your part!” rejoined the baron, still laughing; “what a funny fellow you are!”

Bollar shrugged his shoulders, and turned to old Lory, who quietly asked the particulars.

“Oh, yes, my dear Captain Bollar,” added the irrepressible mocker; “tell us who ate the poor devil. Did he serve as breakfast for a wolf, or supper for a bear?”

“The colonel,” said Bollar, “received a despatch just now, informing him, in the first place, that the Wahlstrom garrison is retreating toward us, driven back by a large party of rebels.”

Old Lory frowned.

“In the second place,” resumed Bollar, “that Lieutenant Frederic d’Ahlefeld, having gone into the mountains three days since to hunt, was captured near Arbar ruins by a monster, who carried him to his lair and there devoured him.”

At this, Lieutenant Randmer’s merriment increased.

“Oh, how our good Lory swallows your stories! That’s right; keep up a sober face, Bollar. You are wonderfully{7} amusing; but you don’t tell us what this monster, this ogre, this vampire was, that carried off and ate up the lieutenant like a week-old kid!”

“I will not tell you,” impatiently answered Bollar; “but I will tell Lory, who is not such an incredulous fool. Lory, my dear fellow, the monster who drank Frederic’s blood was Hans of Iceland.”

“The leader of the rebels!” exclaimed the old officer.

“Well, Lory,” rejoined the scoffer, “do you think a man who handles his jaw so ably needs to know how to shoulder a musket?”

“Baron Randmer,” said Bollar, “you are very like d’Ahlefeld in character; beware lest you meet with the same fate.”

“I declare,” cried Randmer, “that Captain Bollar’s immovable gravity amuses me beyond expression.”

“And Lieutenant Randmer’s inexhaustible laughter alarms me more than I can say.”

At this moment a group of officers, engaged in eager conversation, approached our three speakers.

“Zounds!” cried Randmer, “I must amuse them with Bollar’s story.”

“Comrades,” he added, advancing to meet them; “have you heard the news? Poor Frederic d’Ahlefeld has been eaten alive by the barbarous Hans of Iceland.”

As he said these words, he could not repress a burst of laughter, which, to his great surprise, was received by the new-comers almost with shouts of indignation.

“What! can you laugh? I did not think, Randmer, that you would repeat such a dreadful piece of news so lightly. How can you laugh at such a misfortune?{8}”

“What!” said Randmer, much confused, “is it really true?”

“Why, you just told us of it yourself!” was the general cry. “Don’t you believe your own words?”

“But I thought it was one of Bollar’s jokes.”

An old officer interposed.

“Such a joke would be in very bad taste; but unfortunately it is no joke. Baron Vœthaün, our colonel, has just received the sad news.”

“A fearful affair! It is really awful!” repeated a dozen voices.

“So we are to fight wolves and bears with human faces,” said one.

“We are to be shot down,” said another, “without knowing whence the bullet comes; we are to be picked off one by one, like birds in a cage.”

“D’Ahlefeld’s death,” said Bollar, in a solemn tone, “makes me shudder. Our regiment is unlucky. Dispolsen’s murder, that of those poor soldiers found dead at Cascadthymore, d’Ahlefeld’s awful fate,—here are three tragic events in a very short space of time.”

Young Baron Randmer, who had been silent, looked up.

“It is incredible,” said he; “Frederic, who danced so well!”

And after this weighty remark he relapsed into silence, while Captain Lory declared that he was greatly distressed at the young lieutenant’s death, and drew the attention of private Toric-Belfast to the fact that the brass clasp of his shoulder-belt was not so bright as usual.{9}

XXXI.

“Hush, hush! here comes a man climbing down a ladder.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“Oh, yes; he is a spy.”

“Heaven could grant me no greater favor than to let me offer you—my life. I am yours; but tell me, for mercy’s sake, to whom does this army belong?”

“To a count from Barcelona.”

“What count?”

. . . . . . . . . .

“What is it?”

“General, one of the enemy’s spies.”

“Whence come you?”

“I came here, little dreaming what I should find; little thinking what I should see.”—Lope de Vega: La Fuerza Lastimosa.

THERE is something desolate and forbidding in the aspect of a bare, flat region when the sun has set, when one is alone; when, as he walks, he tramples the dry grass beneath his feet, the dead brown leaves drop rustling from the trees, he hears the monotonous cry of{10} the cricket, and sees huge, shapeless clouds sink slowly on the horizon like dead ghosts.

Such were Ordener’s gloomy reflections on the night of his vain encounter with the Iceland robber. Startled by his abrupt disappearance, he at first tried to pursue him; but he lost his way in the heather, and wandered all day through a wild and uncultivated country, where he found no trace of man. At nightfall he was in a vast plain stretching to the horizon on every side, where there seemed no hope of shelter for the young traveller exhausted by fatigue and hunger.

It would have been a slight relief if his bodily suffering had not been aggravated by mental distress; but all was over. He had reached his journey’s end without accomplishing his purpose. He could not even cherish those foolish illusions of hope which had urged him to pursue the monster; and now that nothing was left to sustain his courage, countless discouraging thoughts, for which he had hitherto had no room, assailed him. What could he do? How could he return to Schumacker unless he could take with him Ethel’s salvation? What was the frightful nature of the misfortune which the possession of the fatal casket would prevent, and what of his marriage to Ulrica d’Ahlefeld? If he could only free his Ethel from her undeserved captivity; if he could fly with her, and enjoy uninterrupted happiness in some distant exile!

He wrapped himself in his mantle, and threw himself upon the ground. The sky was dark; a tempestuous light ever and anon appeared in the clouds as if through a veil of crape and then vanished; a cold wind swept across the{11} plain. The young man scarcely heeded these signs of an immediate and violent storm; and besides, even could he have found shelter from the tempest and a place to rest from his fatigues, could he have found a spot where he might avoid his misery or rest from thought?

All at once confused sounds of men’s voices fell upon his ear. In surprise, he rose upon his elbow, and perceived at some distance a number of shadowy forms moving through the darkness. He looked again; a light shone in the midst of the mysterious group, and Ordener, with astonishment which may easily be imagined, saw the weird forms sink one after the other into the centre of the earth, until all had disappeared.

Ordener was above the superstitions of his age and country. His serious and mature mind knew none of those vain beliefs, those strange terrors, which torture the childhood of a race as well as the childhood of a man. And yet there was something supernatural about this singular vision which filled him with devout distrust against his better judgment; for who can tell whether the spirits of the dead may not sometimes return to earth?

He rose, made the sign of the cross, and walked toward the spot where the apparition vanished.

Big drops of rain now began to fall; his cloak filled like a sail, and the feather in his cap, beaten by the wind, flapped in his face.

He stopped suddenly. A flash of lightning revealed just at his feet a large, round well, into which he must inevitably have fallen headlong had it not have been for this friendly warning. He approached the abyss. A{12} faint light was visible at a fearful depth, and cast a red glow over the bottom of this huge opening in the bowels of the earth. The light, which seemed like a magic fire kindled by elves, only increased the immeasurable darkness which the eye was forced to pierce before reaching it.

The dauntless youth leaned over the abyss and listened. A distant murmur of voices rose to his ear. He no longer doubted that the beings who had so strangely appeared and disappeared before his very eyes had plunged into this gulf, and he felt an unconquerable desire, doubtless because it was so fated, to follow them, even should he pursue spectres to the mouth of hell. Moreover, the tempest now burst with fury, and this hole would afford him a shelter; but how was he to descend? What road had those he longed to follow taken, if indeed they were not phantoms? A second flash came to his aid, and showed him at his feet a ladder leading into the depths of the well. It consisted of a strong upright beam, crossed at regular intervals by short iron bars for the hands and feet of those who might venture into the gulf below.

Ordener did not hesitate. He swung himself boldly down upon the dreadful ladder, and plunged into the abyss without knowing whether it reached the bottom or not,—without reflecting that he might never again see the sun. Soon he could only distinguish the sky from the darkness overhead by the bluish flashes which lit it up at brief intervals; soon the rain pouring in torrents upon the surface of the earth, reached him merely as a fine, vaporous mist. Then the whirlwind, rushing violently into the{13} well, was lost above him in a prolonged moan. He went down and down, and yet seemed scarcely nearer to the subterranean light. He went on without losing heart, never looking below lest he should become dizzy and fall.

However, the air becoming more and more stifling, the sound of voices more and more distinct, and the purplish glow which began to tinge the walls of the pit, warned him that he was not far from the bottom. He descended a few more rounds, and saw plainly at the foot of the ladder the entrance to an underground passage lighted by a flickering red flame, while his ear caught words which won his entire attention.

“Kennybol does not come,” said an impatient voice.

“What can detain him?” repeated the same voice, after a brief pause.

“No one knows, Mr. Hacket,” was the reply.

“He intended to spend the night with his sister, Maase Braal, in the village of Surb,” added a different voice.

“You see,” rejoined the first speaker, “I keep my promises. I agreed to bring Hans of Iceland for your leader. I have brought him.”

An indistinct murmur followed these words. Ordener’s curiosity, already aroused by the name of Kennybol, who had so astonished him the night before, was redoubled at the name of Hans of Iceland.

The same voice continued:—

“My friends, Jonas, Norbith, what matters it if Kennybol is late? There are enough of us; we need fear nothing. Did you find your standards at Crag ruins?”

“Yes, Mr. Hacket,” replied several voices.{14}