separating itself from the ever living, stirring city by a wall of
silence, motionlessness and darkness. Then it was that the strokes of
the clock became audible. A strange melody, foreign to earth, was
slowly and mournfully born and died out up in the heights. It was born
again; deceiving the ear, it rang plaintively and softly-it broke
off-and rang again. Like large, transparent, glassy drops, hours and
minutes descended from an unknown height into a metallic, softly
resounding bell.

This was the only sound that reached the cells, by day and night,
where the condemned remained in solitary confinement. Through the
roof, through the thickness of the stone walls, it penetrated,
stirring the silence-it passed unnoticed, to return again, also
unnoticed. Sometimes they awaited it in despair, living from one sound
to the next, trusting the silence no longer. Only important criminals
were sent to this prison. There were special rules there, stern, grim
and severe, like the corner of the fortress wall, and if there be
nobility in cruelty, then the dull, dead, solemnly mute silence, which
caught the slightest rustle and breathing, was noble.

And in this solemn silence, broken by the mournful tolling of the
departing minutes, separated from all that lives, five human beings,
two women and three men, waited for the advent of night, of dawn and
the execution, and all of them prepared for it, each in his or her own
way.



CHAPTER VII
THERE IS NO DEATH