The Legacy of Cain | Page 6

to the cell.
CHAPTER IV.
THE MINISTER SAYS YES.
The Prisoner was seated on her bed, quietly talking with the woman
appointed to watch her. When she rose to receive us, I saw the Minister
start. The face that confronted him would, in my opinion, have taken
any man by surprise, if he had first happened to see it within the walls
of a prison.
Visitors to the picture-galleries of Italy, growing weary of Holy
Families in endless succession, observe that the idea of the Madonna,
among the rank and file of Italian Painters, is limited to one changeless
and familiar type. I can hardly hope to be believed when I say that the
personal appearance of the murderess recalled that type. She presented
the delicate light hair, the quiet eyes, the finely-shaped lower features
and the correctly oval form of face, repeated in hundreds on hundreds
of the conventional works of Art to which I have ventured to allude. To
those who doubt me, I can only declare that what I have here written is
undisguised and absolute truth. Let me add that daily observation of all
classes of criminals, extending over many years, has considerably
diminished my faith in physiognomy as a safe guide to the discovery of
character. Nervous trepidation looks like guilt. Guilt, firmly sustained
by insensibility, looks like innocence. One of the vilest wretches ever
placed under my charge won the sympathies (while he was waiting for
his trial) of every person who saw him, including even the persons
employed in the prison. Only the other day, ladies and gentlemen
coming to visit me passed a body of men at work on the road. Judges of
physiognomy among them were horrified at the criminal atrocity
betrayed in every face that they noticed. They condoled with me on the

near neighborhood of so many convicts to my official place of
residence. I looked out of the window and saw a group of honest
laborers (whose only crime was poverty) employed by the parish!
Having instructed the female warder to leave the room--but to take care
that she waited within call--I looked again at the Minister.
Confronted by the serious responsibility that he had undertaken, he
justified what he had said to me. Still pale, still distressed, he was now
nevertheless master of himself. I turned to the door to leave him alone
with the Prisoner. She called me back.
"Before this gentleman tries to convert me," she said, "I want you to
wait here and be a witness."
Finding that we were both willing to comply with this request, she
addressed herself directly to the Minister. "Suppose I promise to listen
to your exhortations," she began, "what do you promise to do for me in
return?"
The voice in which she spoke to him was steady and clear; a marked
contrast to the tremulous earnestness with which he answered her.
"I promise to urge you to repentance and the confession of your crime.
I promise to implore the divine blessing on me in the effort to save your
poor guilty soul."
She looked at him, and listened to him, as if he was speaking to her in
an unknown tongue, and went on with what she had to say as quietly as
ever.
"When I am hanged to-morrow, suppose I die without confessing,
without repenting--are you one of those who believe I shall be doomed
to eternal punishment in another life?"
"I believe in the mercy of God."
"Answer my question, if you please. Is an impenitent sinner eternally

punished? Do you believe that?"
"My Bible leaves me no other alternative."
She paused for a while, evidently considering with special attention
what she was about to say next.
"As a religious man," she resumed, "would you be willing to make
some sacrifice, rather than let a fellow-creature go--after a disgraceful
death--to everlasting torment?"
"I know of no sacrifice in my power," he said, fervently, "to which I
would not rather submit than let you die in the present dreadful state of
your mind."
The Prisoner turned to me. "Is the person who watches me waiting
outside?"
"Yes."
"Will you be so kind as to call her in? I have a message for her."
It was plain that she had been leading the way to the delivery of that
message, whatever it might be, in all that she had said up to the present
time. So far my poor powers of penetration helped me, and no further.
The warder appeared, and received her message. "Tell the woman who
has come here with my little girl that I want to see the child."
Taken completely by surprise, I signed to the attendant to wait for
further instructions.
In a moment more I had sufficiently recovered myself to see the
impropriety