Invited to explain what she knew, the countess told in her own words, humbly and bravely, the reason why and the manner in which she had unintentionally killed Captain Rytmel.
‘Here are the letters and the money he had with him,’ she concluded, placing on the table a packet of papers bundled up in a white cravat. ‘I have written my will. Do with me as you choose. Impose upon me the punishment I deserve.’
We all stood in silence. F. moved to the centre of the room and said:
‘To punish is to usurp the power of Providence. Human justice, when applied to criminals, does not have society’s revenge as its purpose, but the need to protect society from the contagion and infection of crime itself. All crime is a disease. The courts’ jurisdiction over criminals ends when a cure has been achieved. Locking up those from whom evil has been shown to be expunged does irreparable harm to society, and is, besides, monstrous and cruel. Everything that is not harmful is necessary and indispensable to our understanding of human emotions, ideas and acts. The nature of the action we are considering, the determining factors, the extenuating circumstances and the underlying intention, all of these things convince us that allowing this lady to go free cannot possibly constitute a danger to society. Incarcerated and delivered over to the courts, she would become the subject of an interesting, scandalous, contentious case. Left to herself, she will be an example, a lesson.’
And going over to the door, he turned the key, flung the door wide, and addressing himself to the countess, announced in a grave, respectful voice:
‘You may leave, madam, you are entirely free. Official justice might disagree, but the right-thinking men who were called upon to judge your case will not stand in your way. Your future, so deeply marked by misfortune, is not that of a criminal, but of a poor unfortunate wretch. Take to your fellow wretches, then, the melancholy lesson of your own bitter disappointments, and may God, in His supreme judgement, find that the obscure and unacknowledged kindnesses you scatter about you will make up for past transgressions. The evidence of your guilt will remain buried in this house.’
We stood aside for her to leave. Pale as death, the countess swayed; her strength failed her; she could barely stand. The Tall Masked Man gave her his arm. She made as if she were about to speak; her face took on a pained expression; she hesitated for a moment; finally, she pressed a handkerchief to her lips and left, either stifling a word or choking back a sob.
Moments later, we heard the carriage moving off, carrying with it the person who had, in the world, been the Countess of W.
*****
We had already agreed on a means of concealing the body, which was made all the easier given that no one knew of Captain Rytmel’s presence in Lisbon.
We took the stairs to the ground floor of the building and went down four more steps to a kind of cellar room located below street level. It was late afternoon. No daylight reached the room and so we were lit by candles. A deep grave had been dug there. The freshly turned soil gave off a dank and acrid smell. Two of the men to whom I have referred as ‘the masked men’ were carrying a candelabra, each holding five pink candles. From the dark beams hung grey, silvery cobwebs, broken by the weight of dust.
We unwrapped the bundle we had laid beside the grave and contemplated for the last time the face of the dead man lying on his travel rug.
His white cravat had been neatly tied, his waistcoat buttoned and he had on his gold-buttoned blue tailcoat, with a faded rose in its lapel. In the dim light, his face had taken on an ideal beauty. With his still, closed eyelids he resembled one of those blank-gazed ancient statues. Beneath the arc of his moustache, a slight smile seemed to hover over his parted lips. His hair, dishevelled by contact with the rug in which his body had been wrapped, stood out against his pale features like gold on ivory.
A profound silence reigned. We could hear the ticking of our pocket watches and the buzz of the flies hovering around the dead man’s face. Gazing at him with tear-filled eyes, my mind was filled with melancholy thoughts.
Poor Rytmel! At this solemn moment, when your body waits at the graveside for its eternal rest, your funeral may lack the pomp proper to your rank; you may not have been escorted here by a cortège of gold-braided uniforms; you may not even be accompanied to your final resting place by a holy candle and by the prayers of a priest, but you do, at least, have the blessing of friendship! The young, intelligent, handsome scion of an aristocratic family, beneath whose feet bloomed all the flowers that perfume life, the star that presided over your birth has suddenly been snuffed out, and you tumble, like the most despised of beings, into an unmarked grave, in the very house to which you came in search of the ultimate expression of your happiness, and by the light of the same candles that lit your last kiss! At least the place where other unfortunates are buried is known to those who loved them, who can go there to weep. Your fate is far more cruel; you die and disappear! The sad trees of cemeteries will never shade your grave. The birds in the sky will never swoop down to drink the water that the rains have left in the urn by your tomb. The moon, gentle friend of the dead, will never shine through the dark branches of the cypresses and kiss your white headstone. The morning dew will never drop upon the flowers that adorn your burial place. No bees will buzz around the roses planted in the soil that covers you. White butterflies will never flutter about whatever essence of you might burst forth from the bosom of the earth into the dawn light in the form of scent from jasmines and gillyflowers. Your mother, wan and pensive, will search in vain for the rails surrounding your grave to which she can cling as she kneels and raises questioning eyes to Heaven, a gaze in which the remembrance of dead children is always wrapped as if in the luminous robes of a resurrected Christ.’
The Tall Masked Man bent over Captain Rytmel’s corpse and took it firmly by the shoulders. We all helped lower the body into the hole. The Tall Masked Man then knelt down and covered the dead man’s face with a handkerchief, saying, as if he were speaking to a sleeping child:
‘Rest in peace! I will tell your mother where your body lies and I will come back to kneel beside this tomb after I have received on my own breast the tears she sheds for you. Farewell, Rytmel! Farewell!’
Then he shovelled a large portion of the earth piled at his feet into the hole. It fell with a soft, muffled thud onto the corpse.