The Last day of a Condemned Man - Victor Hugo

[Hoda]

This is a chronicle of the last few days lived by a prisoner awaiting death penalty. He wrote it on his last day before stepping into the guillotine.
It is written beautifully by Hugo, and I enjoyed it very much.

[Hoda]

'That good jailer with his kindly smile, soothing words, those eyes that fawn and spy on you, with his big pudgy hand, he is prison personified, Bicêtre incarnate. Everything around me is a prison; I see prison in all its forms, human as well as in the shape of bolts and bars. This wall is a prison made of stone; this door, a prison made of wood; these jailers, a prison made of flesh and blood. Prison is a sort of terrible creature, whole, inseparable, half house, half man. I am its prey: it broods over me, clutches me to its innermost recesses.'

“But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.”

“The merciful precepts of Christ will at last suffuse the Code and it will glow with their radiance. Crime will be considered an illness with its own doctors to replace your judges and its hospitals to replace your prisons. Liberty shall be equated with health. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. The cross in place of the gallows: sublime and yet so simple.”

- 'The Last day of a Condemned Man' , Victor Hugo