Chapter 53 Chapter 52

(Fagin's last night on earth.) The courtroom, from floor to ceiling, is filled with human faces.Curious and eager eyes shot out from every inch of space.From the bar in front of the dock to the narrow corner at the far end of the gallery, all eyes were on one person—Fagin.Front and back of him—up and down, left and right, as if the sky and the earth are covered with sparkling eyes, completely surrounding him. In this living light he stood, with one hand resting on the plank in front of him, the other over his ear, and his head stretched forward, so that he could pronounce every word uttered by the presiding judge. Hearing a little more clearly, the trial judge was presenting the charges against him to the jury.From time to time he would snap his eyes to the jury to see how they would react to some trifle in his favour.Hearing the presiding judge enumerate the facts against him in a terrifyingly clear voice, he turned to his attorney again, and silently begged him to defend himself no matter what.Apart from these expressions of anxiety, he did not move his hands or feet.He had barely moved since the court session.Now that the judge had finished speaking, he still maintained the tense look of rapt attention, staring at the presiding judge, as if he was still listening.

A slight uproar in the courtroom brought him back to his senses.He turned his head and saw the jury gathered together, deliberating their verdict.When his eyes fell on the auditorium unknowingly, he could see that people were scrambling to stand up in order to see his appearance clearly, some put on their glasses in a hurry, and some whispered to the people next to him. Talking, with a disgusted expression on his face.A few people seemed not to notice him, but kept looking impatiently at the jury, wondering why they were so procrastinating.However, he could not see the slightest sympathy for himself on any face-not even the many women present-but only one common desire, and that was to bring him to justice.

Just as he was watching all this in bewilderment, a deathly silence fell again. He turned his head and saw the jurors all turned towards the presiding judge.Be quiet. They are simply asking for leave to retire. The jury members went out, and he looked at their faces one by one, as if trying to see the tendency of most of them, but to no avail.The guard touched his arm.He walked mechanically to the end of the dock and sat down in a chair.The guard pointed to the chair just now, or he must not have seen it. He raised his head again and looked towards the auditorium.Some people were eating, and some were fanning themselves with handkerchiefs, and the place was so crowded that it was hot enough.A lad was sketching him in a little notebook.He really wanted to know if he looked like it, so he just kept watching, just like any idle audience.At this time, the artist broke off the tip of the pencil and began to sharpen the pencil again with a knife.

When he turned his eyes to the judge in the same way, his mind was busy again, what the judge's clothes were, how much they cost, and how they wore them.There was also a fat old gentleman on the judgment seat. He went out about half an hour ago and just came back now.All he wanted was to know if the man had gone to supper, what he had eaten, and where.He wandered through this train of thoughts absently, until some new object caught his eye, and then he began to wander in another line of thought. During this period of time, his heart never got rid of a heavy sense of oppression. The grave had opened its mouth wide beneath his feet. This feeling has been holding him tightly, but it was vague and general, and he couldn't define it. Come to think about it.In this way, when he was trembling and burning with the thought of dying, he began to count the number of iron railings with the pointed ends in front of him, wondering how the pointed end of one of them was broken, and they were going to Fix it, or just leave it alone.Then he thought of all the horrors of the gallows and the guillotine—and paused to watch a man pour water on the floor to cool himself—and then began to think again.

Finally someone called out "Quiet".People held their breath and looked towards the door in unison.The jury came back and walked right next to him.Nothing could be seen on their faces, each face was like a stone sculpture.Then there was silence—no rustling—not even the sound of breathing—and the accused was guilty! A terrible roar resounded through the building, and another roar, and another roar.Then, a noisy shouting followed, and the angry shouts were like thunder, getting closer and louder.The crowd outside the courtroom cheered the news that he would be executed on Monday. The uproar died down, and he was asked if he had anything to say about the death sentence.He put on the posture of listening intently again, watching the questioner put this question intently.It wasn't until the question was repeated twice, however, that he seemed to catch it, and then just murmured that he was getting old - an old man - an old man - and fell silent again.

The judge puts on his black hat, and the prisoner remains unmoved.A woman in the gallery uttered a cry of alarm at the terrible solemnity, and he looked up hastily, as if annoyed by the disturbance, and then craned his neck more attentively.The judge's speech was solemn and exciting, and the verdict sounded creepy.He stood motionless, like a marble statue.His haggard face was still stretched forward, the chin drooping, and his eyes staring straight ahead as the guard placed a hand on his arm and bade him retire.He glanced around drowsily and obeyed. He was escorted to a slate room below the courtroom, where several prisoners were waiting for arraignment, and several other prisoners were talking with relatives and friends in front of the fence, which opened into the yard.No one spoke to him.As he passed, the prisoners backed away, allowing the crowd huddled in front of the fence to get a better view of him.The crowd bombarded him with all kinds of abuse, screams and boos.He shook his fist, wanting to slap them.However, several guards leading the way urged him to leave.They passed through a dimly lit passage to the inside of the prison.

Here, the guards searched him, and he couldn't have anything with him that was enough to get ahead of the law.After this ceremony, he was led into a cell for condemned prisoners, where he was left alone. He sat down on a stone bench opposite the cell door, which doubled as chair and bed-stool.He stared at the ground with bloodshot eyes, trying to collect his thoughts.After a while he recalled fragments of what the judge had said, though he didn't seem to catch a word of it at the time.These few words gradually scattered to their respective positions, and more things were said bit by bit, and he understood everything without much effort, almost as if he was delivering a sentence.Sentenced to be hanged, executed on the spot—that was the end.Sentenced to death by hanging, executed on the spot.

Dark came down, and he began to think of all those acquaintances who had died on the gallows, some of them at his hands.They appeared in such a rapid succession that he could hardly count them.He'd seen people die—and teased them because they were saying prayers as they died.Remember that pedal that fell off with a click, and people went from muscular men to coat hangers dangling in mid-air in an instant. Some of them might have been in this cell—sitting here.It's pitch black all around, why don't people light it up?This cell has been built for many years, and many people must have passed their last days here.To be here was to sit in a grave full of dead bodies—hats on heads, nooses, bound arms, faces he knew, even under that dreadful hood— Light it up, light it up.

He beat the solid cell door and the walls with both hands until the skin was torn apart. At this moment, two people walked in, one inserted the candle in his hand into the iron candlestick fixed on the wall, and the other dragged it in for a while. Mattress, ready to spend the night here.The prisoner is no longer alone. Night came—dark, dreary, dead night.The other night watchmen were generally delighted to hear the church bells chiming the time, for bells foretold life and days to come.For him, the sound of the bell brought despair.The iron bell roared, and every stroke brought that voice, that low, hollow voice—death.What good was it to him that the noise and bustle of the morning had found its way into the cell?It was just another death knell, with taunts added to warnings.

The day passed—day?What day is this: as soon as it arrives, it leaves in a hurry—and night falls again.The night is so long and so short.Long because of its dead silence, short because the hours fly by.For a while, he was berserk, cursing, crying and pulling his hair for a while.Several elders of his own denomination had come to him to pray and told him to throw him out with curses.They walked in again, intending to do a good deed, and he simply drove them away. Saturday night.He has only one more night to live.When he realized this, dawn was breaking—it was Sunday. Until that terrible last night, a sense of disillusionment, knowing that he was on the verge of death, came over his darkened soul with all its might.It wasn't that he had any definite or great hope that he would be forgiven, but that the possibility of his imminent death was still so vague that he couldn't dwell on it.He spoke little to the two men who took turns guarding him, and neither of them attempted to attract his attention.He sat there awake, but dreaming again.From time to time he jumped up, gasping for breath, his skin was burning hot, and he ran around in a panic. Fear and anger suddenly broke out, and even the two guards—who had seen such scenes many times—shuddered and hid. with him.At last, under the torment of evil thoughts, he became so terrible that the guard was too frightened to sit face to face with him alone; they had to watch him together.

He curled up on the stone bed, thinking about the past.On the day of his arrest, he had been wounded by something flying from the crowd and had a piece of linen tied around his head.The red hair was scattered over the pale face, and the beard, much torn off, was now in wisps.The eyes radiate a terrible luster.I haven't showered for a long time, and my skin is wrinkled by the high temperature in my body.Eight—nine—ten.If it wasn't a prank to frighten him, but hours and hours followed one another like this, where would he be when they turned back.eleven o'clock.The clock had just stopped ringing for the previous hour when it struck again.By eight o'clock he would be the only mourner in his own funeral procession.It's eleven o'clock-- Those terrible walls of Newgate, which concealed so much misery and unspeakable suffering, not only from the eye, but, much more and for a long time, from the thought—they never I have never seen such a terrible tragedy.A few people passing by the door slowed down, wondering what the man who was going to be hanged tomorrow was doing. If people could see him, they would not be able to sleep peacefully that night. From dusk until almost midnight people flocked to the door of the anteroom, inquiring anxiously whether there had been any reprieve.The answer was in the negative, and they passed the happy news to crowds in the street, and they made gestures and discussed among themselves that he would come out through that door, that the gallows would be there, Then he walked away reluctantly, and kept turning his head, imagining that scene.People gradually dispersed.For an hour in the middle of the night, the streets were left quiet and dark. The space in front of the prison had been cleared, and a few solid black-painted fences were stretched across the road to keep out the expected crowd.At this moment, Mr. Brownlow and Oliver appeared at the entrance of the palisades, and they produced an order, signed by a sheriff, granting visits to the prisoner, and were at once admitted into the anteroom. "Is the little gentleman coming, sir?" said the policeman who was leading them. "It's not a scene for children, sir." "Indeed, my friend," replied Mr. Brownlow, "but I am closely connected with the man. And, having seen him at the height of his complacency and mischief, the boy saw him, so I think it might as well— — even if it entails a certain degree of pain and fear — it's worth seeing him now." These words were spoken at the side, that Oliver should not hear them.The policeman raised his hand in salute, then looked at Oliver curiously, opened another door opposite to the one they had come in, and led them through the dark and winding passage to the cell. "Here," the prison guard stopped in a dark corridor, where two workers were silently doing some preparatory work.Said the policeman—"This is where he went on the road, and if you go this way, you can still see the door he went out through." The prison guard led them to a stone-paved kitchen where several copper pots were kept for cooking for the prisoners, and he pointed to a door.Above the door was an open lattice window, from which came the sound of voices, mixed with the sound of hammers falling and boards falling to the ground.People are setting up gallows. They walked forward, passed through a series of strong cell doors opened by other prison guards from the inside, entered a large courtyard, climbed up narrow steps, and entered a corridor, and there was another row of strong cell doors on the left side of the corridor.The prison guard signaled them to wait there, and knocked on one of the doors with a bunch of keys.The two guards murmured a few words before coming to the corridor outside the door. They stretched, as if they were very happy with this temporary shift, and then signaled the two visitors to follow the policeman into the cell.Mr. Brownlow and Oliver entered. The condemned prisoner was sitting on the bed, dangling from side to side, the expression on his face was not that of a human, but that of a beast caught in a trap.His mind was evidently wandering through his old life, muttering to himself, conscious of nothing but their presence as part of his hallucination. "Good boy, Charlie—well done," he murmured, "and Oliver, ha ha ha! And Oliver—all a gentleman—all a— Take that kid to bed." The jailer took Oliver's free hand, and enjoined him in a low voice not to panic, while he watched silently. "Take him to bed!" cried Fagin. "Did you hear, y'all? He's the—that's—the cause of all these things. It's worth the money to bring him up—cut off Porter's Throat, Bill. Leave that girl alone—you cut Polter's neck as deep as you can. Just saw his head off." "Fagin," said the jailer. "Here!" In an instant, the old Jew regained the posture of listening attentively when he was being interrogated, and said loudly, "I am old, my lord, a very old old man." "Well," said the jailer, laying his hand on Fagin's chest, and telling him to sit still, "I'm afraid I've got a visitor to ask you some questions. Fagin, Fagin. Are you human?" "I'm going to be a man forever," he replied, raising his head. There was no human expression on his face, only anger and fear. "Beat them all to death. What right do they have to kill me?" While speaking, he caught sight of Oliver and Mr. Brownlow.He retreated to the farthest corner of the stone bench, asking them what they came here to know. "Don't worry," said the prison guard, still holding him down. "Please, sir, just tell him what you want to say. Please hurry up. The longer the time delays, the worse his condition will be." "You have some papers," said Mr. Brownlow, stepping forward, "that a man named Monks gave you for insurance." "That's sheer nonsense," replied Fagin. "I have no papers—none." "For God's sake," said Mr. Brownlow gravely, "don't talk about that just now, death is approaching, or tell me where the papers are. You know Sikes is dead, Meng." Ke Si also confessed, don't expect to get anything else, where are those documents?" "Oliver," cried Fagin, waving his hand, "come here, here. Let me whisper to you." "I'm not afraid," whispered Oliver, releasing Mr. Brownlow's hand. "The papers," said Fagin, drawing Oliver close to him, "are in a canvas bag, a little above the chimney, where there's a hole in the very front room. I want to talk to you, dear." Yes. I want to talk to you." "Yes, yes," replied Oliver, "I'll say a prayer. Come on. I'll say a prayer. Only one, and you kneel beside me, and we can talk till morning." "Let's go out, go out," replied Fagin, pushing the boy towards the door, looking blindly over the top of his head, "just say I'm asleep—they'll believe you. If only You promise me you'll get me out. Quick, quick!" "Oh! God bless the unfortunate man!" cried Oliver, aloud. "Well, well," said Fagin, "it's good for us. This door is the most important thing. If I'm staggering and shivering when I pass the gallows, don't mind me, just go. Quick, Quick, quick!" "Sir, do you have anything else to ask him?" asked the prison guard. "There is no other question," replied Mr. Brownlow. "I thought it would make him see his situation—" "It's irreparable, sir," replied the prison guard, shaking his head, "you'd better leave him alone." The cell door opened and the two guards returned. "Quick, quick," cried Fagin, "quietly, and don't be so slow. Quickly, quickly!" Several people put their hands on him, helped Oliver break free from his hand, and pulled him back.Fagin struggled desperately, and then howled one after another, even through the thick prison doors, and still rang in their ears when they were in the courtyard. It will be a while before they leave the prison.Witnessing such a terrible scene, Oliver almost fainted.He was so weak that he could not walk for an hour. It was almost daylight when they came out.A large group of people had already gathered.The windows of every household are crowded with people, smoking cigarettes, playing cards, killing time;Everything looked alive except for a swarthy mass in the midst of it all--black stands, cross-bars, nooses, and all those hideous instruments of execution.