Really?" said I. "With us it is just the contrary; surgeons are called
executioners."

"You will find him, moreover," added Mr. G----, "a very distinguished
young man, who, although he was very young at that time, has retained
a vivid recollection of that event. As for his poor father, I think
he would as willingly have cut off his own right hand as have executed
Sand; but if he had refused, someone else would have been found. So he
had to do what he was ordered to do, and he did his best."

I thanked Mr. G----, fully resolving to make use of his letter, and we
left for Heidelberg, where we arrived at eleven in the evening.

My first visit next day was to Dr. Widernann. It was not without
some emotion, which, moreover, I saw reflected upon, the faces of my
travelling companions, that I rang at the door of the last judge, as
the Germans call him. An old woman opened the door to us, and ushered us
into a pretty little study, on the left of a passage and at the foot of
a staircase, where we waited while Mr. Widemann finished dressing. This
little room was full of curiosities, madrepores, shells, stuffed birds,
and dried plants; a double-barrelled gun, a powder-flask, and a game-bag
showed that Mr. Widemann was a hunter.

After a moment we heard his footstep, and the door opened. Mr. Widemann
was a very handsome young man, of thirty or thirty-two, with black
whiskers entirely surrounding his manly and expressive face; his morning
dress showed a certain rural elegance. He seemed at first not only
embarrassed but pained by our visit. The aimless curiosity of which
he seemed to be the object was indeed odd. I hastened to give him Mr.
G----'s letter and to tell him what reason brought me. Then he gradually
recovered himself, and at last showed himself no less hospitable and
obliging towards us than he to whom we owed the introduction had been,
the day before.

Mr. Widemann then gathered together all his remembrances; he, too, had
retained a vivid recollection of Sand, and he told us among other things
that his father, at the risk of bringing himself into ill odour, had
asked leave to have a new scaffold made at his own expense, so that no
other criminal might be executed upon the altar of the martyr's death.
Permission had been given, and Mr. Widemann had used the wood of the
scaffold for the doors and windows of a little country house standing
in a vineyard. Then for three or four years this cottage became a shrine
for pi