The courtroom, from floor to ceiling, was covered with human faces. Every inch of space shoots a curious and eager gaze. From the barricade in front of the dock to the narrow corner at the very edge of the auditorium, all eyes were on one man - the old camel.

In front of him and behind him—up and down, left and right—it was as if the heavens and the earth were covered with sparkling eyes, enveloping him entirely.

In the light of this living light, he stood with one hand on the board in front of him, the other over his ear, and his head sticking out in front of him in order to hear more clearly every word spoken by the presiding judge, who was presenting the charges against him to the jury. From time to time, he turned his gaze abruptly to the jury to see how they reacted to some nuances in his favor.

Hearing the presiding judge recount the facts against him in a terrible clear voice, he turned to his attorney ad litem and silently begged him to defend himself anyway.

Beyond these anxious expressions, his hands and feet remained motionless. He has barely moved since the trial. Now that the judge had finished speaking, he still maintained the nervous appearance of his previous preoccupation, and his eyes were fixed on the presiding judge, as if he was still listening.

There was a slight commotion in the courtroom that brought him back to his senses. He turned around and saw the jury coming together, weighing their verdict. When his gaze fell unconsciously on the auditorium, he could see that people were scrambling to get up in order to see his appearance, some hurriedly putting on their glasses, some talking in whispers to the people next to them, with a look of disgust.

A few of them didn't seem to pay attention to him, but just stared at the jury, impatient, puzzled as to why they were dragging their feet. However, he could not see a single face with the slightest sympathy for himself – not even the many women present – who saw only one common wish, and that was to bring him to justice.

Just as he was bewildered in his eyes about all this, a deathly silence fell again, and he turned his head to see the jurors all turning towards the presiding judge. Don't squeak.

They were just asking for permission to leave the courtroom.

The members of the jury went out, and he looked at their faces one by one, as if trying to discern the inclination of the majority, but to no avail. The guard touched his arm. He mechanically walked to the end of the dock and sat down in a chair. The guard had just pointed to the chair, or he hadn't seen it yet.

He looked up again and looked at the auditorium. Some people were eating, some were fanning with handkerchiefs, and it was crowded and it was really hot.

A young man was sketching for him in a small notebook. He wanted to know if it was like or not, so he kept watching, like an idle audience. At this time, the artist broke off the tip of the pencil and began to resharpen the pencil with a knife.

When he turned his eyes to the judge in the same way, his mind was busy again, and how the judge was dressed, how much it cost, and how he was dressed.

There was also a chubby old gentleman on the judgment bench, who had gone out about half an hour ago, and had only returned from this work.

He wanted to know if the man had gone to dinner, what he ate, and where he had eaten. He thought about this series of thoughts casually, until a new object came into his eye, and then he followed another train of thought.

During this time, his heart had not shaken off a heavy feeling of depression, and the grave had opened its mouth wide at his feet, a feeling that had been twisting him, but it was somewhat vague and general, and he did not have the heart to think about it.

And so, as he trembled, and burned with the thought of dying, he began to count the iron bars in front of him, and wondered how one of them had broken, and whether they were to fix it, or let it be.

Then he remembered the horrors of the gallows and the guillotine—and stopped to watch a man splash water on the floor to cool down—and began to think again.

Finally, someone called out "silence". People held their breath and looked towards the door. The jury returned, walking right next to him. They couldn't see anything on their faces, and all of them looked like stone sculptures.

Silence followed, not a single rustle, not even breathing. No surprise, the defendant was convicted!

A terrible roar echoed through the building, another roar, another roar. Then a noisy shout ensued, and angry shouts thundered nearer and louder. Outside the courtroom, there was a cheer in the news that he would be executed on Monday.

The noise subsided, and he was asked if he had anything to say about the death sentence. He assumed the same intently listening posture again, watching intently at the questioner asking the question. However, it wasn't until the question was repeated twice that he seemed to understand, and then he just muttered that he was getting older, and his voice grew quieter and quieter again.

The judge wore a black hat, and the prisoner remained motionless. One of the women in the auditorium let out a cry of exclamation at the sight of this terrible solemnity, and he hurriedly looked up, as if annoyed by the interference, and then craned her neck more intently.

The judge's speech was solemn and gripping, and the verdict sounded creepy.

He stood still, like a marble statue. The guard pressed a hand on his arm and ordered him to retreat, his haggard face still stretched forward, his jaw drooping, and his eyes staring straight ahead. He glanced around groggily and complied.

He was escorted to a stone room at the bottom of the courtroom, where several prisoners were awaiting arraignment, while others were talking to relatives and friends in front of a fence that opened onto the courtyard. No one accosted him.

As he passed, the prisoners stepped back, allowing the group of people crowded in front of the fence to see him more clearly. The crowd blasted him with all sorts of insults, screams and boos. He shook his fist and wanted to give them a slap.

However, several guards who led the way urged him to walk away. They walked through a dimly lit corridor to the prison.

Here, the guards searched him, and he could not have enough tools with him to get ahead of the law.

After this ceremony, he was ushered into a cell where the condemned prisoner was held, where he was left alone.

He sat down on a stone bench opposite the cell door, which served as both a chair and a bed. He stared at the ground with bloodshot eyes, trying to sort out his thoughts. After a while, he recalled several fragments of the judge's words, though he didn't seem to hear a word at the time.

These few words gradually scattered to their respective positions, and little by little he said more things, and it didn't take long for him to understand them all, almost as if he was being sentenced. Sentenced to death by hanging, justice on the spot - this is the end. Sentenced to death by hanging, justice on the spot.

When it got dark, he began to think about all the acquaintances who died on the gallows, some of whom died at his hands.

They appeared one after another, and he could barely count them. He had seen some people die, and he had joked about them because they were still reciting words when they died.

I remember that the pedal fell down with a click, and people went from being strong men to hangers dangling in mid-air in an instant.

Some of them may have been in this cell—sitting in this place. It's pitch black all around, why don't people light it up? This cell has been built for many years, and there must have been many people who spent their last days here.

It was like sitting in a grave full of dead bodies, the hat on his head, the noose, the arms tied, the face he knew so familiar, even with that horrible cover, he could recognize—light up, light up.

He pounded the solid door and walls with both hands until his skin was broken, when two men entered, one inserting the candle he was holding into the iron candlestick fixed to the wall, and the other dragging in a mattress to spend the night. The prisoner is no longer alone.

Night came—a dark, bleak, dead night. The other night watchmen were generally happy to hear the church bells chime, because the bells were a sign of life and the day to come. For him, the sound of the bell brings despair. The iron bell roared, and with each blow came the voice, the low, hollow voice—death.

What good did the noise and busyness of the early morning actually get into the cell?

It's just another death knell, and a mockery added to the warning.

The day passed - daytime? What is this called day: as soon as it arrives, it leaves in a hurry—and the night comes again. The night was so long, and so short. It was long because it was dead silent, and short because hour after hour flew by.

For a while, he was furious, scolding, crying, and pulling his hair.

Several of the elders of the church came to his side to pray, and he was thrown out with curses. They walked in again, intending to do something good, and he simply knocked them away.

Saturday night. He only had one more night to live. By the time he realized this, it was already dawn – Sunday had arrived.

It wasn't until this terrible last night that a sense of disillusionment that he was on the verge of extinction came over his dark soul with all its might. It wasn't that he had any definite or great hope that he would be forgiven, but that he thought that the possibility of death was still too vague to dwell on.

He rarely talked to the two men who took turns guarding him, and neither of them intended to attract his attention. He sat there awake, but he was dreaming again. He jumped up from time to time, gasping for air in his mouth, his skin was hot, and he ran around in a panic, and fear and anger flareed up, and even the two guards, who had seen such scenes for a long time, avoided him in fear.

At last, under the torment of evil thoughts, he became so terrible that the guards were too frightened to sit there alone face to face; The two of them had to look at him together.

He curled up on the stone bed, thinking about the past. On the day of his arrest, he was injured by something flying in the crowd and had a linen cloth tied around his head.

The hair was scattered on the bloodless face, and the beard was torn off a lot, and it became a lock after lock. The eyes radiated a terrible glow.

I haven't taken a bath for a long time, and my skin is wrinkled by the high barbecue in my body. Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock. If this wasn't a prank to scare him, but if it did, hour after hour, by the time they turned back, where he was.

Eleven. The bell had just stopped ringing an hour before when it rang again. By eight o'clock, he would be the only mourner in his funeral procession. It's eleven o'clock.