conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a book about Condemned, France entitled The Last Day of a Condemned Man.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Last Day of a Condemned Man: A man who has been condemned to death by the guillotine in 19th-century France writes down his cogitations, feelings and fears while awaiting his execution.\nHis writing traces his change in psyche vis-a-vis the world outside the prison cell throughout his imprisonment, and describes his life in prison, everything from what his cell looks like to the personality of the prison priest.\nHe does not betray his name or what he has done to the reader, though he vaguely hints that he has killed someone.\nOn the day he is to be executed he sees his three-year-old daughter for the last time, but she no longer recognizes him, and she tells him that her father is dead.\nThe novel ends just after he briefly but desperately begs for pardon and curses the people of his time, the people he hears outside, screaming impatiently for the spectacle of his decapitation.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Last Day of a Condemned Man
  This is what he aimed to do; and if posterity should ever grant him the glory of having accomplished it, and he hardly dares hope that it will, he would ask for no other crown.
  He knows no higher, no holier, no nobler aim than this,—to strive for the abolishment of capital punishment. And it is from his heart that he adheres to the wishes and the efforts of the generous men of every nation, who for several years have worked to overthrow the gallows, the only tree which is not uprooted by the Revolution. It is with joy that it comes his turn, his, the poor poet, to apply his axe, and enlarge as much as possible the gash made by Beccaria, sixty years ago, on the old gallows which has stood for so many centuries over Christendom.
  We have said that the scaffold is the only thing which Revolutionists do not demolish. It is seldom indeed that a revolution spares human life; and coming, as it does, to prune, cut, hack, and behead society, capital punishment is one of the instruments which it is most loath to give up.
  We will admit, however, that if ever a revolution seemed to us worthy and capable of abolishing capital punishment, it was the Revolution of July. It seems to belong to the kindest popular movement of modern times to blot out the barbarous punishment of Louis XI, Richelieu, and Robespierre, and to inscribe on the face of the law the sacredness of human life. 1830 deserved to break the chopper of '93.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The wagons were uncovered. Each cordon occupied one. The convicts were seated sidewise on the benches, one leaning against the other, separated by their common chain, which lay along the entire length of the wagon, at the end of which stood a keeper, gun in hand. The clanking of the irons could be heard; and at every shake of the wagon, their heads were jerked forward and their dangling legs shook.
  A fine, thin rain was falling, making the air frigid, and causing their gray linen trousers, which were already black, to cling to their knees. The rain poured from their long beards and short hair, their faces were purple; they were shivering, and their teeth chattered with rage and cold. More than this, they could not move. Once riveted within the chain, one is no longer anything but a part of that hideous cordon which moves like one man. The intellect leaves one; the prison-collar condemns it to death; and as to the being himself, he has no longer desires and an appetite except at fixed hours. So, motionless, the most of them half-naked, with bare heads and dangling feet, they began their journey of twenty-five days, seated in the same wagons, and dressed in the same clothes under the perpendicular sun of July as in the cold rains of November. One might say that in their office of hangmen, men wish the climate to do half.
  Some sort of a horrible harangue arose between the people and those in the wagons,—abuse on the one side, bravado on the other, curses on both; but at a sign from the captain, I saw blows raining from the baton upon the wagons, on shoulders and heads alike, and everything assumed that exterior calm called order. But the wretches' eyes were full of vengeance, and their fists were clinched on their knees.
  The five wagons, guarded by mounted gendarmes and keepers on foot, disappeared one after another beneath the high arched gate of Bicêtre; a sixth followed, in which the kettles, brass porringers, and extra chains rattled together in noisy confusion. Some keepers who had been detained at the canteen ran out to catch up with their squad. The crowd began to scatter. The picture vanished like a phantasmagoria. By degrees, the heavy rolling of the wheels and the tramp of the horses' hoofs on the paved road from Fontainebleau grew faint, and the crack of the whips, the clank of the chains, and the cries of the people wishing the galleys an unlucky journey, died away.
  What was it the lawyer said to me? The galleys! Ah, yes! death a thousand times,—the scaffold rather than the galleys; nothing rather than hell. I would give my neck to the knife of the guillotine, but not to the prison-collar! The galleys, just Heaven!
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.. Start with the sentence 'The original manuscript of the "Last Day of a Condemned Man" bears these words on the margin of the first page: "Tuesday, October 14, 1828," and at the foot of the last page: "Night, December 25—26, 1828,—three o'clock in the morning'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The original manuscript of the "Last Day of a Condemned Man" bears these words on the margin of the first page: "Tuesday, October 14, 1828," and at the foot of the last page: "Night, December 25—26, 1828,—three o'clock in the morning."
  We give opposite, for those interested in this sort of literature, the dialect song, with an accompanying explanation, after a copy found among the condemned man's papers, and which is reproduced in this fac-simile in its original spelling and writing. The meaning of the words is given in the handwriting of the condemned man, and in the last couplet there are two inserted verses which seem to be in his writing also; the remainder is in another hand. Probably, struck with the song, but not remembering it perfectly, he tried to secure a copy, and one was given him by some one in the jail.
  The only thing which the fac-simile does not reproduce, is the appearance of the paper copy, which is yellow, soiled, and torn.
  We do not pretend to look with the same scorn upon all that was said at this time in the Chamber. Now and then, kind and generous words were spoken. We, like every one else, applauded the dignified and simple speech of Monsieur de Lafayette, and at another time the remarkable words of Monsieur Villemain.
  A facsimile of the song's text to which Hugo refers appears on pages 88 and 89. An English translation of the song appears on pages 35 and 36.