The Shame of Motley by Rafael Sabatini — Read

I have heard tell of the calm that comes upon brave men when hope is dead and their doom has been pronounced. Uncertainty may have tortured and made cowards of them; but once that uncertainty is dissolved and suspense is at an end, resignation enters their soul, and, possessing it, gives to their bearing a noble and dignified peace. By the mercy of Heaven they are made, maybe, to see how poor and evanescent a thing is life; and they come to realise that since to die is a necessity there is no avoiding, as well might it betide to-day as ten years hence.

Such a mood, however, came not to soothe that last hour of mine, and yet I account myself no coward. It was an hour of such torture and anguish as never before I had experienced--much though I had undergone--and the source of all my suffering lay in the fact that Madonna Paola was in the hands of the ogre of Cesena. Had it not been for that most untoward circumstance I almost believe that while I waited for the sun to set on that December afternoon, my mood had not only been calm but even in some measure joyous, for it must have comforted my last moments to reflect that for all that Messer Ramiro was about to hang me, yet had I sown the seeds of his own destruction ere he had brought me to this pass.