THE DAY OF EXECUTION.
The night of Sunday had passed; already the holiday-makers were
seeking their beds after a day spent in the country--by some in the
woods of Fontainebleau and St. Germains; by others in the gardens of
Versailles, where they had waited all day to see the king come out
upon the great balcony and salute his people; by others, again, who
had been to Marly to gaze in amazement on distorted Nature; to gaze on
the trees stuck in the ground which would not grow here though they
had flourished for a century elsewhere, before being uprooted to
gratify a king's caprice; on artificial lakes now gay with _caiques_
and gondolas where but a few years ago the frogs and eels had held
undisputed possession; on a palace which reared its new walls where
starving peasants' hovels had been not long since.
The holiday-makers were going home to their beds as all the clocks of
the city clanged out the hour of midnight; all were about to seek
their homes ere they commenced the new week--a week that to most of
them brought nothing but hard, griping toil, starvation, and a heavy
load of taxation imposed upon them by that king whom they stared at
and reverenced, and by his nobility.
Yet not quite all, either! For some there were who, as they streamed
across the Pont Neuf, or came in from the Charenton gate, or arrived
back from Versailles or Marly, broke off in solitary twos and threes
from the others and directed their footsteps toward the great _place_
in front of the Hotel de Ville--toward the _Place de Greve_! They,
these solitary ones, had no intention of seeking their homes and beds
that night--they could sleep long and well to-morrow night--instead
they meant to enjoy themselves in the _place_ until day broke, with
the anticipation of what the daybreak would bring. For at that hour
they knew they would see a man done to death upon the wheel; see limb
after limb broken until life was extinguished by the final _coup de
grace_.
As they neared the great open space some cast their eyes up at the
lights burning in the Hotel de Ville and muttered to each other,
wondering which room the man was in who would be led forth three hours
hence; what he was thinking of; if he was counting each quarter as it
sounded from tower and steeple; if--these speculations generally by
women in the fast-gathering crowd--there were any who loved him? If he
had a wife--a mother--a child? Any to mourn his loss?
"A traitor, they say," some whispered; "one who joined England against
France." "A spy," others murmured, "who betrayed Tourville to the
brutal islanders. Well, he deserves the dog's death! Let him endure
it."
The quarters boomed forth again; at half past twelve the executioner
and his assistants arrived in a cart. Ordinarily they came earlier
when they had a scaffold to erect and a block to place upon it. Now,
however, there was no block on which the man's head would need to be
laid to receive the headsman's stroke. Instead, a great cannon wheel
was lifted from out the cart, then next a wooden platform was
constructed, having in it a socket of raised wood into which the wheel
was dropped and firmly fixed by cords, three parts of it towering
above that socket. Then a heap of ropes brought forth and flung down
beside the wheel--they would secure the body tightly enough--following
the heap two huge iron bars and a heavy iron-bound club. That was all,
yet enough to do justice on the traitor.
"_La toilette de la Roue est faite_," said one man, a joker; "soon his
will be made also. 'Tis well the early mornings are warm now. He will not
miss his clothes so much when they strip him to his singlet," and he
laughed and grinned like a wolf and turned his eyes on the Hotel de Ville.
And still, as the moments and the quarters crept by, they chattered and
talked about the coming _spectacle_, and wondered how the man felt in
there who was now so shortly to furnish it. If they could have seen him,
have been able to read his thoughts, they would have been little
gratified--perhaps, indeed, a little dissatisfied--for he knew as well as
they that his doom was fast approaching, that the clocks were telling of
his fast-ebbing hours on earth; knew, too, that down below the wheel was
being prepared, and bore the knowledge calmly and with resignation.
As they discussed down in the _place_ what he might be doing and
speculated on what his feelings were in those last hours, he above, at
the iron-barred window of a room to which they had brought him after
his sentence was pronounced, was gazing down at the crowd gathering to
see him die. The feelings on which they speculated so much were
scarcely such as would have satisfied them.
"The dawn breaks," he murmured to himself, as, although heavily
chained both at the feet and hands, he leaned against the window and
gazed far away over the roofs of the houses to, across the Seine,
where the mists rose in the fields--"is near at hand. Another hour and
daylight will have come--and then it is ended! So best!--so best!"
He shifted his position a little, still gazing out, however; then
continued his meditations:
"Yes, so best. My last chance, last hope of life was gone when M. de
Mortemart trusted me--let me ride by his side a free man instead of
bound. Then I knew I must go on--come on--to this. I could have
stabbed him to the heart more than once--have perhaps evaded even his
three men--have escaped--been free--but how! By treachery
unparalleled, by murder and deceit! And, afterward, a life of reproach
and self-contempt. No! better this--better that wheel below than such
a freedom!"
Looking down now at the crowd, his attention was called to it by a
slight stir in its midst; he saw a troop of dragoons ride in to the
_place_ and observed them distributing themselves all round it at
equal distance under the orders of an officer. Also he saw that a lane
was made to the platform where the wheel stood--a lane among the
people that ended at the platform and began he knew at the door of the
Hotel de Ville beneath him, from which he would be led forth.
"Courage," he whispered to himself, "courage. It will not be long;
they say the first blow sometimes brings insensibility, and after that
there is no more. Only death--death! Death with my little child's name
upon my lips--that name the last word I shall ever speak; my last
thoughts a prayer for her."
Gradually now he let himself sink to the floor, his manacles almost
preventing him from doing so, and when in a kneeling position he
buried his head in his iron-bound hands and prayed long and fervently.
"O God," he murmured, "thou who hast in thy wisdom torn her from me,
keep and guard her ever, I beseech thee, in this my darkest hour; let
her never know her father's sorrow, nor share the adversity thou hast
thought fit to visit upon him. And, since I may never gaze on her face
again, see her whom I have so dearly loved, so mourned for, never hear
the tones of her voice, be thou her earthly as her heavenly Father;
sleeping and waking, oh, watch over her still!"
Then, because the thoughts of her were more than he could bear, and
because he knew that the child whom he had loved so dearly--the child
whose future life he had once sworn solemnly to her dying mother
should be dearer to him than his own--would never know his fate nor
his regrets, he buried his head once more in those manacled hands and
wailed: "My child! my child! My little lost child! Oh, my child! my
child!"
"If I could only know," he murmured, later, "that you were well,
happy--feel sure, as that woman told me once herself, and Boussac
thought--that whoever has you in his keeping was not cruel to you, my
little, helpless child, the end might be easier. If I could only know!
O Dorine! Dorine!"
Looking up, as he strove with his two hands, so tightly chained
together, to wipe the tears from his eyes, he noticed that the room
was lighter now; the sky was a clear daffodil. Daybreak was coming;
the day was at hand--his last on earth!
And again he whispered: "It is better so. But for her there is naught
to hold me to life. Better so. Now"--and as he spoke to himself,
across the roofs of the houses the first rays of the summer sun shot
up--"now be brave. The end is near; meet it like a man. And remember,
her name the last word on your lips--the last ere your soul goes to
meet its God!"
A murmur, a noise from the crowd below waiting for its victim, caused
him to look forth again from the window, and to observe that some new
officials had arrived. A horseman in a rich scarlet coat, over which,
however, he wore a riding cloak--for the morning was still
chilly--followed by two others in sober blue coats trimmed with silver
lace, was making his way down the lane of people and was being greeted
by the crowd.
Yet, to the doomed man standing by the window, he did not seem to be
altogether popular with them, especially when he suddenly halted his
horse, and turning round on the vast concourse behind him, said
something to them, accompanied with a comprehensive wave of his
disengaged hand--something that vexed and annoyed that concourse
terribly, he could see, and hear, too--a vexation increased when,
after the other had spoken a further word to the officer in command of
the dragoons, they began to close in from the outside of the _place_
round the assembled mob.
Then the horseman disappeared from St. Georges's view, evidently
having entered the door beneath his window, and again the people
murmured and shrieked.
"Has he given orders to clear them away," he began to speculate, "so
that they may not witness my end?----" but his speculation was not
concluded.
On the stone steps outside he could hear the tread of many feet, the
clang of spurs and of swords as those who wore them mounted the
stairs.
"They are coming for me," he thought, and again he whispered: "The
time is at hand. Courage! Be brave!"
The keys turned grating in the locks, a great transverse bar outside
was moved with a clash, and the door opened, the first person to enter
being the newly arrived horseman, followed by the principal official
of the Hotel de Ville, and next by some of his subordinate officers,
as well as the jailers, one of whom carried in his hands a large iron
hammer and the other a great bunch of keys.
And St. Georges, standing there facing them, looked as brave a
gentleman as any who had ever been led to his fate.
"This is the condemned man?" the horseman asked of the chief official;
"the man who was sentenced at the _cours criminel_ on Friday last to
die this morning?"
"It is the man, Monsieur l'Herault," the official replied, his
questioner being none other than L'Herault, the head of the police
system.
"Remove his irons."
At this order the two jailers stepped forward, the one unlocking the
fetters that bound St. Georges's hands, the other knocking away with
the hammer the iron pegs that ran through the steel ring which held
the chains round his ankles. And in less than three moments chains and
fetters lay at his feet.
"Here is the warrant," L'Herault said, handing it to the governor of
the Hotel de Ville--for such the principal official by his side
was--"read it aloud to the prisoner," and it was read accordingly. It
ran:
"To M. l'Herault, superintendent of our police, and to the
governor of our Hotel de Ville at Paris:
"It is our royal will that the prisoner tried at our _cours
criminel_ by M. Barthe de la Rennie, one of our judges, and
sentenced to die on the morning of Monday, the 26th June of
this year 1692, be released and set free unconditionally.
And may----"
"What!" exclaimed St. Georges, reeling backward, and speaking in a
hoarse whisper--"what! what does this mean? Who has written that?"
"The king," L'Herault answered. Then he said briefly, "You are free."
"Free! Not to go to--to that?" and he pointed below.
"Not to go to that--though 'tis where escaped _galeriens_ usually go
sooner or later. Your time is not yet come, it seems. I know no more,
except that at midnight I was roused from my bed to ride here with
this," pointing to the paper in the governor's hand, "and with this,"
putting another in St. Georges's. "It will," he continued, "bear you
harmless in France so long as you offend no more."
"Sir," St. Georges said, and as he spoke L'Herault looked at him,
wondering if in truth this was an innocent man before him, "for your
errand of mercy I thank you. Yet, believe me or not as you will, I had
committed no sin when I went to the galleys."
Then he read the paper handed to him. It also was brief:
"The man bearing this is to be held free of arrest on any
charge and to be allowed to pass in freedom through all and
any of our dominions. His name is Georges St. Georges, and
he is branded with the _fleur-de-lis_ and the letter G.
_Signe_, LOUIS R."
"What does it mean?" reiterated St. Georges. "Who can have done this?"
"It means," said L'Herault, "that you have some powerful interest with
his Majesty. Whomsoever you may be, even though you were one of the
king's own sons, you must be deemed fortunate. However great your
friends may be, your escape is remarkable."
"Friends! I have none. I----" but the sentence was never finished. The
excitement of the last hour had overmastered him at last and he sank
in a swoon before them.
When he came to himself the others were gone with the exception of one
turnkey, who was kneeling by his side, supporting his head and
moistening his lips with brandy. But in the place of those who had
departed there was another now, a man at whom St. Georges stared with
uncertain eyes as though doubting whether his senses were not still
playing him false; a man also on one knee by his side, clad in the
handsome uniform of the Mousquetaires Noirs.
"Boussac!" he exclaimed. "Boussac! Is it in truth you?"
"It is I, my friend."
Then, as St. Georges's senses came fully back to him, he seized the
other's hand and murmured: "You! It is you have done this! Through you
that I am saved."
"You are saved, my friend. That is enough. What matter by whom?"