Yet, at last, the soldier who had waited so patiently for hours drew nearer and nearer to the circle in which the arbiter of the destiny of all in France sat, a crowd of courtiers and nervous pet.i.tioners behind and round him; at last, after having seen countless others bowed and smiled to, he was face to face with Louis, stammering and scarce knowing how to begin his request.

But the finger went to the hat, the king's smile--perhaps a little artificial now--shone on him, the king's soft, courtly voice said:

"Monsieur le lieutenant, have you a pet.i.tion to make also? I am afraid it cannot be granted. Is it for promotion?"

"No, sire. It is for a man's life," and before he thoroughly understood, himself, what he was saying, he poured out his story before the king and the astonished listeners. And, at last, in a halting, laboured way it was told. Then the king spoke, while the shoulder-shrugging, grinning courtiers held their breath to hear his reply.

"_Mon brave mousquetaire_," he said, "you have been imposed on. De Vannes never married. I know it well--know, too, the woman whom he loved, who married De Roquemaure. And even if he had married and had this son, do you think I would pardon him for doing that for which he lies under sentence of death? Nay, were he my own I would not do so.

Ah!"--turning to a beautiful blue-eyed woman who stood by the side of Boussac, "Madame de Verneuil"--and the hand went up to the hat and lowered it till the fringe touched his right ear--"I rejoice to see you here to-night." Boussac's audience was over.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE DAY OF EXECUTION.

The night of Sunday had pa.s.sed; 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 _caques_ 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 n.o.bility.

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 antic.i.p.ation 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sistants 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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 G.o.d," 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 G.o.d!"

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 a.s.sembled 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 princ.i.p.al 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 princ.i.p.al 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 hoa.r.s.e 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."