She, no less pale, no less like a statue, had hardly noticed that they had placed in her hand a heavy, lighted candle of yellow wax; she had not heard the yelping voice of the clerk reading the fatal contents of the apology; when they told her to respond with Amen, she responded Amen. She only recovered life and force when she beheld the priest make a sign to her guards to withdraw, and himself advance alone towards her.
Then she felt her blood boil in her head, and a remnant of indignation flashed up in that soul already benumbed and cold.
The archdeacon approached her slowly; even in that extremity, she beheld him cast an eye sparkling with sensuality, jealousy, and desire, over her exposed form. Then he said aloud,--"Young girl, have you asked God's pardon for your faults and shortcomings?"He bent down to her ear, and added (the spectators supposed that he was receiving her last confession): "Will you have me? I can still save you!"She looked intently at him: "Begone, demon, or I will denounce you!"He gave vent to a horrible smile: "You will not be believed.
You will only add a scandal to a crime. Reply quickly! Will you have me?""What have you done with my Phoebus?"
"He is dead!" said the priest.
At that moment the wretched archdeacon raised his head mechanically and beheld at the other end of the Place, in the balcony of the Gondelaurier mansion, the captain standing beside Fleur-de-Lys. He staggered, passed his hand across his eyes, looked again, muttered a curse, and all his features were violently contorted.
"Well, die then!" he hissed between his teeth. "No one shall have you." Then, raising his hand over the gypsy, he exclaimed in a funereal voice:--"~I nunc, anima anceps, et sit tibi Deus misenicors~!"** "Go now, soul, trembling in the balance, and God have mercy upon thee."This was the dread formula with which it was the custom to conclude these gloomy ceremonies. It was the signal agreed upon between the priest and the executioner.
The crowd knelt.
"~Kyrie eleison~,"* said the priests, who had remained beneath the arch of the portal.
* "Lord have mercy upon us."
"~Kyrie eleison~," repeated the throng in that murmur which runs over all heads, like the waves of a troubled sea.
"Amen," said the archdeacon.
He turned his back on the condemned girl, his head sank upon his breast once more, he crossed his hands and rejoined his escort of priests, and a moment later he was seen to disappear, with the cross, the candles, and the copes, beneath the misty arches of the cathedral, and his sonorous voice was extinguished by degrees in the choir, as he chanted this verse of despair,--"~Omnes gurgites tui et fluctus tui super me transierunt."** "All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me."At the same time, the intermittent clash of the iron butts of the beadles' halberds, gradually dying away among the columns of the nave, produced the effect of a clock hammer striking the last hour of the condemned.
The doors of Notre-Dame remained open, allowing a view of the empty desolate church, draped in mourning, without candles, and without voices.
The condemned girl remained motionless in her place, waiting to be disposed of. One of the sergeants of police was obliged to notify Master Charmolue of the fact, as the latter, during this entire scene, had been engaged in studying the bas-relief of the grand portal which represents, according to some, the sacrifice of Abraham; according to others, the philosopher's alchemical operation: the sun being figured forth by the angel; the fire, by the fagot; the artisan, by Abraham.
There was considerable difficulty in drawing him away from that contemplation, but at length he turned round; and, at a signal which he gave, two men clad in yellow, the executioner's assistants, approached the gypsy to bind her hands once more.
The unhappy creature, at the moment of mounting once again the fatal cart, and proceeding to her last halting-place, was seized, possibly, with some poignant clinging to life.
She raised her dry, red eyes to heaven, to the sun, to the silvery clouds, cut here and there by a blue trapezium or ********; then she lowered them to objects around her, to the earth, the throng, the houses; all at once, while the yellow man was binding her elbows, she uttered a terrible cry, a cry of joy. Yonder, on that balcony, at the corner of the Place, she had just caught sight of him, of her friend, her lord, Phoebus, the other apparition of her life!
The judge had lied! the priest had lied! it was certainly he, she could not doubt it; he was there, handsome, alive, dressed in his brilliant uniform, his plume on his head, his sword by his side!
"Phoebus!" she cried, "my Phoebus!"
And she tried to stretch towards him arms trembling with love and rapture, but they were bound.
Then she saw the captain frown, a beautiful young girl who was leaning against him gazed at him with disdainful lips and irritated eyes; then Phoebus uttered some words which did not reach her, and both disappeared precipitately behind the window opening upon the balcony, which closed after them.
"Phoebus!" she cried wildly, "can it be you believe it?"A monstrous thought had just presented itself to her. She remembered that she had been condemned to death for murder committed on the person of Phoebus de Chateaupers.