"Gold!" said he; "always gold! Alas! madame, if I only could buy back for gold the blood I was forced to spill to-day!"
"Maître," said Marguerite, looking around with a sad hesitation, "Maître, do we have to go to some other room? I do not see"—
"No, madame, they are here; but it is a sad sight, and one which I could have spared you by wrapping up in my cloak that for which you have come."
Marguerite and Henriette looked at each other.
"No," said the queen, who had read in her friend's eye the same thought as in her own; "no, show us the way and we will follow."
Caboche took the torch and opened an oaken door at the top of a short stairway, which led to an underground chamber. At that instant a current of air blew some sparks from the torch and brought to the princesses an ill-smelling odor of dampness and blood. Henriette, white as an alabaster statue, leaned on the arm of her less agitated friend; but at the first step she swayed.
"I can never do it," said she.
"When one loves truly, Henriette," replied the queen, "one loves beyond death."
It was a sight both horrible and touching presented by the two women, glowing with youth, beauty, and jewels, as they bent their heads beneath the foul, chalky ceiling, the weaker leaning on the stronger, the stronger clinging to the arm of the hangman.
They reached the final step. On the floor of the cellar lay two human forms covered with a wide cloth of black serge.