"Oh!" said Pontcalec, "you will have no more to do with the executioner than I shall."
"Always the prediction," said Montlouis. "You know that I have no faith in it."
"You are wrong."
"This is sure, my friends," said Pontcalec. "We shall be exiled, we shall be forced to embark, and I shall be lost on the way. This is my fate. But yours may be different. Ask to go by a different vessel from me; or there is another chance. I may fall from the deck, or slip on the steps; at least, I shall die by the water. You know that is certain. I might be condemned to death, taken to the very scaffold, but if the scaffold were on dry ground I should be as easy as I am now."
His tone of confidence gave them courage. They even laughed at the rapidity with which the deliberations were carried on. They did not know that Dubois sent courier after courier from Paris to hasten them.
At length the commission declared themselves sufficiently enlightened, and retired to deliberate in secret session.
Never was there a more stormy discussion. History has penetrated the secrets of these deliberations, in which some of the least bold or least ambitious counselors revolted against the idea of condemning these gentlemen on presumptions which were supported solely by the intelligence transmitted to them by Dubois; but the majority were devoted to Dubois, and the committee came to abuse and quarrels, and almost to blows.
At the end of a sitting of eleven hours' duration, the majority declared their decision.
The commissioners associated sixteen others of the contumacious gentlemen with the four chiefs, and declared:
"That the accused, found guilty of criminal projects, of treason, and of felonious intentions, should be beheaded: those present, in person, those absent, in effigy. That the walls and fortifications of their castles should be demolished, their patents of nobility annuled, and their forests cut down to the height of nine feet."