"And you," said the usher gravely, to Pontcalec, who was silent, "what do you ask?"
"I," said Pontcalec calmly, "I demand nothing."
"Then, gentlemen," said the usher, "this is the answer of the commission: you have two hours at your disposal to arrange your spiritual and temporal affairs; it is now half-past six, in two hours and a half you must be on the Place du Bouffay, where the execution will take place."
There was a profound silence; the bravest felt fear seizing the very roots of their hair.
The usher retired without any one having made any answer; only the condemned looked at each other, and pressed each other's hands.
They had two hours.
Two hours, in the ordinary course of life, seem sometimes an age, at others two hours are but a moment.
The priests arrived, after them the soldiers, then the executioners.
The situation was appalling. Pontcalec, alone, did not belie himself. Not that the others wanted courage, but they wanted hope; still Pontcalec reassured them by the calmness with which he addressed, not only the priests, but the executioners themselves.
They made the preparations for that terrible process called the toilet of the condemned. The four sufferers must proceed to the scaffold dressed in black cloaks, in order that in the eyes of the people, from whom they always feared some tumult, they might be confounded with the priests who exhorted them.