"What shall I do?" asked Waters.
"Strike," answered the same voice which had always spoken.
Pontcalec threw himself on his knees; the assistants placed his head upon the block. Then the priests fled in horror, the soldiers trembled in the gloom, and Waters, as he struck, turned away his head lest he should see his victim. Ten minutes afterward the square was empty—the windows closed and dark. The artillery and the fusiliers, encamped around the demolished scaffold, looked in silence on the spots of blood that incarnadined the pavement.
The priests to whom the bodies were delivered recognized that there were indeed, as Waters had said, five bodies instead of four. One of the corpses still held a crumpled paper in his hand.
This paper was the pardon of the other four. Then only was all explained—and the devotion of Gaston, which he had confided to no one, was divined.
The priests wished to perform a mass, but the president, Chateauneuf, fearing some disturbance at Nantes, ordered it to be performed without pomp or ceremony.
The bodies were buried on the Wednesday before Easter. The people were not permitted to enter the chapel where the mutilated bodies reposed, the greater part of which, report says, the quick lime refused to destroy.
And this finished the tragedy of Nantes.