“Why this terror?” continued Sabre-tout. “Does not your cloth plead for you? The man who wears a cassock can have done nothing against royalty or religion.”
The priest crouched back, murmuring: “Mercy! mercy!”
“Why mercy?” demanded Sabre-tout, “do you feel that you are guilty, wretch?”
“Oh! oh!” exclaimed Roland, “is that how you royalists and Christians speak to a man of God!”
“That man,” said Cadoudal, “is not a man of God, but a man of the devil.”
“Who is he, then?”
“Both an atheist and a regicide; he denied his God and voted for the death of the king. That is the Conventional Audrein.”
Roland shuddered. “What will they do?” he asked.
“He gave death, he will receive death,” answered Cadoudal.
During this time the Chouans had pulled Audrein out of the diligence.