The sinister procession crossed the Place des Lisses and skirted the walls of the Hôtel Montbazon. The cart bearing the three bodies came first, then the dragoons, then Morgan walking alone in a clear space of some ten feet before and behind him, then the gendarmes. At the end of the wall they turned to the left.
Suddenly, through an opening that existed at that time between the wall and the market-place, Morgan saw the scaffold raising its two posts to heaven like two bloody arms.
“Faugh!” he exclaimed, “I have never seen a guillotine, and I had no idea it was so ugly.”
Then, without further remark, he drew his dagger and plunged it into his breast up to the hilt.
The captain of the gendarmerie saw the movement without being in time to prevent it. He spurred his horse toward Morgan, who, to his own amazement and that of every one else, remained standing. But Morgan, drawing a pistol from his belt and cocking it, exclaimed: “Stop! It was agreed that no one should touch me. I shall die alone, or three of us will die together.”
The captain reined back his horse.
“Forward!” said Morgan.
They reached the foot of the guillotine. Morgan drew out his dagger and struck again as deeply as before. A cry of rage rather than pain escaped him.
“My soul must be riveted to my body,” he said.
Then, as the assistants wished to help him mount the scaffold on which the executioner was awaiting him, he cried out: “No, I say again, let no one touch me.”