"Well," said Cadoudal, rising in his stirrups, "so be it. Since you are standing there, look around you. There are ten thousand men who have come to see you die. If, among them, a single one asks for mercy, you shall have it."
"Mercy!" cried Lacombe, stretching out his arms.
Cadoudal rose again in his stirrups.
"You alone, father, of us all, have no right to ask for mercy for this man. You extended mercy to him on the day when you prevented me from sending his letter to the revolutionary tribunal. You may help him to die, but that is all that I can grant you."
Then in a voice which made itself heard by all the spectators, he asked for the second time: "Is there one among you who asks for mercy for this man?"
Not a voice replied.
"You have five minutes in which to make your peace with God," said Cadoudal to François Goulin; "and, unless it be a miracle from heaven, nothing can save you. Father," said he, addressing Lacombe, "you may give this man your arm, and accompany him to the scaffold." Then, to the executioner, he said, "Do your duty!"
The executioner, who now saw that his only part in the performance would be the execution of his ordinary functions, rose and put his hand on Groulin's shoulder in token that he belonged to him.
The Abbé Lacombe approached the condemned man, but the latter pushed him back.
Then ensued a frightful struggle between the man who would neither pray nor die and his two executioners. In spite of his cries, his bites and his blasphemies, the executioner picked him up in his arms as if he had been a child; and, while the assistant prepared the knife, he carried him from his carriage to the platform of the guillotine.