The cries which the unhappy girl uttered, as she rapidly spoke these words, terrified Richelieu and Laubardemont so much that they still remained motionless. The delirium and the fever continued to transport her.
“‘Did the judges tremble?’ said Urbain Grandier to me. ‘Did they tremble at deceiving themselves?’ They work the work of the just. The question! They bind his limbs with ropes to make him speak. His skin cracks, tears away, and rolls up like a parchment; his nerves are naked, red, and glittering; his bones crack; the marrow spurts out. But the judges sleep! they dream of flowers and spring. ‘How hot the grand chamber is!’ says one, awaking; ‘this man has not chosen to speak! Is the torture finished?’ And pitiful at last, he dooms him to death—death, the sole fear of the living! death, the unknown world! He sends before him a furious soul which will wait for him. Oh! has he never seen the vision of vengeance? Has he never seen before falling asleep the flayed prevaricator?”
Already weakened by fever, fatigue, and grief, the Cardinal, seized with horror and pity, exclaimed:
“Ah, for the love of God, let this terrible scene have an end! Take away this woman; she is mad!”
The frantic creature turned, and suddenly uttering loud cries, “Ah, the judge! the judge! the judge!” she said, recognizing Laubardemont.
The latter, clasping his hands and trembling before the Cardinal, said with terror:
“Alas, Monseigneur, pardon me! she is my niece, who has lost her reason. I was not aware of this misfortune, or she would have been shut up long ago. Jeanne! Jeanne! come, Madame, to your knees! ask forgiveness of Monseigneur the Cardinal-duc.”
“It is Richelieu!” she cried; and astonishment seemed wholly to paralyze this young and unhappy beauty. The flush which had animated her at first gave place to a deadly pallor, her cries to a motionless silence, her wandering looks to a frightful fixedness of her large eyes, which constantly followed the agitated minister.
“Take away this unfortunate child quickly,” said he; “she is dying, and so am I. So many horrors pursue me since that sentence that I believe all hell is loosed upon me.”
He rose as he spoke; Jeanne de Belfiel, still silent and stupefied, with haggard eyes, open mouth, and head bent forward, yet remained beneath the shock of her double surprise, which seemed to have extinguished the rest of her reason and her strength. At the movement of the Cardinal, she shuddered to find herself between him and Laubardemont, looked by turns at one and the other, let the knife which she held fall from her hand, and retired slowly toward the opening of the tent, covering herself completely with her veil, and looking wildly and with terror behind her upon her uncle who followed, like an affrighted lamb, which already feels at its back the burning breath of the wolf about to seize it.