“If you are talking about me,” said the unfortunate wretch, “pray spare yourself the trouble. I neither ask, nor wish for any mercy at your hands. I am ready to die.”
As de Lescure looked at him, and observed the alteration which a few weeks had made in his appearance—his sunken, sallow cheeks; his wild and bloodshot eyes; his ragged, uncombed hair, and soiled garments—as he thought of his own recent intimacy with him—as he remembered how often he had played with him as a child, and associated with him as a man—that till a few days since he had been the bosom friend of his own more than brother, Henri Larochejaquelin, the tears rushed to his eyes and down his cheeks. In that moment the scene in the council-room at Saumur came to his mind, and he remembered that there he had rebuked Adolphe Denot for his false ambition, and had probably been the means of driving him to the horrid crime which he had committed. Though he knew that the traitor’s iniquity admitted of no excuse, he sympathized with the sufferings which had brought him to his present condition. He turned away his head, as the tears rolled down his cheeks, and felt that he was unable to speak to the miserable man.
Had de Lescure upbraided him, Denot’s spirit, affected and unreal as it was, would have enabled him to endure it without flinching. He would have answered the anger of his former friend with bombast, and might very probably have mustered courage enough to support the same character till they led him out to death. But de Lescure’s tears affected him. He felt that he was pitied; and though his pride revolted against the commiseration of those whom he had injured, his heart was touched, and his voice faltered, as he again declared that he desired no mercy, and that he was ready to die.
“Ready to die!” said the Curé, “and with such a weight of sin upon your conscience; ready to be hurried before the eternal judgment seat, without having acknowledged, even in your own heart, the iniquity of your transgressions!”
“That, Sir, is my concern,” said Denot. “I knew the dangers of the task before I undertook it, and I can bear the penalties of failure without flinching. I fear them not, either in this world or in any other world to come.”
De Lescure, overcome with distress, paced up and down the room till Chapeau entered it, and whispered to him, that the peasants outside were anxious to know what next they were to do, and that they were clamorous for Denot’s execution. “They are determined to hang him,” continued Chapeau, who had induced de Lescure to leave the room, and was now speaking to him in the hall. “They say that you and M. Henri may do what you please about Santerre and the soldiers, but that Adolphe Denot has betrayed the cause, insulted Mademoiselle, and proved himself unfit to live; and that they will not leave the château as long as a breath of life remains in his body.”
“And you, Chapeau, what did you say to them in reply?”
“Oh, M. de Lescure, of course I said that that must be as you and M. Henri pleased.”
“Well, Chapeau, now go and tell them this,” said de Lescure: “tell them that we will not consent that this poor wretch shall be killed, and that his miserable life has already been granted to him. Tell them also, that if they choose to forget their duty, their obedience, and their oaths, and attempt to seize Denot’s person, neither I nor M. Henri will ever again accompany them to battle, and that they shall not lay a hand upon him till they have passed over our bodies. Do you understand?”
Chapeau said that he did understand, and with a somewhat melancholy face, he returned to the noisy crowd, who were waiting for their victim in the front of the house. “Well, Jacques,” said one of them, an elderly man, who had for the time taken upon himself the duties of a leader among them, and who was most loud in demanding that sentence should be passed upon Denot. “We are ready, and the rope is ready, and the gallows is ready, and we are only waiting for the traitor. We don’t want to hurry M. Henri or M. de Lescure, but we hope they will not keep us waiting much longer.”