The executioner and his assistants seize Karvel. While the latter hold the Perfect the former quickly takes out of his bag a pair of small iron pincers with wooden handles; he heats the iron in the furnace; and armed with the incandescent instrument of torture, beats in the Perfect's teeth, and tears out his tongue together with shreds of his lips. Morise closes her eyes and plunges into the burning furnace, whither her husband is thrown immediately after her.
The only heretics now left of those that were condemned to the pyre are the Lady of Lavaur and her son. At the moment when the executioners drag them towards the fosse, Giraude throws herself upon her knees under the balcony where she just perceived Alyx of Montmorency. With convulsed hands and a voice that palpitates with horror the distracted mother cries:
"Madam! I do not ask you for my life. But I shudder for my son at the thought of the pyre. Oh! madam, for mercy's sake, obtain from your husband the commutation of our punishment. Let us be slain with the sword!"
Alyx of Montmorency (lowers her eyes and clasps her beads)—"It may not be!"
The Lady of Lavaur (with a heart-rending voice)—"I implore you! Listen to a last prayer! Order them to burn me, but let them kill my son with the sword. You are silent? Oh, God! Have you no children, yourself, that you can be so merciless?"
Aloys kneels down beside his mother. His hands being tied behind his back the boy's movements are constrained. He breaks into tears and approaches his face to the lips of his mother, who covers it with kisses and wets it with her tears. Alyx of Montmorency, whose eyes seem to moisten, timidly looks at Montfort and says to him in a low voice: "Monseigneur, I pity this heretic woman, could not her request be granted?"
Abbot Reynier (precipitately)—"Madam, in her quality of Mistress of Lavaur, this woman is guiltier than any other. She and her son must be burned alive!"
Montfort (impatiently)—"Oh! my reverend Father. Provided this heretic woman die, what does it matter whether it be by the rope, the sword or by fire? She will have been made an example of. After all, the Lady of Lavaur is of noble race; some concession must be made to the nobility. (The count casts his hollow eyes around him and proceeds with an expression of lassitude and disgust) And even that—to have the woman and her child slain there—before my very eyes. May the Lord pardon me a sinful weakness—my heart fails me! (He notices a cistern, and beckons to the provost) Come, be quick about it. Throw the woman and her son into that well and cover it up with large stones."
The Lady of Lavaur (with a look of gratitude)—"Oh, thanks! Thanks! (To her son) Come, my child, we shall be drowned together."
While Giraude and Aloys descend the stone steps within the well in which their lives are to be extinguished, the former turns to the executioner who accompanies them and is to thrust them into the water. "We are about to die," she says, "neither my son nor I can offer any resistance. For mercy's sake, free us from our bonds. My son and I could at least give each other a last embrace and die in each other's arms!"