The Executioner—"You need not feel uneasy about that. I shall hang you high and short. Hurry up. Night is upon us!"
Goose-Skin (dragged to the gibbet)—"Adieu, Mylio! I have drunk my last bumper of wine here below. We shall clink glasses again in the stars. (Turning to the balcony where Abbot Reynier is seated). As to you, the devil is waiting for you with his big frying-pan in his hand!"
Mounted up to the middle of the ladder which leans against the gibbet, the executioner gives Goose-Skin a violent jerk by the collar in order to compel him to step up. The juggler is not to be hurried, and putting his inert weight to use, remains immovable. The executioner's assistants then push him up and putting their shoulders under him succeed in raising his bulky body to the middle of the ladder. What, however, with the juggler's enormous weight and the heavy shaking of the gibbet caused by his resistance, the instrument of death, which has been hastily raised and is but weakly planted in the ground, now sways and breaks down. It falling, together with the ladder, Goose-Skin and the executioner, all in a heap upon the third gibbet, the latter yields to the shock, tumbles and falls over upon the fourth, which, likewise breaking down, carries the next one to the ground. But poorly fixed over night in the earth, most of the gibbets are torn down through the initial momentum imparted by the fall of the one that was intended to end Goose-Skin's life.
Montfort (impatiently)—"Seeing that the gibbets leave us in the lurch, exterminate the heretics with the sword!"
Soon after, the count leaves the balcony, taking Alyx of Montmorency with him. The lady is hardly able to stand. The soldiers who brought out the twenty-four heretics to be hanged fall upon them with their lances and swords. When the soldiers finally report their work done, Abbot Reynier withdraws with the rest of the clergy from the balcony.
The moon, shining radiantly from the starry vault of heaven, inundates with its mellow light the esplanade of the Castle of Lavaur. Round about lie the bodies of the ill-starred beings who succumbed to the torture of blinding. Among these bodies is Florette. The young woman has not recovered from her swoon; her chest heaves painfully; her head rests upon a stone; the moonlight falls upon it. Not far from her lie the corpses of those who escaped the rope only to fall under the sword of the Soldiers of the Faith. Not a sound disturbs the silence of the night. One of the bodies that lies on the ground raises itself slowly. It is Mylio the Trouvere.
Mylio (listens, looks about with caution, and calls in a low voice)—"Goose-Skin, all the soldiers are gone—we have nothing more to fear—the danger is over. Goose-Skin!—Oh! poor fellow, he probably has died, smothered under the weight of the other corpses! Oh! I can never forget that the fellow's devotion to me was the cause of his death!—There he lies face down and half covered by two other corpses." (Mylio stoops in order to clasp one of the juggler's hands.)
Goose-Skin (raising his head)—"Oxhorns! Am I really alive? I thought I heard my funeral prayers!"
Mylio—"Oh, joy! You are not dead? You heard me, and yet you kept silent?"
Goose-Skin—"At first, out of prudence, and then out of curiosity to know what you would say of old Goose-Skin. I was happy to learn that you still love me. But, now, tell me, have you any plan?"