He saw that the small Place St. Antoine was filled with a crowd of people surrounding two or three large carts as they seemed, but he could not make out what the persons present were about, and, after looking on for a few minutes, he returned to his book.
Every thing within the walls of the Bastille seemed to be unusually still and quiet, and for rather more than an hour and a half he read on, till some sound of a peculiar character, or some sudden impression on his own mind which he could not account for, made him again rise and hasten to the window. When he did so, a sight was presented to his eyes which would have required long years to efface its recollection. The carts which he had seen, and the materials they contained, had been by this time erected into a scaffold; and in the front thereof, turned towards the Rue St. Antoine, which, as well as the square itself, was filled with an immense multitude of people, was a block with the axe leaning against the side.
At one corner of the scaffold was erected a gibbet, and in the front, within a foot or two of the block, stood the unfortunate Chevalier de Rohan, with a priest, on one side of him, pouring consolation or instruction into his ear, while the executioner, on the other side, was busily cutting off his hair to prepare his neck for the stroke. Two or three other prisoners were behind with several priests and the assistants of the executioner, and amongst them again was seen the form of the old man, Vandenenden, and of the lady whom the Count had beheld pass through the court of the castle.
The old man seemed scarcely able to support himself, and was upheld near the foot of the gallows by two of the guards; but the lady, with her head uncovered and her fine hair gathered together in a knot near the top of her head, stood alone, calm, and, to all appearance, perfectly self-possessed; and as she turned, for a moment, to look at the weak old man, whose writhing agitation at parting with a life that he could not expect to prolong for many years even if pardoned was truly lamentable, she showed the Count de Morseiul a fine though somewhat faded countenance, with every line expressive of perfect resolution and tranquillity.
The Count de Morseiul was a brave man, who had confronted death a thousand times, who had seen it in many an awful shape and accompanied by many a terrible accessory; but when he looked at the upturned faces of the multitude, the block, the axe, the gibbet, the executioners, the cold grey sky above that spoke of hopelessness, the thronged windows all around teeming with gaping faces, and all the horrible parade of public execution, he could not but wonder at the self-possession and the calmness of that lady's look and demeanour, as one about to suffer in that awful scene.
His, however, was no heart that could delight in such spectacles, and withdrawing almost immediately from the window, he waited in deep thought. In about a minute after there was a sort of low murmur, followed by a heavy stroke; and then the murmur sounded like the rushing of a distant wind. In a few moments after that, again came another blow, and the Count thought that there was a suppressed scream, mingled with the wave-like sound of the multitude. Again came that harsh blow, accompanied by a similar noise, and, lastly, a loud shout, in which there were mingled tones of ferocity and derision, very different from any which had been heard before. Not aware of what could have produced the change, the Count was once more irresistibly led to the window, where he beheld swinging and writhing on the gibbet, the form of the old man Vandenenden, whose pusillanimity seemed to have excited the contempt and indignation of the populace. On the other parts of the scaffold the executioner and his assistants were seen gathering up the bloody ruins of the human temples they had overthrown. Sickened and pained, the Count turned away, and covered his eyes with his hands, asking himself in the low voice of thought, "When will this be my fate also?"
CHAPTER IV.
[THE WOMAN'S JUDGMENT.]
We must now, for a little, change the scene entirely; and, as we find often done most naturally, both in reality and poetry, bring the prison and the palace side by side. It was in one of the smaller chambers, then, of the palace at Versailles--exquisitely fitted up with furniture of the most costly, if not of the most splendid materials, with very great taste shown in every thing, grace in all the ornaments, harmony in all the colours, and a certain degree of justness and appropriateness in every object around--that there sat a lady, late on the evening of an autumnal day, busily reading from a book, illustrated with some of the richest and most beautiful miniatures that the artists of the French capital could then produce.
She was, at the time we speak, of somewhat past the middle age,--that is to say, she was nearly approaching to the age of fifty, but she looked considerably younger than she really was, and forty was the very extreme at which any one by the mere look would have ventured to place the number of her years. The rich worked candelabra of gold under which she was reading cast its light upon not a single grey hair. The form was full and rounded; the arms white and delicate; the hand, which in general loses its symmetry sooner than aught else, except, perhaps, the lips, was as tapering, as soft, and as beautiful in contour as ever. The eyes were large and expressive, and there was a thoughtfulness about the whole countenance which had nothing of melancholy in its character, perhaps a little of worldliness, but more of mind and intellect than either.