"What is here my good fellow? what crime hath he committed?"
He, like the driver, answered carelessly:
"None; she is a Huguenot."
"She," I echoed, and stopped the bearers who laid their ghastly burden down, having little relish in the task. Yes, it was in very truth a woman.
"For the sake of decency, comrade, why do you not cover her and give her Christian burial?"
"It is the law," he replied stolidly.
"Yes, yes, it is the law," eagerly assented the people who gathered about the corpse, not as friends, not as mourners, but as spectators of the horrid scene. Among them, unrebuked, were many white-faced children, half afraid and wholly curious. I looked at them all in disgust. They went their way and came to the outskirts of the village, where they contemptuously tossed the woman from the plank across a ditch into the open field. In spite of my loathing I had followed.
I perceived now a feeble old woman hobble up toward the body and try with loud wailings to make her way through the guard which surrounded it. They shoved her back with their pikes, and finally one of them struck her for her persistence.
"Pierre, look at her old mother; ah, Holy Virgin, what a stubborn lot are these heretics."
Her mother! Great powers of heaven, could it be possible? My indignation blazed out against the inhuman guard.