Meantime, not one word had been uttered by the leader of the party, who indicated his demands to his men merely by the wafture of his hand or the gesture of his head, which were promptly understood and implicitly obeyed. In compliance with a sign, the prisoners were now led after him into their own magnificent abode, and carried through long, winding passages, and up an almost interminable stairway, to an apartment in the summit of a huge, square tower, overlooking the castle-moat, from a battlemented balcony, at the height of above a hundred feet. A dread foreboding shook the breast of Raoul de Canillac, as he was brought into that chamber, the scene of his outrageous cruelty to the lovely Marguerite in past years, and now to be the scene of its as cruel retribution.
The black warrior raised the vizor of his helmet, and gazed into the face of his former lord with the fixed, resolute, determined scowl of Maurice Champrèst, while the bad, bold oppressor shook before his captor with a visible, convulsive air.
“Ay! tremble, murderer and tyrant—tremble!” thundered the fierce avenger; “tremble! for thy time is at hand: and, Marguerite—lovely and beloved Marguerite—right royally shalt thou be now avenged! Away with these! away with them! their doom is spoken!”
And a scene of more than fiendish cruelty and violence ensued. Those innocent and lovely women, subjected to the last dishonor before the eyes of the husband and brother—tortured with merciless ingenuity when their violators were satiate of their beauties—and then cast headlong from the bartizan into the moat which had received the corpse of the Vassal’s Wife! Raoul de Canillac, scourged till the flesh was literally torn from his bones, was plunged headlong after them!
Such was the Vassal’s Vengeance!—and when he fell, shortly afterward, before the walls of Meaux, by the lance of the renowned Captal de Buch, his last words were: “I care not—I care not to live longer. My task was ended, my race won, when thou wert avenged, Marguerite—Marguerite!” and he perished with her name on his tongue. His crimes were great, but was not his temptation greater? Pray we, that we be not tempted!
TRUE LOVE’S DEVOTION:
A TALE OF THE TIMES OF LOUIS QUINZE.
PART I.
There was a mighty stir in the streets of Paris, as Paris’s streets were in the olden time. A dense and eager mob had taken possession, at an early hour of the day, of all the environs of the Bastile, and lined the way which led thence to the Place de Grève in solid and almost impenetrable masses.
People of all conditions were there, except the very highest; but the great majority of the concourse was composed of the low populace, and the smaller bourgeoisie. Multitudes of women were there, too, from the girl of sixteen to the beldam of sixty, nor had mothers been ashamed to bring their infants in their arms into that loud and tumultuous assemblage.