Denounced: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

Lady Belrose and Kate did as he bade them, and then the coach went on, slowly following all those in the road before them. Unfortunately, it had no curtains to the windows, which shut from within as was the custom of the day, otherwise the baronet would have closed out the whole of their surroundings. But this was impossible.

And still the crowd accompanying them shrieked and howled more and more--fighting and struggling to pass each other; thrusting those in front of them away, elbowing and pushing--the man who had waited all night at Caen playing at cards, throwing another almost under the wheels of Sir Charles's coach, while a girl was borne down in the crush and dragged aside fainting--stamping with glee and excitement, almost dancing in frenzy.

For the bell of the neighbouring church was tolling now, and, through the flakes of snow as they fell, the wheel and the block for the two condemned men were visible on the scaffold.

That scaffold itself was a platform some seven feet high, around which stood a company of the grenadiers, with, on either side of it, a guard of the musketeers. On the left of it was the wheel itself, fixed horizontally between stout wooden supports let into the platform, it being a large cannon-wheel. On the right side was a headsman's block, with, beneath it, a basket filled with sawdust, now half covered by snow. By the wheel and leaning against it was a huge club, iron-bound at the head, and at this sight the crowd became still more excited, if possible, pointing it out to each other and saying, "Behold, la massue. She will do her work well, Ça pese bien," and laughing and screaming once more, and rubbing their hands.

Next came a roar, with shrieks from women and more faintings among them, while, by some impulse unrecognised perhaps by themselves, all of the latter produced their masks and put them on. It may be that something feminine, some feeling of womanly shame, prompted them to hide their features, to disguise their presence there. As for the men, the excitability of their natures affected them in a different way, for at what was happening now some of them, even strangers to each other, shook hands effusively, and some clapped others on the back.

For the condemned ones were in sight.

They came forth together from a small door in the wall of the Hôtel de Ville, side by side, these two who were to suffer; one--he who was to perish on the wheel--being nearly naked, and having on him nothing but a short pair of breeches reaching to his knees and a sleeveless singlet. He was a great, bull-chested man, with massive limbs that would have become a gladiator, and, as he strode along attended by a confessor with a crucifix in his hand, he seemed to the mob to appear like one who would suffer severely. Therefore they roared and shrieked at him, and some waved handkerchiefs and clapped and cried, while he regarded them almost with contempt. Yet there was a glance in his eyes as if he could not comprehend why all these people, whom he saw through the falling flakes, should be thus fantastically dressed and should also be masked.

In truth it was a weird scene in the Place de Grève that morning, with the condemned men approaching the scaffold through the snow, and with, for the greater part of the spectators, these women, through the holes of whose masks their eyes glittered, and whose grotesque costumes were but little suited either to the occasion or the wintry morning.

Yet still there was the other doomed one. He, however, approached the platform very differently from the manner in which the man whose portion was the wheel came forward. He, too, had by his side a confessor with a crucifix--after each there walked the executioners, and also the officials--and it seemed as if he would shelter himself behind the robes of the priest. Yet sometimes, too, he smiled and gibbered at the crowd as though it was composed of his friends, and only when he saw the masked faces of the women and all the quaint garbs of the onlookers did he seem astonished.

At his appearance the crowd appeared startled, the shouts died down; instead of them a whisper ran through their ranks. "He is mad! Il est fou!" they cried, and again some women fainted.