CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE DAY OF EXECUTION.
The night of Sunday had passed; already the holiday-makers were seeking their beds after a day spent in the country—by some in the woods of Fontainebleau and St. Germains; by others in the gardens of Versailles, where they had waited all day to see the king come out upon the great balcony and salute his people; by others, again, who had been to Marly to gaze in amazement on distorted Nature; to gaze on the trees stuck in the ground which would not grow here though they had flourished for a century elsewhere, before being uprooted to gratify a king's caprice; on artificial lakes now gay with caïques and gondolas where but a few years ago the frogs and eels had held undisputed possession; on a palace which reared its new walls where starving peasants' hovels had been not long since.
The holiday-makers were going home to their beds as all the clocks of the city clanged out the hour of midnight; all were about to seek their homes ere they commenced the new week—a week that to most of them brought nothing but hard, griping toil, starvation, and a heavy load of taxation imposed upon them by that king whom they stared at and reverenced, and by his nobility.
Yet not quite all, either! For some there were who, as they streamed across the Pont Neuf, or came in from the Charenton gate, or arrived back from Versailles or Marly, broke off in solitary twos and threes from the others and directed their footsteps toward the great place in front of the Hôtel de Ville—toward the Place de Grève! They, these solitary ones, had no intention of seeking their homes and beds that night—they could sleep long and well to-morrow night—instead they meant to enjoy themselves in the place until day broke, with the anticipation of what the daybreak would bring. For at that hour they knew they would see a man done to death upon the wheel; see limb after limb broken until life was extinguished by the final côup de grâce.
As they neared the great open space some cast their eyes up at the lights burning in the Hôtel de Ville and muttered to each other, wondering which room the man was in who would be led forth three hours hence; what he was thinking of; if he was counting each quarter as it sounded from tower and steeple; if—these speculations generally by women in the fast-gathering crowd—there were any who loved him? If he had a wife—a mother—a child? Any to mourn his loss?
"A traitor, they say," some whispered; "one who joined England against France." "A spy," others murmured, "who betrayed Tourville to the brutal islanders. Well, he deserves the dog's death! Let him endure it."
The quarters boomed forth again; at half past twelve the executioner and his assistants arrived in a cart. Ordinarily they came earlier when they had a scaffold to erect and a block to place upon it. Now, however, there was no block on which the man's head would need to be laid to receive the headsman's stroke. Instead, a great cannon wheel was lifted from out the cart, then next a wooden platform was constructed, having in it a socket of raised wood into which the wheel was dropped and firmly fixed by cords, three parts of it towering above that socket. Then a heap of ropes brought forth and flung down beside the wheel—they would secure the body tightly enough—following the heap two huge iron bars and a heavy iron-bound club. That was all, yet enough to do justice on the traitor.
"La toilette de la Roue est faite," said one man, a joker; "soon his will be made also. 'Tis well the early mornings are warm now. He will not miss his clothes so much when they strip him to his singlet," and he laughed and grinned like a wolf and turned his eyes on the Hôtel de Ville. And still, as the moments and the quarters crept by, they chattered and talked about the coming spectacle, and wondered how the man felt in there who was now so shortly to furnish it. If they could have seen him, have been able to read his thoughts, they would have been little gratified—perhaps, indeed, a little dissatisfied—for he knew as well as they that his doom was fast approaching, that the clocks were telling of his fast-ebbing hours on earth; knew, too, that down below the wheel was being prepared, and bore the knowledge calmly and with resignation.