"Nevertheless she was superb. Splendide mendax!" murmured Laisné de la Marguerie. "Yet unavailing."
While, as he did so, La Reynie was heard addressing Van den Enden in quiet, impressive tones.
"You forget," he said, "your interview with this woman in her rooms at Basle. You forget that the young man whom you sought to have murdered overheard your conversation with her and La Truaumont. The conversation in which you stated that you had received a million livres from the Comte de Montérey. Also you forget, or, perhaps, you do not know, that that young man's interrogatory is here before us." While, as the Procureur-Général spoke, he laid his hand on a packet of papers lying amongst some others.
[CHAPTER XXV]
The confrontations of the prisoners with one another and the administration of questions, based upon the answers they had made to their earlier interrogations, were over at last. There remained now but one thing farther to be done, one further suffering to be endured by the unhappy conspirators ere their doom, which was certain, was pronounced; namely, to endeavour to extract their confessions from them by torture. This system, still in general use in France and still to remain so for another century, was regarded as the one and only final opportunity of extracting from criminals--real or suspected--some confession which should justify their judges in sentencing them to death. For, if from those criminals who were innocent there could be wrung the slightest word that even sounded like an acknowledgment of guilt, the judges could condemn them with a sound conscience; while, even if the really criminal had already confessed their guilt, the application of torture was still generally applied in the hopes that, thereby, some actual or imaginary accomplices might be implicated.
La Reynie, determined to extort confessions from the four prisoners who had appeared before their judges at the Arsenal, had already decided by midnight that all should be submitted to the "question." This resolve, however, was negatived by the majority of those judges.
De Beaurepaire was, they said, too high in position to be treated with such indignity; he had been too closely allied with the King, both as friend and exalted subject as well as bearer of great offices, to be submitted to such degradation; and they had made up their minds that he was guilty and must die. Therefore he was exempted from torture.
To their honour, the same exemption was granted to Emérance on the plea that she was a woman and was also to die.
"It is a noble resolution," exclaimed the Père Bourdaloue, who had been deputed to discover by exhortation the truth and extent of their guilt, if possible. "A noble one. She is a woman. If, like another, she has sinned, so, also, she has loved and suffered."
From the two others, however, Fleur de Mai and Van den Enden, nothing could be obtained in any shape or form at the trial except denials of every statement made. Therefore both, instead of Van den Enden alone, were now to be submitted to the torture.