"For you, La Preaux," continued the Greffier, "the sentence is that you be decapitated at the same time and place as the Prince Louis de Beaurepaire, and in company with him and the woman Louise de Belleau de Cortonne."
"Ah," murmured De Beaurepaire. "Ah! Emérance and I shall be happy at last. We dreamt of a union. At last we shall be united."
"I thank my judges and the King--though they have misjudged me--for recognising my claims to gentle blood," exclaimed Fleur de Mai.
"For you, Van den Enden," again went on the Greffier, "the sentence is that you be hanged by the neck on a gibbet near unto the scaffold on which your companions in guilt must die. And your goods, like the goods of those companions, are confiscated to the King. Amen."
"I shall not leave you till the end," Bourdaloue whispered in De Beaurepaire's ears as the prisoners were now escorted back to their cells. "My son, may God have mercy on you."
"I pray so, holy father. He knows I have need of mercy."
"As have all of us. Come, my son, come."
At the same hour, almost at the same moment, a different scene, though one which owed its existence to the trial now concluded, was being enacted at St. Germain, where the Court now was.
Seated in his chair, advanced three feet from the brilliant circle that surrounded him, Le Roi Soleil witnessed the representation of Cinna, that superb tragedy which Corneille--stung by the criticisms on Le Cid of those who were deemed his rivals, and doubly stung by the criticisms of those who could by no possibility whatever possess the right of deeming themselves his rivals--had determined should outvie the former masterpiece. By connivance with those who fondly hoped that this play--written immediately after a preceding Norman Rebellion had been crushed--might soften the King's heart towards his whilom companion, it had been selected by the chamberlains for that evening's representation. Never, perhaps, had a greater tribute been paid to genius than this now paid to the dramatist!
Throughout the play, Louis had sat unmoved in his chair, though all present remarked that no word or action of the players was lost by him.