With a touch of his hand, a glance of his eyes through the hideous mask he wore, the executioner motioned each to their respective blocks. Fleur de Mai was placed before the outer block on the right of the scaffold, Emérance before the extreme one on the left, De Beaurepaire between them.
"Altesse," the headsman whispered. "It is the moment."
Amidst a silence such as perhaps no crowd--perhaps no French crowd!--had ever before maintained, De Beaurepaire turned towards the woman he had learnt to love so fondly.
"Adieu," he whispered, bending down to her so that, for the last time in life, their lips met--embrace they could not, since their hands were tied behind their backs. "Adieu for ever, ma adorée."
But from her lips as they met his, the word "Adieu" did not proceed, but, instead, the word "Wedded." As she spoke he saw that she smiled at him.
Advancing now towards the block, he was about to kneel by it; with a sign from his eyes he signalled to the executioner's assistant to give him his hand to assist him in doing so, when, to his astonishment, as well as to that of all in the vast concourse, De Brissac's powerful voice rang out on the dense silence. From his lips were heard to issue the order: "Stop. Defer your task. Proceed no farther in it as yet."
As he thus commanded, his eyes, glancing over the head of the crowd from where he sat above them on his horse, were directed towards a man clad in the soutane of a priest, one who was frantically waving a paper in the air. A priest who was seated by the side of the coachman on the box of one of the royal carriages.
"What does this mean?" De Beaurepaire asked in a hoarse tone, while, as he did so, his eyes were directed towards Emérance who had reeled back as she heard De Brissac's stern command and was now supported by one of the monks who had followed the condemned on to the scaffold. In that look he saw that she was white as marble, that her eyes had in them a strange unnatural glance, a glance perceptible even through their half-closed lids.
"Has the King relented at the last moment?" De Brissac muttered to himself. After which he cried to his men: "Make way through your ranks for the Reverend Father. Let him approach at once. It is," he whispered to the officer nearest to him, "the King's Confessor."
This order was easily to be obeyed in so far as the troops were concerned, but more difficult of accomplishment as regarded the crowd behind them. Nor--since it must be told!--was the majority of that crowd very willing to see any interruption of le spectacle take place. They had stood here since the November dawn had broken, wet, cold and foggy to observe three men and a woman die, and now, it would appear, they were to be baulked of their sport.