“Help! Help!” he shrieked. “Oh, God! Help!”
They would have given it if they could. Even I could not see him die like this, and, forcing my way somehow through the crowd, I tried to face the frail stairway, but ere I had gone four steps, the charred wood broke, and I fell heavily. As I rose to my feet, blackened and bruised, I saw Marcilly was safe. It was but a glance I gave; but it was enough, for Cipierre was beside him, and the black uniforms of the gendarmes of Aunis everywhere.
But for the moment all eyes were fixed on Achon. There were other, and sadder, things going on elsewhere in the burning square, for there the innocent were dying with the guilty; but here, where we were, this was what froze us with horror, and moved us all to pity. Ay, pity! Though he whom God’s hand was striking was the worst of men.
As yet the flames had not touched him, but leaped and danced around the wretch as though playing with him, as though they meant to let him die mentally a hundred deaths before the end came. Three times did he try to break through, and three times we saw his face, evil, white, and despairing, as he fell back, howling curses.
And now there was a yell of horror from those around us, horror and terror unspeakable, and a monk, one of those who sang the death hymn, cried out in a voice that rose shrill and high:
“’Tis the devil! The devil come for him!”
Achon had again dashed to the flaming balustrade, but this time not alone. A black, misshapen thing was at his side, and two long black arms were wound round his neck. He struggled and cried out in a broken voice, and his glazed eyes shone with an awful terror, as he looked at the hideous face pressing close to his. Down they fell together, backward, to reappear again after a breathless movement. They strove madly together. They were hardly human. So closely were they clenched, so grimed were they both by the smoke, that it was barely possible to distinguish the one from the other, and as they came to the edge of the balcony, where the burning balustrade had dropped away, their limbs writhed and worked, like that of some monstrous spider in an agony.
Beneath them was a hissing, seething pit of flame, and, balancing on that perilous ledge, they fought together mutely. Long arms of fire shot up to them from the blazing deep below, seeking to clutch them and drag them down, but still they fought for the life that was already lost to both. For one brief moment I caught Achon’s glance, and it froze me to stone, for he was looking through me, and the terror of that which lies beyond the grave, and who knows what besides, glared from his eyes.
No one spoke. No one stirred, but all watched and watched for the end. At last it came. For a breath the frightful pair swayed and tottered together backward and forward, and then—fell, locked in their death-grip, into the flames beneath.
A shuddering cry went up from the crowd, and then all was still. Once we saw the dwarf, a dim figure, rise through the flames, and wave an arm wildly, and then he vanished in the roaring fire.