At a quarter of two the gates of the château opened, and the condemned man appeared, preceded by the guards of the Seigneur of La Piroche and followed by the executioner.
The thief was dressed in the stolen armor and was mounted reversed on the bare back of a jackass. He rode with vizor down and head lowered. They had tied his hands behind his back, and if they wish for our opinion in the matter we have no hesitation in saying that, judging by his position, in default of his face, which could not be seen, he ought to have been very ill at ease, and indulging at that moment in very sad reflections.
They conducted him to the side of the scaffold, and a moving picture hardly pleasant for him began to silhouette itself against the blue sky. The hangman set his ladder against the scaffold, and the chaplain of the Seigneur of La Piroche, mounted on a prepared platform, delivered the sentence of justice.
The condemned man did not move. One might have said that he had given the spectators the slip by dying before he was hanged.
They called to him to descend from his ass and deliver himself to the hangman.
He did not move. We understand his hesitation.
Then the hangman took him by the elbows, lifted him off the ass, and set him upright on the ground.
Fine fellow, that hangman!
When we say that he set him upright, we do not lie. But we would lie in saying that he remained as they placed him. He had in two minutes jumped two-thirds of the alphabet; that is to say, in vulgar parlance, that instead of standing straight like an I, he became zigzag like a Z.
During this time the chaplain finished reading the sentence.