He ought to have mounted well.
Then the executioner adroitly slipped the running noose, which adorned the end of the rope, around the neck of the culprit, and, giving the latter a vigorous kick in the back, he flung him out into space, which strongly resembled Eternity.
An immense clamor greeted this looked-for dénouement, and a shudder passed through the crowd. Whatever may be the crime he has committed, the man who dies is always at the moment greater than those who watch him die.
The hanged man swung for three or four minutes at the end of his rope, as he had a right to do, danced, wriggled, then hung motionless and rigid.
The Z had become an I again.
They gazed a while longer on the culprit, whose gilded armor glistened in the sun, then the spectators divided themselves, little by little, into groups, and went their way home, chatting about the event.
“Pooh! a horrid thing is death!” said the son of the peasant, as he continued his journey with his father.
“In good faith, to hang one for not having succeeded in stealing a piece of armor, that’s expensive. What do you think?”
“I wonder, I do, what they would have done to him if he had really stolen the armor?”
“They would not have done anything to him, for if he had really stolen the armor he would have been able to escape from the château. Then, possibly, he would not have returned to be arrested.”