“He has repented,” said one, “and has come to hang himself over again.”
“He has been there all the time,” said another; “only we did not see him.”
“But why has he got spurs?” asked a third.
“No doubt, because he has come from afar and wished to return in a hurry.”
“I know well, for my part, that far or near, I would not have needed to put on spurs, for I would not have come back.”
And they laughed, and they stared at the ugly face the dead man made.
As for the Seigneur of La Piroche, he thought of nothing but of making sure that the thief was quite dead, and of securing his armor.
They cut down the corpse and stripped it; then, once despoiled, they hung it up again, and the ravens investigated so thoroughly that at the end of two days it was all jagged, at the end of eight days it had only the appearance of a rag, and at the end of fifteen days it had no longer the appearance of anything at all; or, if it did resemble anything, it was only those impossible hanged men we used to make pictures of on the first page of our text-book, and below which we wrote the amphibious quatrain, half Latin, half French:
Aspice Pierrot pendu,
Qui nunc librum n’a pas rendu,
Si hunc librum reddidisset:
Pierrot pendu non-faisset.[13]
But what had the hanged man been doing during his month of absence? How did it happen that he escaped, and, having escaped, that he hanged himself again?