This was the dread formula with which it was the custom to conclude these gloomy ceremonies. It was the signal agreed upon between the priest and the executioner.
The crowd knelt.
“Kyrie eleison,”[49] said the priests, who had remained beneath the arch of the portal.
“Kyrie eleison,” repeated the throng in that murmur which runs over all heads, like the waves of a troubled sea.
“Amen,” said the archdeacon.
He turned his back on the condemned girl, his head sank upon his breast once more, he crossed his hands and rejoined his escort of priests, and a moment later he was seen to disappear, with the cross, the candles, and the copes, beneath the misty arches of the cathedral, and his sonorous voice was extinguished by degrees in the choir, as he chanted this verse of despair,—
“Omnes gurgites tui et fluctus tui super me transierunt.”[50]
At the same time, the intermittent clash of the iron butts of the beadles’ halberds, gradually dying away among the columns of the nave, produced the effect of a clock hammer striking the last hour of the condemned.
The doors of Notre-Dame remained open, allowing a view of the empty desolate church, draped in mourning, without candles, and without voices.
The condemned girl remained motionless in her place, waiting to be disposed of. One of the sergeants of police was obliged to notify Master Charmolue of the fact, as the latter, during this entire scene, had been engaged in studying the bas-relief of the grand portal which represents, according to some, the sacrifice of Abraham; according to others, the philosopher’s alchemical operation: the sun being figured forth by the angel; the fire, by the fagot; the artisan, by Abraham.