The sheriff placed the parchment on the table, laid down his spectacles, took up the nosegay, and said,—
"End of la peine forte et dure. Hardquanonne, thank her Majesty."
By a sign the justice of the quorum set in motion the man dressed in leather.
This man, who was the executioner's assistant, "groom of the gibbet," the old charters call him, went to the prisoner, took off the stones, one by one, from his chest, and lifted the plate of iron up, exposing the wretch's crushed sides. Then he freed his wrists and ankle-bones from the four chains that fastened him to the pillars.
The prisoner, released alike from stones and chains, lay flat on the ground, his eyes closed, his arms and legs apart, like a crucified man taken down from a cross.
"Hardquanonne," said the sheriff, "arise!"
The prisoner did not move.
The groom of the gibbet took up a hand and let it go; the hand fell back. The other hand, being raised, fell back likewise.
The groom of the gibbet seized one foot and then the other, and the heels fell back on the ground.
The fingers remained inert, and the toes motionless. The naked feet of an extended corpse seem, as it were, to bristle.