Femme Gougeon, as leader of a horde of viragoes, was rushing among them shrieking more fiendishly than ever. While some held down the guard or wrested away their arms, the prisoners were lifted out of the cart and began to be hurried along towards the bridge, Bec and Caron struggling like maniacs with their fetters. The mob had at this moment complete mastery.
It lasted only a few seconds. Drums began to beat towards the Place de Grève. The tocsin bell of the Hôtel de Ville sounded. There was a shock—a check of the crowd's volitions. A heavy rolling-back movement took place, and a public roar of fear was heard. People on the edges ran to shelter, and in a few moments more a volley of musketry sounded down the street. The crowd broke in all directions. It scattered away as suddenly as it had risen, and through the clearing smoke the soldiers could be seen closing up and again preparing to fire in volley. The prisoners were left in the hands only of the Admiral and Hache.
"Come, come," cried the latter, urging them to run.
"Brave men, save yourselves; as for us we are lost," was the reply of la Tour.
So Hache and the Admiral disappeared.
Bec and Caron lay prostrate on the deserted pavement. Hugues stood up proudly until a musket-ball broke his arm and knocked him over.
Then the dead and wounded could be counted, scattered over the scene of the mêlée.
Sickening it would be to tell in full of the execution which followed.
The Place de Grève was surrounded by an entire regiment, keeping back the crowd, who soon, remastered by overpowering curiosity, struggled for standing room and strained their necks to see. A conspicuous platform had been erected in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Caron was the first to suffer. At the order of the executioner he was caught hold of by two assistants, thrown down, and bound to a large St. Andrew's cross of plank which lay on the platform. The black-robed confessor knelt down at his head and held up the crucifix before him, at the same time hiding his own face by his book and the sleeve of his gown. The executioner adjusted his wig elegantly, took up and minutely examined his crowbar, and casting first a coxcomb look at the breathless spectators, brought the bar into the air with a flourish, and down with a crash on the right thigh of the poor prisoner. The agonising cry of the helpless man was drowned in a tremendous outburst of applause from the crowd. When he had been disposed of in each of his four limbs, Bec was treated in the same manner. Then the assistants, seizing Hugues, threw him on the cross, bound him, and the executioner lifted his bar in the air——