A month had passed, the interrogatories had been made to all the prisoners concerned in the Norman Plot, and the witnesses had been examined and their depositions signed and sworn to. The day had come for the Extra-Ordinary Commission to sit at the Arsenal; a Commission consisting of nineteen carefully selected members who were to deliver judgment on what was now spoken of in France as "L'affaire du Chevalier de Beaurepaire." Amongst these members were La Reynie, who filled on this occasion the office of Procureur-Général du Roi, the Chancellor d'Aligre who presided over the tribunal, twelve other State Councillors and five ordinary Judges.
The prisoners were seated together, the only difference made between them being that De Beaurepaire, by right of his position as Grand Veneur, from which he had not yet been removed, as well as, perhaps, by his birth and rank, sat alone on a bench a few feet apart from, and nearer to the Judges, than the others. Those others, Emérance, Van den Enden and La Preaux, or Fleur de Mai, sat together in the order indicated, whereby the woman who loved De Beaurepaire so madly was next to him though separated from him by that gap of a few feet.
But for the fact that around theChambre Judiciairestood various guards and soldiers, such as those of the King's Guards, several of the Gendarmerie, and a number of men of the garrison of the Bastille--under whose charge the prisoners were transported from that fortress--and also various servants and footmen of the Judges, as well as many members of the police of Paris, known as Archers, there were no members of the general public present. That such, however, would not have been the case had the wishes of many members of that public--and exalted ones, too!--been consulted, was not to be doubted. Innumerable women of high rank who had once given their hearts, or what they were pleased to imagine to be their hearts, to the superbly handsome De Beaurepaire, had applied for permission to be present and had been decisively refused; so, too, had many men of brilliant position. The Great Condé who, though cousin to the King and the most distinguished soldier of his time, if Turenne be excepted, could well enact the part of bully and braggart when he saw fit, had stormed and sworn at La Reynie for being refused, as, it was whispered, he had also stormed and sworn at De Louvois, from whom, however, he was unable to obtain his desire.
Therefore, it was with closed doors that the Commission commenced its labours on this autumn morning, after D'Aligre had addressed a few remarks to all who were present--except his brother Judges--in which he stated that, if any account of what took place within the walls of that room was repeated outside and the culprit could be discovered, that culprit would undoubtedly be punished with either the galleys or death.
Of evidence, beyond whatever might be extorted from the prisoners by the Judges or the Procureur-Général, there was none to be tendered by witnesses, with the exception of that which two persons would be called upon to give, one of those persons being Le Colonel Boisfleury, the other a gentleman, now an official of the King'sGarde Robe, named Humphrey West. Defenders of any of the prisoners there were none. Until the commencement of the sixteenth century prisoners had been allowed the right of such counsel; some years later an ordinance had deprived them of that right, an ordinance which called forth from the well-known President Lamoignon the still remembered phrase, "Il vaudrait mieux absoudre mille coupables que de faire mourir un innocent." A phrase often quoted in English and French law courts to the present day.
In the witness chair, Boisfleury took his seat after innumerable letters had been read, which, coming from various sources, all pointed to one thing, namely, an attempt of the Spanish and Dutch Governments to promote an invasion of France on the coast of Normandy with the ultimate object of deposing the King and of creating a Republic similar to that of Venice or Holland itself, which should be under the protection of Spain and Holland while presided over by a Frenchman of high rank and position. One of these letters was from the Duc de Saint-Aignan, Governor of Havre, stating that it was impossible to doubt that a plot of considerable depth was hatching in Normandy and Picardy. Another was from Louise de Kéroualle, now Duchess of Portsmouth and favourite mistress of King Charles II., in which she stated that, from Normandy, in which she possessed some small property, similar news came to her with regard to this plot, and also that it was much talked of in Court circles in London. The Duchess also mentioned the name which was suggested as that of the man who was to assume the position of President of this new republic, and that name was De Beaurepaire. From the Duchesse de Castellucchio came another, imploring the King to be on his guard against a plot which was brewing against him, while stating that, though she had learnt of the existence of this plot, she had no knowledge of any who were concerned in it.
"Yet," said D'Aligre to a brother Judge, "'tis strange that this heroine of romance had not heard of the plot ere she left Paris, but had heard of it when she left Nancy for Basle and Geneva. And there was but one friend of hers who could have told her anything whatever, since she would not have stooped to listen to La Truaumont who, in his turn, would not have babbled.Hein?"
To which observation the other Judge nodded his head without speaking.
But now the reading of these letters and a dozen others was finished and La Reynie, leaning over on the crimson cushion before him, addressed Boisfleury while referring every instant to the deposition of the man before him.
"You say here that you knew nothing of this plot when you left Paris in the suite of the Duchesse de Castellucchio. When, therefore, did you first know that it was projected?"
"At Basle. When I was told that I should have to take part in the slaying of the young Englishman. I refused to play such a part, since it is not my business to take life except as a soldier, unless I was told why the Englishman was to be slain."
"And you were told?"
"I was told, yet inwardly I resolved to have no share in the matter."
"All lies!" roared out Fleur de Mai at this. "He asked what his pay was to be."
"I will prove they are not lies," the other said, glancing at his brother vagabond. "When Monsieur le Procureur-Général comes to the time at which you stabbed the young man."
"Attend to me and not to the prisoner," La Reynie said to Boisfleury. "You say you resolved to have no share in the matter unless you were told why the Englishman was to be slain. Since, therefore, you were present in the stable--as you affirm in your interrogatory--you had been told. Whatwereyou told?"
"That the Prince de Beaurepaire, the Capitaine la Truaumont and that scoundrel there," nodding his head at Fleur de Mai, "were all concerned in a plot of which the Englishman had discovered the details. That, also, if La Truaumont were denounced, I, who was truly in his pay and not in that of either the Prince de Beaurepaire or the Duchesse de Castellucchio, would also be denounced."
"Every word a lie!" exclaimed Fleur de Mai who, swaggerer to the last, behaved more as if he were one of the Commission himself than a prisoner against whom appearances looked as bad as might well be.
"Silence," La Reynie said, addressing him. "If you again interrupt you shall be removed and inquiries made into your actions while you are absent." Then, turning to Boisfleury, he said: "Therefore, knowing that this murder was decided on so as to ensure the safety of you all, you at first resolved to take part in it."
"No, Monsieur le Procureur-Général," Boisfleury said quietly, "I decided on no such thing. What I did truly decide on, since I was informed that the young man would but be drawn into a duel with Fleur de Mai, in which his chance might be as good as that of the other--was that I would stand by and see that duel. Thereby I should not appear to be against those two ruffians, La Truaumont and La Preaux, and should obtain time in which to come to a conclusion as to how I might best warn his Majesty against the wicked plot."
"Such being your praiseworthy resolve why did you not put it in practice later?"
"He did," the President whispered to La Reynie. "He went to Fontainebleau to inform the Marquis de Louvois of that plot."
"True," La Reynie whispered in turn as he hastily turned over the depositions. "Yet he did not warn the Marquis. It was to De Brissac that he unbosomed himself some week or so later. But we will hear his story. Now," again addressing Boisfleury, "you say in these," tapping the papers before him, "that you went to Fontainebleau to warn the King's Ministers of this plot against his Majesty. Yet you failed to do so. Why did you refrain? Why also wait some week or so ere you addressed yourself to the Sieur de Brissac?"
"Monsieur le Procureur-Général, I was too much undone, too startled by what I saw on my way up the Grand Avenue to the Château. I thought I had seen a spirit from another world."
"What!" While, as La Reynie spoke scornfully to the man, all eyes, including those of the prisoners, were turned on him. What rhodomontade was this they were listening to, they all wondered; with what gibberish was this man, half knave and half adventurer and wholly vagabond, insulting their understandings as he mumbled this buffoonery about spirits from another world?
They did not know--not even the most astute Judges and men of law in France knew or understood, that the fellow before them was but preparing his final effects, his tableau anddénoûment(which should crush the man who had meant to crush him and brand him as a secret midnight assassin) as their own dramatists prepared their tableaux by exciting curiosity from the commencement.
"Monsieur le Procureur-Général," Boisfleury replied, speaking with such well-affected calmness and intensity that his tones became almost dignified and were entirely impressive. "There is no person in this court who would not have thought as I thought, have believed as I believed, that he was looking on a spectre or one who had come back to this world for some dread purpose, had that person seen what I saw on that awful night in Basle and then seen what I saw in the Grand Avenue. A dead man as I thought at first, at the moment,--one who had come back from the grave. Monsieur le Procureur, Messieurs les Judges, may I tell all?"
"'Tis for that you sit in that seat,--that you are here," D'Aligre said. "Speak, but speak only the truth. Otherwise----"
"Otherwise, monseigneur!" Boisfleury exclaimed, "otherwise!Dieu!there is no lie, no fiction that mortal man could invent which can equal that which I saw at Basle. Horrors have I known; I have been a soldier"--there were those who said he never had been one but only a common footpad and cut-throat; but this matters not--"yet never have I seen so wicked, so bloodthirsty and cruel a night as that."
"Speak," exclaimed D'Aligre again. "Tell your tale and have done with it."
Whereupon the man told it. As he did so all present knew that the axe was made ready for one neck in that court; for the neck of Fleur de Mai, if for no other.
"Messeigneurs," he said, speaking solemnly, effectively, one hand upon his breast, the other pointing his words, and sometimes, also, pointing straight at the face of Fleur de Mai: "Messeigneurs, upon that night the young Englishman, he who sits there before you white and wan, was set upon in the stable at Basle. He," and he looked at Humphrey for a moment, "wronged me with an unjust suspicion. He deemed that I meant evil to him or his horse, when--God alone He knows--that I did but intend to set that horse free for him, but to cut the halter rope, so as to enable him to ride off at once if he should vanquish Fleur de Mai. At once, since La Truaumont had sworn that, if this happened, he would slay the Englishman the next moment, not in fair fight but ere he could put himself on guard.
"Therefore, he struck at me, knocking me senseless to the straw and there I lay for some moments. But, gradually, as the dizziness left me, as sense returned, I saw what was happening. By degrees that bully was being worsted; it seemed as though his last hour was at hand. And then--then--he tried the coward's ruse--he fell to the earth on his left hand--with his foot he struck the young man's feet from under him so that he staggered--a moment later his sword was through the young man's breast. I deemed him dead.
"La Truaumont and he thought that I was still insensible, therefore they heeded me not," Boisfleury went on, his eye, glittering like that of a snake, fixed full on Fleur de Mai, upon whose face there had suddenly sprung a drench of sweat--he divining perhaps what was to come next. "They heeded me not. 'He is finished,' La Truaumont said; 'there is no need for me.' 'Not yet,' this other replied, 'not yet. There is more to do.' Whereupon he lifted up his craven blade as though to plunge it through the senseless man's breast, while as he did so he muttered: 'For De Beaurepaire's safety, for yours, for mine, for the sake of all'."
As Boisfleury arrived at this portion of his story--he should have been one of the French dramatists of the time!--the court was as silent as though it had been tenanted by the dead alone: as though it were a tomb and not a room full of living human beings. All eyes were fastened on the face of the narrator; the eyes of Judges, prisoners, guards, the one woman present; and all held their breath. For, if the tale were not true, it sounded like truth. It might be truth. While, for the corroboration of the early part at least, there was present in that court the man on whom the foul attack had been made, on whom was done whatever else they were to hear told.
"Ere the assassin could plunge his sword into the Englishman's breast," Boisfleury continued, while marking the effect of his words on all his listeners, "the hand of La Truaumont fell upon his arm, La Truaumont whispered: 'Fool. Why leave a trace behind! Look there; there--there. The river runs swiftly by; what goes into it comes out no more. There! there! There is the fitting grave for him whom you have almost slain.' Then he went swiftly away, muttering that he would enter the inn and keep all engaged in talk until this one had finished his work.
"I--I--saw him lift the young man," Boisfleury went on, pointing at Fleur de Mai as he spoke, "I saw him go out into the awful storm that had broken over the city; struggling to my feet as he left the stable with his burden, I would have prevented him from concluding his crime. But I was weak and faint from my loss of blood, a vertigo seized on me, I reeled and fell in the straw again. Yet, through the now wide open door out of which he had borne the body, I saw all. I saw this man carry the other on his back beneath the pitiless rain, yet rain that was not as pitiless as he; I saw him turn his back to the river, I saw him let loose the other's hands--I saw that other's body fall into the river, and then, once more, I fainted. I have seen horrid sights, I have been a soldier," Boisfleury repeated, "yet never have I seen aught like that. Messeigneurs," he concluded, "was it strange that, when I saw that man at Fontainebleau, white, ghastly as one who had but just returned from the grave, I deemed that I had seen a spirit from the other world?"
As he concluded, and ere the silence could be broken, there came from the lips of Fleur de Mai an awful sound. One that was neither groan nor gasp nor wail, but a combination of all three. It seemed to those present that the ruffian was choking to death or that some terrible stroke had fallen on him. His great hands tore at the dirty, soiled lace around his neck and at the tags of his jacket, as though he would free his throat and obtain breath; his face was purple, his eyes started from his head, his great, coarse lips were swollen. And through those lips issued sounds that none could comprehend: a jargon of oaths and strange words jumbled pell-mell together without sense or coherence.
Standing by the chair from which he had risen, looking calmly at him, Boisfleury muttered inwardly, "The murder will out and Boisfleury pays for it!" and then turned away his face so that none should see the look upon it that he knew it bore.
Before the night came and ere that Commission had finished its labours much more had to be done. Based upon such matter as had been extracted from them in the numerous interrogatories to which they had all been subjected since their arrest, each and every one had been examined by the Court, while, with one exception--that of Van den Enden, who had not been believed and who was reserved for something still worse than examination, namely torture--what they had told or refused to tell was considered sufficient for the purposes of the Judges. One of the witnesses, however, had been spared the pain of testifying, since Boisfleury's evidence was considered enough--that one being Humphrey West.
"It is true," D'Aligre said to the others seated with him, "that he overheard the plot discussed at Basle. But all that he heard is nothing in comparison with what we now know to have taken place in Brussels, in Normandy, and elsewhere. He has endured enough. We may absolve him from further suffering."
"To which has to be added," remarked Laisné de la Marguerie, another of the Judges, a bitter, sarcastic man, "the fact that the young man stands high in the graces of his Majesty and is like to stand still higher ere long."
"While," said Quintin de Richebourg,maître de requêtes, a kindly hearted lawyer, "he was once a friend of, and befriended by, De Beaurepaire. No need to force him to speak against one who, at least, never harmed him."
Therefore, Humphrey was released from what would have been a hateful task and left the Arsenal directly he was informed that such was the case, while the Commission at once proceeded to examine the prisoners, beginning with De Beaurepaire.
The answers to the questions put to him were, however, a total denial of any knowledge of the plot. He had never, he said, dreamed of any such conspiracy; he loved the King and always had loved him since they were boys and playmates together. La Truaumont was his factotum and he regretted his death, but while acknowledging that he had employed the man in that capacity, he had never heard him breathe a word of any such a scheme. Had such been the case he would have slain him at his feet. With Van den Enden he had had little correspondence and that only on the subject of raising private loans. No one had the slightest right or justification to use his name in connection with any plot against the King, and Van den Enden and La Truaumont had done so for their own purposes, if they had done so at all.
"That they did so," La Reynie said, "is undoubted, since La Truaumont met his death in endeavouring to slay those who went to arrest him on account of his connection with this sinful plot for which you were yourself arrested on the morning of the previous day." After which he continued gravely: "It is strange that, if your Highness was unaware of this plot, you should have been surrounded by so many persons of Norman birth and extraction who were all interested in it. La Truaumont was one of these persons."
"He was equally well known to me ten years ago and more when I first gave him employment. Was the plot hatched so long ago as that?"
"The so-called Chevalier la Preaux is another; the man who is sometimes known as Fleur de Mai."
"He was as much in the pay of La Truaumont as La Truaumont was in mine. And he is of thecanaille. I could have no intercourse with him. Had I required a tool I should not have taken a dirty one."
"Dirty tools, or weapons, can be used as well as clean ones. And--in conspiracies--the tools are never clean. But there is still another Norman. The woman by your side, near you. She calls herself the Marquise de Villiers-Bordéville. She is known to be deeply involved in this vile plot. She was arrested in the lodge you had lent her and which was in your possession as Grand Veneur. She went to Basle at your bidding to meet Van den Enden on the subject of that plot. She is your accomplice. Yet you learnt nothing of it from her. Surely that is strange!"
"She is," De Beaurepaire said, while as he did so he turned towards where Emérance sat separated from him by only a little space, and looked her full in the face, "a woman whom I love. One whom, when we escape from this accursed net you are endeavouring to fling around us, I will love and cherish till my last hour."
"Mon amour!" Emérance breathed rather than murmured between her parted lips.
And the man heard that breath, as perhaps did some of the judges sitting near the prisoner.
"Yet," La Reynie said, "loving her thus, you tell us you know not of what she was vowed to, namely the destruction of the King, of his throne, of France. You did not know the secret of this woman whom you love, the woman who, you think, loves you!"
"Think!" again whispered Emérance, her eyes on La Reynie now. "Think!"
While De Beaurepaire, speaking at the same time, used the same word.
"Think!" he said. "Think that she loves me! La Reynie, do you think there is any man who does not know when a woman truly loves him? If so, then it is you who have never loved or been loved."
As he spoke, D'Aligre shot a glance at Laisné de la Marguerie. "Theriposteis deadly," the latter scrawled on a paper in front of him, a paper which the President could see. For La Reynie's wife was a shrew who was reported to have married him for anything rather than love.
"You know who and what she is?" La Reynie continued savagely. "You know her past?"
"No, only her present. Her past is nothing to me. I had no share in it."
"You should have informed yourself of it ere you allowed yourself to love her. You could have learnt that she was, with La Truaumont, the heart and soul of this conspiracy. A woman ruined by extravagant living and willing to make money by any means."
"'Tis false," Emérance exclaimed, looking up at the Judges for the first time and also speaking aloud for the first time. "My husband left me with some small means. But--because after treating me cruelly for months, he was found dead in his bed, for which I was tried at Rouen for having poisoned him and was at once acquitted and absolved--not one sol or denier have I ever been able to obtain from his kinsmen. Extravagant living! I have never yet known what it was to have a handful of gold pistoles to spend, or fling into the river, if it pleased me so to do."
"Madame," La Reynie said quietly, "this is not your final interrogatory. Later I will deal with you."
After which he again addressed De Beaurepaire, saying: "Monsieur le Prince, the man, Van den Enden, states that you have often said in his presence, and that of others, when speaking of his Majesty the King: 'We shall have him yet. We shall hold him.'"
"He lies," De Beaurepaire said, shrugging his shoulders with superbly assumed disdain. "As for the others, who are they and where are they? Produce them."
"Also," La Reynie continued, ignoring this challenge, "he states that you threatened to kill him if he did not act entirely as you bade him."
"Pah!" exclaimed De Beaurepaire, with another contemptuous shrug which, with the exclamation itself, spoke volumes. "If you choose to believe such babble as this, uttered by such a creature as that, you may do so," was what the shrug and the word conveyed.
"Do you deny, monsieur," La Reynie continued, "that you ever uttered the expression, 'I would die content if I could once draw my sword against the King in a strong revolution'?"
"When," exclaimed De Beaurepaire, "you can put me face to face with a credible witness who can testify to having ever heard me utter any such expression, I will answer you before him. But not till then."
"Madame," La Reynie said now to Emérance, while intimating by a look towards the Prince that he had done with him, for the present at least, "Madame, give me your attention. What is your relationship with the last witness?"
"I love him," Emérance answered, lifting her eyes slowly towards her questioner. "No more nor less than that."
"You misapprehend me. I mean as regards his, and your, participation in this plot?"
"There was no plot," Emérance replied again, this time with a cynical look upon her face; "or, at least, none against France or the King of France. Yet, it is true, there was a plot."
"You admit that?" D'Aligre exclaimed, bending forward over his cushions. "You admit it?"
As he asked the question he was not the only one in that Court who turned their eyes on the unhappy woman. In solemn truth, there were no eyes in that Court which did not rest on her now. The eyes of the Judges and the Procureur-Général, as well as those of her fellow prisoners.
"What is she about to say?" the man who loved her asked himself, while knowing full well that whatever she might say would not be aught that could harm him, though fearing at the same time that she might say something which would sacrifice her while shielding him. "What story, what scheme has she devised?"
"The she-cat, the tigress!" Van den Enden groaned inwardly. "She will save him and herself--curse her!--by sacrificing me. Yet, how? How?"
But still there was another prisoner who heard those words--Fleur de Mai. But he said nothing to himself and indulged in no speculation as to what the woman might be about to state. He was doomed, he knew: nothing could save him. There was for him but one hope left in this world; the hope that since, vagabond as he was, he was the off-shoot of an honourable family, he might perish by the axe and not the wheel, or that still deeper degradation, the rope.
"You acknowledge that there was a plot?" La Reynie exclaimed, echoing the President's question.
"I have said," Emérance replied. "Yet no plot against France or the King."
"Explain."
"He," her eyes turned softly towards her lover and then re-turned swiftly toward the Judges, "wanted money. His charges and expenses were great, as you all know. No need to say more of that. As for myself, I was poor, horribly, bitterly poor, almost at starvation's door, for the reason I have but now told you. That one," her eyes looking from underneath their lids at Van den Enden, "would do aught for money; would betray, steal, murder for the money he always wanted. La Truaumont--well! he is dead. Of him I will but say that he was ambitious. He had been a good soldier yet, like many another soldier as good as he, he had been forgotten, passed over, set aside. We all wanted money. The others--that assassin, or would be assassin, there," looking at Fleur de Mai, "was but a hireling, a varlet, to any who could pay him."
"It was my mind, mine alone," she continued, "which conceived the plot. Mine," and Emérance smote her breast as she spoke, as though to force conviction into the minds of those who heard her. "Mine! Spain hates the King, France, you, I, all of us in whose veins French blood runs--you well know why. So, too, does Holland, for baser, meaner reasons; she hates us because she goes down before us as autumn leaves go down before the storm. Because her Stadtholder, William, can do naught against France. Therefore, since France could not be conquered, defeated, humiliated in the field, other ways were thought of. Shot and steel were useless. It remained to try gold."
That Emérance had aroused the interest of her audience, of the Judges, she knew by now. She had touched that chord, which, as she was well aware, never fails to respond in the hearts of her countrymen to the praise of their country. She knew this, she saw it in their proud, self-satisfied glances as she dwelt on the inferiority of Spain and Holland before France. Only--she asked herself--would they believe? Would this attempt, this last chance, enable the man she loved--of herself she did not think!--to obtain earthly salvation.
"The scheme was tried," she continued. "Learning as I did through La Truaumont that there was a large sum of Spanish money ready for those who would betray France to them, I conceived the idea, not of betraying, but of pretending to betray, France. I was, as I have been termed,une fine Normande; the Normans were embittered against the King for his treatment of the province. The instruments were ready to my hand; the faggots were laid; the spark to ignite them alone was needed. You know the rest, or almost know it. But some part you do not know. His, De Beaurepaire's name was used without his knowledge, the money was obtained from De Montérey, yet not one sol ever reached the Prince's hands. We hoped that, when the enemies of France learnt that we had tricked them, robbed them if you will, the plot would be abandoned without De Beaurepaire ever knowing of the use we had made of him."
"The love for him does not appear in this," sneered Laisné de la Marguerie. "The Prince's name was used unrighteously, judging by your own story, while even the money you say you received was not shared by him."
"Where therefore did it go?" D'Aligre asked, grasping the point which his more astute brother judge had made. "It was a large sum?"
"It went to Normandy if it ever came into France," Van den Enden exclaimed, tottering to his feet in his desire to be listened to by the Judges. "But it never came. Never. This woman, this adventuress, has lied to save her lover and herself. There was no plot to either overthrow France or hoodwink Spain and Holland. There was no money whatever forthcoming.
"Nevertheless she was superb.Splendide mendax!" murmured Laisné de la Marguerie. "Yet unavailing."
While, as he did so, La Reynie was heard addressing Van den Enden in quiet, impressive tones.
"You forget," he said, "your interview with this woman in her rooms at Basle. You forget that the young man whom you sought to have murdered overheard your conversation with her and La Truaumont. The conversation in which you stated that you had received a million livres from the Comte de Montérey. Also you forget, or, perhaps, you do not know, that that young man's interrogatory is here before us." While, as the Procureur-Général spoke, he laid his hand on a packet of papers lying amongst some others.
The confrontations of the prisoners with one another and the administration of questions, based upon the answers they had made to their earlier interrogations, were over at last. There remained now but one thing farther to be done, one further suffering to be endured by the unhappy conspirators ere their doom, which was certain, was pronounced; namely, to endeavour to extract their confessions from them by torture. This system, still in general use in France and still to remain so for another century, was regarded as the one and only final opportunity of extracting from criminals--real or suspected--some confession which should justify their judges in sentencing them to death. For, if from those criminals who were innocent there could be wrung the slightest word that even sounded like an acknowledgment of guilt, the judges could condemn them with a sound conscience; while, even if the really criminal had already confessed their guilt, the application of torture was still generally applied in the hopes that, thereby, some actual or imaginary accomplices might be implicated.
La Reynie, determined to extort confessions from the four prisoners who had appeared before their judges at the Arsenal, had already decided by midnight that all should be submitted to the "question." This resolve, however, was negatived by the majority of those judges.
De Beaurepaire was, they said, too high in position to be treated with such indignity; he had been too closely allied with the King, both as friend and exalted subject as well as bearer of great offices, to be submitted to such degradation; and they had made up their minds that he was guilty and must die. Therefore he was exempted from torture.
To their honour, the same exemption was granted to Emérance on the plea that she was a woman and was also to die.
"It is a noble resolution," exclaimed the Père Bourdaloue, who had been deputed to discover by exhortation the truth and extent of their guilt, if possible. "A noble one. She is a woman. If, like another, she has sinned, so, also, she has loved and suffered."
From the two others, however, Fleur de Mai and Van den Enden, nothing could be obtained in any shape or form at the trial except denials of every statement made. Therefore both, instead of Van den Enden alone, were now to be submitted to the torture.
Yet, once again, as Van den Enden was led into the room where he was to submit to the trial of the Wedge orCoinas it was termed, Bourdaloue made a final attempt not only to extract some admission from him but also, from Christian charity, to spare so old a man unnecessary pain.
"My son," he said, "reflect. Why force your judges to obtain by torture that which may be told freely, since you are surely doomed. Remember, there is another world to which you are hastening; a God whom you have outraged----"
"There is no other world," Van den Enden snarled. "There is no God. I am a materialist. I believe in nothing but that which is tangible, that which I can see and recognise. And I have nothing to confess more than I have told. As for your tortures, it is the fear of them that alone terrifies."
Bravely as the old atheist spoke, he was, however, now to learn that it is sometimes far better to rely less upon oneself and more upon a Superior Power.
The torture of theCoindid not vary much in method from that which, at the same period, was known in the British Islands as the "Boot."Brodequins, or long half-riding boots, were placed upon the feet and legs of those who were to be put to the question. Into these, which were sometimes made of wood and sometimes, but not often, of hardened pigskin almost as tough and firm as wood, the wedges orcoinswere thrust, or hammered, one by one according to the stubborn refusals of the prisoners to reply to the questions put to them.
To the room where he was to be subjected to this inquisition, Van den Enden was led. There were present to administer the questions two of the Councillors of State, De Pomereu and Lefèvre de Caumartin, each of whom had taken part as judges in the last confrontation of the prisoners, as well as the Père Bourdaloue who still hoped to either obtain some amelioration of his sufferings for the wretched man, or to be able to administer religious consolation to him should he perish under the torture. To apply the torture there were the executioner's assistants.
"You have not told all the truth," De Pomereu said, when thebrodequinshad been placed on the legs and feet of Van den Enden and one of the torturers stood by, a wedge in one hand and a hammer in the other. "What more have you to tell?"
"Nothing. You may kill me if you will. I am innocent."
At a sign from De Pomereu the assistant struck in the first wedge, at which Van den Enden winced but said again: "I am innocent."
A second wedge was now inserted and the wretched man emitted a slight groan, but only exclaimed: "I know nothing. Nothing. Mercy!"
A third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth were rapidly inserted next, and Van den Enden cried out: "I am dying. Kill me at once."
"Answer truly," exclaimed De Pomereu. "Did the Prince say, 'If we could only have the King's person we should win'?"
"No. I did not hear it. Yes!" Van den Enden screamed suddenly, as now other wedges were rapidly hammered in between the boots and his legs until the ninth--which was much larger than the previous ones--was inserted. "Yes. He said so. I heard him."
"Did he say, 'When Quillebeuf is taken we will proceed to Versailles and seize upon the King's person'?"
"No. Never. Ah! mercy! mercy! mercy!" for now the last wedge of all--which was composed of several ordinary wedges bound together--was being hammered into his crushed and bleeding leg. "Mercy. Oh! my God! have mercy on me."
"Stop," exclaimed the Père Bourdaloue advancing, his Crucifix in his hands. "Stop! He has confessed something far better than that which you seek to extort from him. Van den Enden," he said, approaching the old man whose eyes were now so turned up in his head that nothing but the whites were visible, while his face was a mass of perspiration, "you are no atheist, praised be God above. You term yourself one, yet in your hour of tribulation you call upon the God you pretend to deny. Van den Enden, look upon this symbol, 'tis the symbol of One who suffered more than you can ever suffer, yet Who was pure and holy; Who was God incarnate. Kiss it, Van den Enden. Acknowledge at last the error of your ways."
"No! no!" groaned the victim, half delirious from pain. "No! no! I believe nothing. I--I--ah! Ask Spinosa. And--and--I was born a Jew."
"So," said Bourdaloue, "was He."
"Mercy! Mercy!"
"He must reply," De Pomereu said in answer to a look of appeal from the priest; "or the wedges must be struck deeper. Speak, Van den Enden," he continued. "Did De Beaurepaire say he would possess himself of the King's sacred person?"
"No. Ah!" and again he called on the Deity as the torturer struck at the great wedge. "Ah! Ah! Yes. Yes. Mercy. I--I--am dying. Save me."
"Remove him," De Pomereu ordered, "and bring in the other. La Preaux."
When, however, this adventurer was subjected to similar treatment to that which Van den Enden had endured nothing was to be obtained from him.
Whether, knowing that death was certain in any case, or determined that, as he had lived without fear--with one exception, namely his cowardice when thinking he was about to be slain by Humphrey West--so he would die, it is at least certain that he was bold enough to bear the torture without uttering one word or one cry. By some superhuman, perhaps by some devilish, courage, he forced himself to refrain from emitting any sound when the torture was applied, and, though his great coarse lips were horribly thrust out and pursed up by the agony he was suffering, no moan issued from them. To all questions put to him by De Pomereu and De Caumartin he returned but one answer, "I am innocent of any knowledge of the plot," and nothing more could be extorted from him.
An hour later, De Beaurepaire accompanied by Bourdaloue and another priest, Le Père Talon, was led into the prison chapel in which were already Van den Enden and La Preaux, or Fleur de Mai. The former had been supported to this spot between two guards; the latter, indomitable as ever, had managed to limp from his cell to the chapel. Emérance was not there.
"To your knees," whispered the priests to the unhappy conspirators. "To your knees and hear the sentences passed on you."
"This," said the Greffier of the Judges when all were kneeling, Van den Enden being assisted and held up between the two guards, "is the decree of the High Court of his Majesty the King. You, Louis, Chevalier and Prince de Beaurepaire, late Colonel of all his Majesty's Guards and Grand Veneur of France, are adjudged guilty of high treason andlèse-majeste. You, Francois Affinius van den Enden, are adjudged guilty of the same. You, La Preaux, falsely styling yourself Chevalier and known to many under an assumed name, are adjudged guilty of the same. The woman Louise de Belleau de Cortonne, widow of Jacques de Mallorties, Seigneur de Villers and Boudéville, styling herself falsely Emérance, Marquise de Villiers-Bordéville, is found guilty of the same."
"The Lord's will be done," said the two priests solemnly.
"For you, Louis de Beaurepaire, Prince et Chevalier," continued the Greffier, "the sentence is that you be decapitated to-morrow at three of the afternoon in front of this, his Majesty's fortress of the Bastille. If your body is claimed by your family it will be given up for burial. At that burial no insignia of your offices of Colonel of his Majesty's Guards and Grand Veneur may be placed upon your bier, or coffin, nor may your Chevalier's sword andfourreau en croixbe so placed. All your goods are confiscated to the King."
"God save the King!" exclaimed De Beaurepaire.
"For you, La Preaux," continued the Greffier, "the sentence is that you be decapitated at the same time and place as the Prince Louis de Beaurepaire, and in company with him and the woman Louise de Belleau de Cortonne."
"Ah," murmured De Beaurepaire. "Ah! Emérance and I shall be happy at last. We dreamt of a union. At last we shall be united."
"I thank my judges and the King--though they have misjudged me--for recognising my claims to gentle blood," exclaimed Fleur de Mai.
"For you, Van den Enden," again went on the Greffier, "the sentence is that you be hanged by the neck on a gibbet near unto the scaffold on which your companions in guilt must die. And your goods, like the goods of those companions, are confiscated to the King. Amen."
"I shall not leave you till the end," Bourdaloue whispered in De Beaurepaire's ears as the prisoners were now escorted back to their cells. "My son, may God have mercy on you."
"I pray so, holy father. He knows I have need of mercy."
"As have all of us. Come, my son, come."