face shone with extraordinary brilliancy, due, no
doubt, to the excess of strength which his fanatic devotion gave
him. Where else but in the feelings of the soul can we find the power
necessary to bear such sufferings? Finally, he smiled when he saw the
executioner lifting the eighth and last wedge. This horrible torture had
lasted by this time over an hour.

The clerk now went to call the physician that he might decide whether
the eighth wedge could be driven in without endangering the life of the
victim. During this delay the duke returned to look at Christophe.

"_Ventre-de-biche_! you are a fine fellow," he said to him, bending down
to whisper the words. "I love brave men. Enter my service, and you shall
be rich and happy; my favors shall heal those wounded limbs. I do not
propose to you any baseness; I will not ask you to return to your party
and betray its plans,--there are always traitors enough for that, and
the proof is in the prisons of Blois; tell me only on what terms are the
queen-mother and the Prince de Conde?"

"I know nothing about it, monseigneur," replied Christophe Lecamus.

The physician came, examined the victim, and said that he could bear the
eighth wedge.

"Then insert it," said the cardinal. "After all, as the queen says,
he is only a heretic," he added, looking at Christophe with a dreadful
smile.

At this moment Catherine came with slow steps from the adjoining
apartment and stood before Christophe, coldly observing him. Instantly
she was the object of the closest attention on the part of the two
brothers, who watched alternately the queen and her accomplice. On this
solemn test the whole future of that ambitious woman depended; she felt
the keenest admiration for Christophe, yet she gazed sternly at him; she
hated the Guises, and she smiled upon them!

"Young man," said the queen, "confess that you have seen the Prince de
Conde, and you will be richly rewarded."

"Ah! what a business this is for you, madame!" cried Christophe, pitying
her.

The queen quivered.

"He insults me!" she exclaimed. "Why do you not hang him?" she cried,
turning to the two brothers, who stood thoughtful.

"What a woman!" said the duke in a glance at his brother, consulting him
by his eye, and leading him to the window.

"I shall stay in France and be revenged upon them," thought the queen.
"Come, make him confess, or let him die!" she said aloud, addressing
Montresor.

The provost-marshal turned a