way his eyes, the executioners were busy
with the wedges; Catherine was free to cast one glance upon the martyr,
unseen by others, which fell on Christophe like the dew. The eyes of the
great queen seemed to him moist; two tears were in them, but they
did not fall. The wedges were driven; a plank was broken by the blow.
Christophe gave one dreadful cry, after which he was silent; his face
shone,--he believed he was dying.

"Let him die?" said the cardinal, echoing the queen's last words with
a sort of irony; "no, no! don't break that thread," he said to the
provost.

The duke and the cardinal consulted together in a low voice.

"What is to be done with him?" asked the executioner.

"Send him to the prison at Orleans," said the duke, addressing Monsieur
de Montresor; "and don't hang him without my order."

The extreme sensitiveness to which Christophe's internal organism had
been brought, increased by a resistance which called into play every
power of the human body, existed to the same degree, in his senses. He
alone heard the following words whispered by the Duc de Guise in the ear
of his brother the cardinal:

"I don't give up all hope of getting the truth out of that little fellow
yet."

When the princes had left the hall the executioners unbound the legs of
their victim roughly and without compassion.

"Did any one ever see a criminal with such strength?" said the chief
executioner to his aids. "The rascal bore that last wedge when he ought
to have died; I've lost the price of his body."

"Unbind me gently; don't make me suffer, friends," said poor Christophe.
"Some day I will reward you--"

"Come, come, show some humanity," said the physician. "Monseigneur
esteems the young man, and told me to look after him."

"I am going to Amboise with my assistants,--take care of him yourself,"
said the executioner, brutally. "Besides, here comes the jailer."

The executioner departed, leaving Christophe in the hands of the
soft-spoken doctor, who by the aid of Christophe's future jailer,
carried the poor boy to a bed, brought him some broth, helped him to
swallow it, sat down beside him, felt his pulse, and tried to comfort
him.

"You won't die of this," he said. "You ought to feel great inward
comfort, knowing that you have done your duty.--The queen-mother bids me
take care of you," he added in a whisper.

"The queen is very good," said Christophe, whose terrible sufferings had
developed an extraordinary lu