's head would need to be
laid to receive the headsman's stroke. Instead, a great cannon wheel
was lifted from out the cart, then next a wooden platform was
constructed, having in it a socket of raised wood into which the wheel
was dropped and firmly fixed by cords, three parts of it towering
above that socket. Then a heap of ropes brought forth and flung down
beside the wheel--they would secure the body tightly enough--following
the heap two huge iron bars and a heavy iron-bound club. That was all,
yet enough to do justice on the traitor.

"_La toilette de la Roue est faite_," said one man, a joker; "soon his
will be made also. 'Tis well the early mornings are warm now. He will not
miss his clothes so much when they strip him to his singlet," and he
laughed and grinned like a wolf and turned his eyes on the Hotel de Ville.
And still, as the moments and the quarters crept by, they chattered and
talked about the coming _spectacle_, and wondered how the man felt in
there who was now so shortly to furnish it. If they could have seen him,
have been able to read his thoughts, they would have been little
gratified--perhaps, indeed, a little dissatisfied--for he knew as well as
they that his doom was fast approaching, that the clocks were telling of
his fast-ebbing hours on earth; knew, too, that down below the wheel was
being prepared, and bore the knowledge calmly and with resignation.

As they discussed down in the _place_ what he might be doing and
speculated on what his feelings were in those last hours, he above, at
the iron-barred window of a room to which they had brought him after
his sentence was pronounced, was gazing down at the crowd gathering to
see him die. The feelings on which they speculated so much were
scarcely such as would have satisfied them.

"The dawn breaks," he murmured to himself, as, although heavily
chained both at the feet and hands, he leaned against the window and
gazed far away over the roofs of the houses to, across the Seine,
where the mists rose in the fields--"is near at hand. Another hour and
daylight will have come--and then it is ended! So best!--so best!"

He shifted his position a little, still gazing out, however; then
continued his meditations:

"Yes, so best. My last chance, last hope of life was gone when M. de
Mortemart trusted me--let me ride by his side a free man instead of
bound. Then I knew I must go on--come on--to this. I could have
stabbed him to the heart more than o