nded to be looking
at a picture. "Come, sir," said Derues, "you haven't come here to see
the pictures, but to see me. Have a good look at me. Why study copies of
nature when you can look at such a remarkable original as I?" But there
were to be no more days of mirth and gaiety for the jesting grocer. His
appeal was rejected, and he was ordered for execution on the morrow.

At six o'clock on the morning of May 6 Derues returned to the Palais
de Justice, there to submit to the superfluous torments of the question
ordinary and extraordinary. Though condemned to death, torture was to
be applied in the hope of wringing from the prisoner some sort of
confession. The doctors declared him too delicate to undergo the torture
of pouring cold water into him, which his illustrious predecessor, Mme.
de Brinvilliers, had suffered; he was to endure the less severe torture
of the "boot."

His legs were tightly encased in wood, and wedges were then hammered in
until the flesh was crushed and the bones broken. But never a word
of confession was wrung from the suffering creature. Four wedges
constituting the ordinary torture he endured; at the third of the
extraordinary he fainted away. Put in the front of a fire the warmth
restored him. Again he was questioned, again he asserted his wife's
innocence and his own.

At two o'clock in the afternoon Derues was recovered sufficiently to be
taken to Notre Dame. There, in front of the Cathedral, candle in hand
and rope round his neck, he made the amende honorable. But as the
sentence was read aloud to the people Derues reiterated the assertion
of his innocence. From Notre Dame he was taken to the Hotel de Ville.
A condemned man had the right to stop there on his way to execution,
to make his will and last dying declarations. Derues availed himself
of this opportunity to protest solemnly and emphatically his wife's
absolute innocence of any complicity in whatever he had done. "I want
above all," he said, "to state that my wife is entirely innocent. She
knew nothing. I used fifty cunning devices to hide everything from her.
I am speaking nothing but the truth, she is wholly innocent--as for me,
I am about to die." His wife was allowed to see him; he enjoined her to
bring up their children in the fear of God and love of duty, and to let
them know how he had died. Once again, as he took up the pen to sign the
record of his last words, he re-asserted her innocence.

Of the last dreadful punishmen