man was a monster. It was said that she had poisoned her
second husband; she had tried to assassinate her brother-in-law; she
had just poisoned a young woman who was her rival, and before leaving
England she had, it was believed, caused the favorite of the king to be
murdered."

"Buckingham?" cried the monk.

"Yes, Buckingham."

"The woman was English, then?"

"No, she was French, but she had married in England."

The monk turned pale, wiped his brow and went and bolted the door. The
executioner thought that he had abandoned him and fell back, groaning,
upon his bed.

"No, no; I am here," said the monk, quickly coming back to him. "Go on;
who were those men?"

"One of them was a foreigner, English, I think. The four others were
French and wore the uniform of musketeers."

"Their names?" asked the monk.

"I don't know them, but the four other noblemen called the Englishman
'my lord.'"

"Was the woman handsome?"

"Young and beautiful. Oh, yes, especially beautiful. I see her now, as
on her knees at my feet, with her head thrown back, she begged for life.
I have never understood how I could have laid low a head so beautiful,
with a face so pale."

The monk seemed agitated by a strange emotion; he trembled all over; he
seemed eager to put a question which yet he dared not ask. At length,
with a violent effort at self-control:

"The name of that woman?" he said.

"I don't know what it was. As I have said, she was twice married, once
in France, the second time in England."

"She was young, you say?"

"Twenty-five years old."

"Beautiful?"

"Ravishingly."

"Blond?"

"Yes."

"Abundance of hair--falling over her shoulders?"

"Yes."

"Eyes of an admirable expression?"

"When she chose. Oh, yes, it is she!"

"A voice of strange sweetness?"

"How do you know it?"

The executioner raised himself on his elbow and gazed with a frightened
air at the monk, who became livid.

"And you killed her?" the monk exclaimed. "You were the tool of those
cowards who dared not kill her themselves? You had no pity for that
youthfulness, that beauty, that weakness? you killed that woman?"

"Alas! I have already told you, father, that woman, under that angelic
appearance, had an infernal soul, and when I saw her, when I recalled
all the evil she had done to me----"

"To you? What could she have done to you? Come, tell me!"

"She had seduced and ruined my brother, a priest. She had fled with him
from her co