filled with self-pity to such an extent that he wept bitterly.

The crowd, which had hooted and insulted him from the Conciergerie to
the Place de Greve, fell suddenly silent as he mounted the scaffold, his
step firm, but his shoulders bowed, and his eyes upon the ground.

Suddenly upon the silence, grotesquely, horribly merry, broke the sound
of a clarinet playing the "Ca ira!"

Jerking himself erect, Carrier turned and flung the last of his terrible
glances at the musician.

A moment later the knife fell with a thud, and a bleeding head rolled
into the basket, the eyes still staring, but powerless now to inspire
terror.

Upon the general silence broke an echo of the stroke.

"Vlan!" cried a voice. "And there's a fine end to a great drowner!"

It was Leroy the cocassier. The crowd took up the cry.

IX. THE NIGHT OF NUPTIALS--Charles The Bold And Sapphira Danvelt

When Philip the Good succumbed at Bruges of an apoplexy in the early
part of the year 1467, the occasion was represented to the stout folk
of Flanders as a favourable one to break the Burgundian yoke under which
they laboured. It was so represented by the agents of that astute king,
Louis XI, who ever preferred guile to the direct and costly exertion of
force.

Charles, surnamed the Bold (le Temeraire), the new Duke of Burgundy, was
of all the French King's enemies by far the most formidable and menacing
just then; and the wily King, who knew better than to measure himself
with a foe that was formidable, conceived a way to embarrass the Duke
and cripple his resources at the very outset of his reign. To this
end did he send his agents into the Duke's Flemish dominions, there to
intrigue with the powerful and to stir up the spirit of sedition that
never did more than slumber in the hearts of those turbulent burghers.

It was from the Belfry Tower of the populous, wealthy city of
Ghent--then one of the most populous and wealthy cities of Europe--that
the call to arms first rang out, summoning the city's forty thousand
weavers to quit their looms and take up weapons--the sword, the pike,
and that arm so peculiarly Flemish, known as the goedendag. From Ghent
the fierce flame of revolt spread rapidly to the valley of the Meuse,
and the scarcely less important city of Liege, where the powerful guilds
of armourers and leather workers proved as ready for battle as the
weavers of Ghent.

They made a brave enough show until Charles the Bold came face