ost of thousands
was more feeble than his now: for good or ill! No brain more dull, no
voice less heeded. A righteous retribution indeed had overtaken him.
He had died by the sword he had drawn--died, a priest, by violence!
The cross he had renounced had crushed him. And all his schemes and
thoughts, and no doubt they had been many, had perished with him. It
had come to this, only this, the sum of the whole matter, that there
was one wicked man the less in Paris--one lump of breathless clay the
more.

For her--the woman on his breast--what man can judge a woman, knowing
her? And not knowing her, how much less? For the present I put her
out of my mind, feeling for the moment faint and cold.

We were clear of the crowd, and clattering unmolested down a paved
street before I fully recovered from the shock which this sight had
caused me. Wonder whither we were going took its place. To Bezers'
house? My heart sank at the prospect if that were so. Before I
thought of an alternative, a gateway flanked by huge round towers
appeared before us, and we pulled up suddenly, a confused jostling mass
in the narrow way; while some words passed between the Vidame and the
Captain of the Guard. A pause of several minutes followed; and then
the gates rolled slowly open, and two by two we passed under the arch.
Those gates might have belonged to a fortress or a prison, a dungeon or
a palace, for all I knew.

They led, however, to none of these, but to an open space, dirty and
littered with rubbish, marked by a hundred ruts and tracks, and fringed
with disorderly cabins and make-shift booths. And beyond this--oh, ye
gods! the joy of it--beyond this, which we crossed at a rapid trot,
lay the open country!

The transition and relief were so wonderful that I shall never forget
them. I gazed on the wide landscape before me, lying quiet and
peaceful in the sunlight, and could scarce believe in my happiness. I
drew the fresh air into my lungs, I threw up my sheathed sword and
caught it again in a frenzy of delight, while the gloomy men about me
smiled at my enthusiasm. I felt the horse beneath me move once more
like a thing of life. No enchanter with his wand, not Merlin nor
Virgil, could have made a greater change in my world, than had the
captain of the gate with his simple key! Or so it seemed to me in the
first moments of freedom, and escape--of removal from those loathsome
streets.

I looked back at Paris--at the clo