rose-nobles for the anonymous Esculapius
to whom his recovery was due. Coconnas was not afraid of death, but
Coconnas was not the less satisfied to be alive and well, and so, as we
see, he was intending to recompense his deliverer generously.

La Mole proceeded along the Rue de l'Astruce, the wide Rue Saint Honore,
the Rue des Prouvelles, and soon found himself on the Place des Halles.
Near the ancient fountain, at the place which is at the present time
called the Carreau des Halles, was an octagon stone building, surmounted
by a vast wooden lantern, which was again surmounted by a pointed roof,
on the top of which was a weathercock. This wooden lantern had eight
openings, traversed, as that heraldic piece which they call the _fascis_
traverses the field of blazonry, by a kind of wooden wheel, which was
divided in the middle, in order to admit in the holes cut in it for that
purpose the head and hands of such sentenced person or persons as were
exposed at one or more of these eight openings.

This singular arrangement, which had nothing like it in the surrounding
buildings, was called the pillory.

An ill-constructed, irregular, crooked, one-eyed, limping house, the
roof spotted with moss like a leper's skin, had, like a toadstool,
sprung up at the foot of this species of tower.

This house was the executioner's.

A man was exposed, and was thrusting out his tongue at the passers-by;
he was one of the robbers who had been following his profession near the
gibbet of Montfaucon, and had by ill luck been arrested in the exercise
of his functions.

Coconnas believed that his friend had brought him to see this singular
spectacle, and he joined the crowd of sightseers who were replying to
the patient's grimaces by vociferations and gibes.

Coconnas was naturally cruel, and the sight very much amused him, only
he would have preferred that instead of gibes and vociferations they had
thrown stones at a convict so insolent as to thrust out his tongue at
the noble lords that condescended to visit him.

So when the moving lantern was turned on its base, in order to show the
culprit to another portion of the square, and the crowd followed,
Coconnas would have accompanied them, had not La Mole checked him,
saying, in a low tone:

"We did not come here for this."

"Well, what did we come for, then?" asked Coconnas.

"You will see," replied La Mole.

The two friends had got into the habit of addressing each other with th