Chapter 16

BROKEN ON THE WHEEL

The prisoners were condemned to death, in the terrible form of breaking on the wheel. Wife Gougeon and the Admiral returned late on the last night before the execution to the old-iron shop, dismayed and ferocious. Her vanity was deeply hurt by the failure of her plan. In the back of the shop, among piles of horse-shoes, locks, spikes, and bars, a meeting of the Big Bench of the Galley-on-land was held to decide the course to be taken. The yellow light of the dip threw their shadows into the recesses and shed its flicker on their faces. Gougeon sat picking at the candle-grease in his apathetic way. Hache cheerfully threw himself on a long box. The Admiral stood wrapped in his cloak, melodramatic as usual.

Femme Gougeon pushed into the centre.

"Men, or whatever you call yourselves," she hissed, throwing her grimy arm into the air, "will you let la Tour, Bec, and Caron die like dogs?" and her deep-set eyes scintillated from one to the other.

A sullen silence ensued.

Finding no reply, she rushed to the window-sill at the rear and took down an assortment of pike-heads and stilletti, with which were a couple of pistols. She thrust a dirk or pike-head into the hand of each, but to the Admiral she gave one of the pistols; the other she kept.

"There," shrieked she furiously, raising her arm to its full height with the pistol. "That is what I say about this."

They were still sullen and reluctant.

"What have you done, Motte?" the Admiral said, turning to the beggar of Versailles.

"I have seen Fouché; he is persuaded an escape is impossible."

"Who is Fouché?"

"A prison guard of the Châtelet, and belongs to our Galley."

"Did you tell him I had the money?"

"He says money in this case is useless; this is not an ordinary business; the Lieutenant sees to it in person on account of the King's interest in it; it is robbery from the person of a Prince, and a crime against the King on his own lands."

"Reasons only too clear," reflected the Admiral. "Where will the execution be?"

At the mention of the unpleasant word a grimace passed over Hache's face.

"On the Place de Grève," Gougeon replied, showing a little interest, "at eight to-morrow."

"How many guards will attend them?"

"Six by the cart, with their officers; and the streets are lined with the guards of Paris," continued Gougeon.

"You intend a _rescue_? Sacre!" vociferated Wife Gougeon. "I will be there too; they dare not arrest me. Greencaps, I tell you those white-gills fear us people, and we could kick their heads about the streets if we all stood together."

"Death to the hogs!" cried the beggar.

"Take care," Gougeon grumbled.

"What do you mean, beast?" retorted his amiable spouse.

"That there are plenty of _sheep_[1] on this street."

[Note 1: Spies.]

"Curse the _sheep_!" ejaculated the Admiral. "Go everywhere, all of you, and rouse the Galley and all ragmen for to-morrow at the Quai Pelletier at half-past seven. Return here by six sharp."

By six next morning the Council had returned, and their friends as they left the door hung about the street corner near by, amusing themselves by striking the lamp with their sticks.

At half-past six the Council issued, shouting--

"To the execution!"

Hache ran up the middle of the street repeating the cry in his stentorian voice, so that as he rushed along the dingy houses poured forth their contents after him like swarms of bees; boys, men, and women mingling pell-mell, half clothed, unkempt, fierce-mouthed, wild-faced, ignorant.

Motte, the beggar, took up the words and sped like the wind up the narrow side streets and lanes, shouting, "To the execution!"

Wife Gougeon screamed it. Even her husband opened his malign jaws from time to time and automatically gave vent to a harsh shout.

Thus sown, it became a cry springing up everywhere. The whole quarter of St. Marcel grew alive, and an immense crowd ran together into the neighbouring square. Little direction was needed to band them into a marching mob, waving clubs, pikes, and bottles, dancing, quarrelling and howling, with ribald songs and shouts of "To the execution!" In one thing they differed notably from a similar crowd in this century, could such be imagined. Ragged and wretched though they were, they wore _colour_ in profusion. The mass was a rich subject for the artist.

Among the women at the front was seen Wife Gougeon brandishing her pistol. The Admiral and Hache were at her side haranguing the leaders. Surging along, the demoniac screams of drunken women and the babel of shouting men, as they approached each new neighbourhood, seemed to stir it to its depths and to add to the rear a new contingent.

Thus their numbers swelled at every street, and the excitement increased to a pitch beyond description. They swept forward by the Rue Mouffetard and through the Latin Quarter till they reached the broad Boulevard St. Germain. Turning along the latter through the Rue St. Jacques they suddenly increased their speed and uproar, and thundered across the Petit Pont Bridge and Isle of France, and once more across a bridge--that of Notre Dame--where they saw the Quai Le Pelletier on the other side lined with a black sea of people. At least a quarter of the population of Paris were crammed together within the available space upon the quays and the neighbouring streets along the Seine, from the towered Châtelet--court-house and prison--some distance below, to the Place de Grève, some distance above, in front of the Hôtel de Ville. A line of blue-coated, white-gaitered soldiers on each side kept the space clear down the centre.

The people were looking forward to the spectacle of the morning with intense delight.

Meanwhile at the prison doors of the Châtelet the three poor wretches of prisoners were forced into a cart by gendarmes in the sight of the multitude. A man sat awaiting them in the cart, curled, powdered, dressed; and perfumed with foppish elegance, and his every motion made with a dainty sense of distinction. He was the people's hero--the public executioner. He took in his hands the ends of the rope which hung from the necks of his victims. Another figure mounted the cart behind them. It was a priest, who knelt, bent his head, and offered to each of them the crucifix; and the cart then proceeded slowly along the soldier-lined streets, accompanied by half a dozen guards carrying their muskets on their shoulders, bayonetted.

The emotions meanwhile of the condemned were told in their bearing. Young Hugues de la Tour stood up, and scornfully refusing the crucifix of the priest, looked around upon the scene with an air of irreconcilable indignation. His companions, Bec and Caron, the men who in the cave had spoken of themselves as ruined, the one by taxes, the other by the tithe, were more abject, and clutched the crucifix in despair.

Comments were shouted freely at the victims. Applause greeted the demeanour of la Tour, rough raillery the terror of his companions.

After this manner they jolted painfully along the cobbled paving, down through the swaying crowd towards the Place de Grève. Though the distance was not perhaps more than a couple of hundred yards the poor men underwent ages of tension. When they came to the Quai Le Pelletier, Hugues heard, as in a dream, a startling stentorian, familiar cry--

"Vive the Galley!"

His bloodshot eyes strained towards the place whence it came, and once more a voice, this time the shriek of a woman, pierced the air--

"Vive the Galley!"

The two other prisoners now raised their heads, still dazed and in a stupor.

Immediately a third voice, loud and shrill, but instinct with the thrill of command, took up the words. It was the Admiral, and his third "Vive the Galley!" was a signal.

Nine soldiers of the line of troops at the point nearest the prisoners were simultaneously thrown on the street, and a score of desperate men had broken into the centre and made a rush for the small guard around the carts. A cry, rising into a multitudinous commotion of shouts, went up from the gazing mob, ever on the verge of a tumult. At the same time there was a resistless swaying on all sides--the two lines of soldiers gave way for a few minutes, and people far and near rushed into the middle of the street. The vortex of St. Marcellese, at the Pont Notre Dame, already filled with winey purpose, pushed forward with a sudden bound towards their leaders and the death-cart, triumphing over their old enemies, the gendarmes, and preparing for every excess.

Femme Gougeon, as leader of a horde of viragoes, was rushing among them shrieking more fiendishly than ever. While some held down the guard or wrested away their arms, the prisoners were lifted out of the cart and began to be hurried along towards the bridge, Bec and Caron struggling like maniacs with their fetters. The mob had at this moment complete mastery.

It lasted only a few seconds. Drums began to beat towards the Place de Grève. The tocsin bell of the Hôtel de Ville sounded. There was a shock--a check of the crowd's volitions. A heavy rolling-back movement took place, and a public roar of fear was heard. People on the edges ran to shelter, and in a few moments more a volley of musketry sounded down the street. The crowd broke in all directions. It scattered away as suddenly as it had risen, and through the clearing smoke the soldiers could be seen closing up and again preparing to fire in volley. The prisoners were left in the hands only of the Admiral and Hache.

"Come, come," cried the latter, urging them to run.

"Brave men, save yourselves; as for us we are lost," was the reply of la Tour.

So Hache and the Admiral disappeared.

Bec and Caron lay prostrate on the deserted pavement. Hugues stood up proudly until a musket-ball broke his arm and knocked him over.

Then the dead and wounded could be counted, scattered over the scene of the _mêlée_.

Sickening it would be to tell in full of the execution which followed.

The Place de Grève was surrounded by an entire regiment, keeping back the crowd, who soon, remastered by overpowering curiosity, struggled for standing room and strained their necks to see. A conspicuous platform had been erected in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Caron was the first to suffer. At the order of the executioner he was caught hold of by two assistants, thrown down, and bound to a large St. Andrew's cross of plank which lay on the platform. The black-robed confessor knelt down at his head and held up the crucifix before him, at the same time hiding his own face by his book and the sleeve of his gown. The executioner adjusted his wig elegantly, took up and minutely examined his crowbar, and casting first a coxcomb look at the breathless spectators, brought the bar into the air with a flourish, and down with a crash on the right thigh of the poor prisoner. The agonising cry of the helpless man was drowned in a tremendous outburst of applause from the crowd. When he had been disposed of in each of his four limbs, Bec was treated in the same manner. Then the assistants, seizing Hugues, threw him on the cross, bound him, and the executioner lifted his bar in the air----