t length cries for mercy and of despair
resound; that is, the farewell of the vanquished. The two condemned are
again in the hands of the archers. D'Artagnan approaches them, seeing
them pale and sinking: "Console yourselves, poor men," said he, "you
will not undergo the frightful torture with which these wretches
threatened you. The king has condemned you to be hung: you shall only be
hung. Go on, hang them, and it will be over."

There is no longer anything going on at the Image-de-Notre-Dame. The
fire has been extinguished with two tuns of wine in default of water.
The conspirators have fled by the garden. The archers were dragging the
culprits to the gibbets. From this moment the affair did not occupy much
time. The executioner, heedless about operating according to the rules
of art, made such haste that he dispatched the condemned in a couple of
minutes. In the meantime the people gathered around D'Artagnan,--they
felicitated, they cheered him. He wiped his brow, streaming with sweat,
and his sword, streaming with blood. He shrugged his shoulders at seeing
Menneville writhing at his feet in the last convulsions. And, while
Raoul turned away his eyes in compassion, he pointed to the musketeers
the gibbets laden with their melancholy fruit. "Poor devils!" said he,
"I hope they died blessing me, for I saved them with great difficulty."
These words caught the ear of Menneville at the moment when he himself
was breathing his last sigh. A dark, ironical smile flitted across his
lips, he wished to reply, but the effort hastened the snapping of the
chord of life--he expired.

"Oh! all this is very frightful!" murmured Raoul: "let us begone,
monsieur le chevalier."

"You are not wounded?" asked D'Artagnan.

"Not at all, thank you."

"That's well! Thou art a brave fellow, mordioux! The head of the father,
and the arm of Porthos. Ah! if he had been here, good Porthos, you
would have seen something worth looking at." Then as if by way of
remembrance--

"But where the devil can that brave Porthos be?" murmured D'Artagnan.

"Come, chevalier, pray come away," urged Raoul.

"One minute, my friend, let me take my thirty-seven and a half
pistoles and I am at your service. The house is a good property," added
D'Artagnan, as he entered the Image-de-Notre-Dame, "but decidedly,
even if it were less profitable, I should prefer its being in another
quarter."

CHAPTER 63. How M. d'Eymeris's Diamond passed into the Hands of