l the streets toward the Place
de St. Pierre, the people found it barricaded on all sides, and filled
with mounted guards and archers. Carts, fastened to the posts at each
corner, closed each entrance, and sentinels, armed with arquebuses, were
stationed close to the carts. In the centre of the Place rose a pile
composed of enormous beams placed crosswise upon one another, so as
to form a perfect square; these were covered with a whiter and lighter
wood; an enormous stake arose from the centre of the scaffold. A man
clothed in red and holding a lowered torch stood near this sort of mast,
which was visible from a long distance. A huge chafing-dish, covered on
account of the rain, was at his feet.

At this spectacle, terror inspired everywhere a profound silence; for
an instant nothing was heard but the sound of the rain, which fell in
floods, and of the thunder, which came nearer and nearer.

Meanwhile, Cinq-Mars, accompanied by MM. du Lude and Fournier and all
the more important personages of the town, had sought refuge from the
storm under the peristyle of the church of Ste.-Croix, raised upon
twenty stone steps. The pile was in front, and from this height they
could see the whole of the square. The centre was entirely clear, large
streams of water alone traversed it; but all the windows of the houses
were gradually lighted up, and showed the heads of the men and women who
thronged them.

The young D'Effiat sorrowfully contemplated this menacing preparation.
Brought up in sentiments of honor, and far removed from the black
thoughts which hatred and ambition arouse in the heart of man, he could
not conceive that such wrong could be done without some powerful and
secret motive. The audacity of such a condemnation seemed to him so
enormous that its very cruelty began to justify it in his eyes; a secret
horror crept into his soul, the same that silenced the people. He almost
forgot the interest with which the unhappy Urbain had inspired him, in
thinking whether it were not possible that some secret correspondence
with the infernal powers had justly provoked such excessive severity;
and the public revelations of the nuns, and the statement of his
respected tutor, faded from his memory, so powerful is success, even
in the eyes of superior men! so strongly does force impose upon men,
despite the voice of conscience!

The young traveller was asking himself whether it were not probable that
the torture had forced some monst