fortunate girl felt herself so utterly abandoned by God and men,
that her head fell upon her breast like an inert thing which has no
power in itself.

The tormentor and the physician approached her simultaneously. At
the same time, the two assistants began to fumble among their hideous
arsenal.

At the clanking of their frightful irons, the unhappy child quivered
like a dead frog which is being galvanized. "Oh!" she murmured, so low
that no one heard her; "Oh, my Phoebus!" Then she fell back once more
into her immobility and her marble silence. This spectacle would have
rent any other heart than those of her judges. One would have pronounced
her a poor sinful soul, being tortured by Satan beneath the scarlet
wicket of hell. The miserable body which that frightful swarm of saws,
wheels, and racks were about to clasp in their clutches, the being
who was about to be manipulated by the harsh hands of executioners
and pincers, was that gentle, white, fragile creature, a poor grain of
millet which human justice was handing over to the terrible mills of
torture to grind. Meanwhile, the callous hands of Pierrat Torterue's
assistants had bared that charming leg, that tiny foot, which had so
often amazed the passers-by with their delicacy and beauty, in the
squares of Paris.

"'Tis a shame!" muttered the tormentor, glancing at these graceful and
delicate forms.

Had the archdeacon been present, he certainly would have recalled at
that moment his symbol of the spider and the fly. Soon the unfortunate
girl, through a mist which spread before her eyes, beheld the boot
approach; she soon beheld her foot encased between iron plates disappear
in the frightful apparatus. Then terror restored her strength.

"Take that off!" she cried angrily; and drawing herself up, with her
hair all dishevelled: "Mercy!"

She darted from the bed to fling herself at the feet of the king's
procurator, but her leg was fast in the heavy block of oak and iron, and
she sank down upon the boot, more crushed than a bee with a lump of lead
on its wing.

At a sign from Charmolue, she was replaced on the bed, and two coarse
hands adjusted to her delicate waist the strap which hung from the
ceiling.

"For the last time, do you confess the facts in the case?" demanded
Charmolue, with his imperturbable benignity.

"I am innocent."

"Then, mademoiselle, how do you explain the circumstance laid to your
charge?"

"Alas, monseigneur, I do not know."

"S