exsurge, Domine; salvum me
fac, Deus_!"

"_Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intraverunt aquoe usque ad animam meam_.

"_Infixus sum in limo profundi; et non est substantia_."

At the same time, another voice, separate from the choir, intoned upon
the steps of the chief altar, this melancholy offertory,--"_Qui verbum
meum audit, et credit ei qui misit me, habet vitam oeternam et in
judicium non venit; sed transit a morte im vitam_*."

* "He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me,
hath eternal life, and hath not come into condemnation; but is passed
from death to life."

This chant, which a few old men buried in the gloom sang from afar over
that beautiful creature, full of youth and life, caressed by the warm
air of spring, inundated with sunlight was the mass for the dead.

The people listened devoutly.

The unhappy girl seemed to lose her sight and her consciousness in
the obscure interior of the church. Her white lips moved as though in
prayer, and the headsman's assistant who approached to assist her
to alight from the cart, heard her repeating this word in a low
tone,--"Phoebus."

They untied her hands, made her alight, accompanied by her goat, which
had also been unbound, and which bleated with joy at finding itself
free: and they made her walk barefoot on the hard pavement to the foot
of the steps leading to the door. The rope about her neck trailed behind
her. One would have said it was a serpent following her.

Then the chanting in the church ceased. A great golden cross and a row
of wax candles began to move through the gloom. The halberds of the
motley beadles clanked; and, a few moments later, a long procession of
priests in chasubles, and deacons in dalmatics, marched gravely towards
the condemned girl, as they drawled their song, spread out before her
view and that of the crowd. But her glance rested on the one who marched
at the head, immediately after the cross-bearer.

"Oh!" she said in a low voice, and with a shudder, "'tis he again! the
priest!"

It was in fact, the archdeacon. On his left he had the sub-chanter, on
his right, the chanter, armed with his official wand. He advanced with
head thrown back, his eyes fixed and wide open, intoning in a strong
voice,--

"_De ventre inferi clamavi, et exaudisti vocem meam_.

"_Et projecisti me in profundum in corde mans, et flumem circumdedit
me_*."

* "Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest
my voice