great chamber,
and then another corridor.

Far off, through the bars, by the torchlight, he perceived the great
crowd of which he had caught a glimpse before.

He had passed right through the castle, and issued on a terrace; thence
he perceived the esplanade, a scaffold, men, and all around the crowd.

Gaston tried to cry, but no one heard him, he waved his handkerchief,
but no one saw him; another man mounts on the scaffold, and Gaston
uttered a cry and threw himself down below.

He had leaped from the top of the rampart to the bottom. A sentinel
tried to stop him, but he threw him down, and descended a sort of
staircase which led down to the square, and at the bottom was a sort of
barricade of wagons. Gaston bent down and glided between the wheels.

Beyond the barricade were all St. Simon's grenadiers--a living hedge;
Gaston, with a desperate effort, broke through the line, and found
himself inside the ring.

The soldiers, seeing a man, pale and breathless, with a paper in his
hand, allowed him to pass.

All of a sudden he stopped, as if struck by lightning. Talhouet!--he saw
him!--Talhouet kneeling on the scaffold!

"Stop! stop!" cried Gaston, with all the energy of despair.

But even as he spoke the sword of the executioner flashed like
lightning--a dull and heavy blow followed--and a terrible shudder ran
through all the crowd.

The young man's shriek was lost in the general cry arising from twenty
thousand palpitating breasts at once.

He had arrived a moment too late--Talhouet was dead: and, as he lifted
his eyes, he saw in the hand of the headsman the bleeding head of his
friend--and then, in the nobility of his heart, he felt that, one being
dead, they all should die. That not one of them would accept a pardon
which arrived a head too late. He looked around him; Du Couedic mounted
in his turn, clothed with his black mantle, bareheaded and bare-necked.

Gaston remembered that he also had a black mantle, and that his head and
neck were bare, and he laughed convulsively.

He saw what remained for him to do, as one sees some wild landscape by
the lightning's livid gleam--'tis awful, but grand.

Du Couedic bends down; but, as he bends, he cries--"See how they
recompense the services of faithful soldiers!--see how you keep your
promises, oh ye cowards of Bretagne!"

Two assistants force him on his knees; the sword of the executioner
whirls round and gleams again, and Du Couedic lies beside Talhouet.