; 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 monstrous confession from the accused, when
the obscurity which surrounded the church suddenly ceased. Its two great
doors were thrown open; and by the light of an infinite number of
flambeaux, appeared all the judges and ecclesiastics, surrounded by
guards. Among them was Urbain, supported, or rather carried, by six men
clothed as Black Penitents--for his limbs, bound with bandages saturated
with blood, seemed broken and incapable of supporting him. It was at most
two hours since Cinq-Mars had seen him, and yet he could hardly recognize
the face he had so closely observed at the trial. All color, all
roundness of form had disappeared from it; a livid pallor covered a skin
yellow and shining like ivory; the blood seemed to have left his veins;
all the life that remained within him shone from his dark eyes, which
appeared to have grown twice as large as before, as he looked languidly
around him; his long, chestnut hair hung loosely down his neck and over a
white shirt, which entirely covered him--or rather a sort of robe with
large sleeves, and of a yellowish tint, with an odor of sulphur about it;
a long, thick cord encircled his neck and fell upon his breast. He looked
like an apparition; but it was the apparition of a martyr.

Urbain stopped, or, rather, was set down upon the peristyle of the
church; the Capuchin Lactantius placed a lighted torch in his right hand,
and held it there, as he said to him, with his hard inflexibility:

"Do penance, and ask pardon of God for thy crime of magic."

The unhappy man raised his voice with great difficulty, and with his eyes
to heaven said:

"In the name of the living God, I cite thee, Laubardemont, false judge,
to appear before Him in three years. They have taken away my confessor,
and I have been fain to pour out my sins into the bosom of God Himself,
for my enemies surround me. I call that God of mercy to witness I never
have dealt in magic. I have known no mysteries but those of the Catholic
religion, apostolic and Roman, in which I die; I have sinned much against
myself, but never against God and our Lord--"

"Cease!" cried the Capuch