s for a moment
without being observed. As he was drying his eyes, the assistant gave
him his hand to help him down. Meanwhile the marquise was mounting the
ladder with the executioner, and when they reached the platform he told
her to kneel down in front of a block which lay across it. Then the
doctor, who had mounted with a step less firm than hers, came and knelt
beside her, but turned in the other direction, so that he might whisper
in her ear--that is, the marquise faced the river, and the doctor faced
the Hotel de Ville. Scarcely had they taken their place thus when the
man took down her hair and began cutting it at the back and at the sides,
making her turn her head this way and that, at times rather roughly; but
though this ghastly toilet lasted almost half an hour, she made no
complaint, nor gave any sign of pain but her silent tears. When her hair
was cut, he tore open the top of the shirt, so as to uncover the
shoulders, and finally bandaged her eyes, and lifting her face by the
chin, ordered her to hold her head erect. She obeyed, unresisting, all
the time listening to the doctor's words and repeating them from time to
time, when they seemed suitable to her own condition. Meanwhile, at the
back of the scaffold, on which the stake was placed, stood the
executioner, glancing now and again at the folds of his cloak, where
there showed the hilt of a long, straight sabre, which he had carefully
concealed for fear Madame de Brinvilliers might see it when she mounted
the scaffold. When the doctor, having pronounced absolution, turned his
head and saw that the man was not yet armed, he uttered these prayers,
which she repeated after him: "Jesus, Son of David and Mary, have mercy
upon me; Mary, daughter of David and Mother of Jesus, pray for me; my
God, I abandon my body, which is but dust, that men may burn it and do
with it what they please, in the firm faith that it shall one day arise
and be reunited with my soul. I trouble not concerning my body; grant, O
God, that I yield up to Thee my soul, that it may enter into Thy rest;
receive it into Thy bosom; that it may dwell once more there, whence it
first descended; from Thee it came, to Thee returns; Thou art the source
and the beginning; be thou, O God, the centre and the end!"

The marquise had said these words when suddenly the doctor heard a dull
stroke like the sound of a chopper chopping meat upon a block: at that
moment she ceased to speak. The blade