receded, was strangely livid and unnatural in its appearance. Still it
did not seem that it was fear which had blanched his cheeks, and
stolen all the color from his compressed lip, for his eye was full of
a fierce, scornful light, and all his features were set and steady
with an expression of the calmest and most iron resolution.

As the fatal vehicle which bore him made its appearance on the
esplanade without the gates of the prison, a deep hum of satisfaction
ran through the assembled concourse, rising and deepening gradually
into a savage howl like that of a hungry tiger.

Then, then blazed out the haughty spirit, the indomitable pride of the
French noble! Then shame, and fear, and death itself, which he was
looking even now full in the face, were all forgotten, all absorbed in
his overwhelming scorn of the people!

The blood rushed in a torrent to his brow, his eye seemed to lighten
forth actual fire, as he raised his right hand aloft, loaded although
it was with such a mass of iron, as a Greek Athlete might have shunned
to lift, and shook it at the clamorous mob, with a glare of scorn and
fury that showed how, had he been at liberty, he would have dealt with
the revilers of his fallen state.

"_Sacre canaille!_" he hissed through his hard-set teeth, "back to
your gutters and your garbage, or follow, if you can, in silence, and
learn, if ye lack not courage to look on, how a man should die."

The reproof told; for, though at the contemptuous tone and fell insult
of the first words the clamor of the rabble route waxed wilder, there
was so much true dignity in the last sentiment he uttered, and the
fate to which he was going was so hideous, that a key was struck in
the popular heart, and thenceforth the tone of the spectators was
changed altogether.

It was the exultation of the people over the downfall and disgrace of
a noble that had found tongue in that savage conclamation--it was the
apprehension that his dignity, and the interest of his great name,
would win him pardon from the partial justice of the king, that had
rendered them pitiless and savage--and now that their own cruel will
was about to be gratified, as they beheld how dauntlessly the proud
lord went to a death of torture, they were stricken with a sort of
secret shame, and followed the dread train in sullen silence.

As the black car rolled onward, the haughty criminal turned his eyes
upward, perchance from a sentiment of pride, which rendered