At the clanking of their frightful irons, the unhappy child quivered like a dead frog which is being galvanized. "Oh!"she murmured, so low that no one heard her; "Oh, my Phoebus!"Then she fell back once more into her immobility and her marble silence. This spectacle would have rent any other heart than those of her judges. One would have pronounced her a poor sinful soul, being tortured by Satan beneath the scarlet wicket of hell. The miserable body which that frightful swarm of saws, wheels, and racks were about to clasp in their clutches, the being who was about to be manipulated by the harsh hands of executioners and pincers, was that gentle, white, fragile creature, a poor grain of millet which human justice was handing over to the terrible mills of torture to grind. Meanwhile, the callous hands of Pierrat Torterue's assistants had bared that charming leg, that tiny foot, which had so often amazed the passers-by with their delicacy and beauty, in the squares of Paris.
"'Tis a shame!" muttered the tormentor, glancing at these graceful and delicate forms.
Had the archdeacon been present, he certainly would have recalled at that moment his symbol of the spider and the fly.
Soon the unfortunate girl, through a mist which spread before her eyes, beheld the boot approach; she soon beheld her foot encased between iron plates disappear in the frightful apparatus.
Then terror restored her strength.
"Take that off!" she cried angrily; and drawing herself up, with her hair all dishevelled: "Mercy!"She darted from the bed to fling herself at the feet of the king's procurator, but her leg was fast in the heavy block of oak and iron, and she sank down upon the boot, more crushed than a bee with a lump of lead on its wing.
At a sign from Charmolue, she was replaced on the bed, and two coarse hands adjusted to her delicate waist the strap which hung from the ceiling.
"For the last time, do you confess the facts in the case?"demanded Charmolue, with his imperturbable benignity.
"I am innocent."
"Then, mademoiselle, how do you explain the circumstance laid to your charge?""Alas, monseigneur, I do not know."
"So you deny them?"
"All!"
"Proceed," said Charmolue to Pierrat.
Pierrat turned the handle of the screw-jack, the boot was contracted, and the unhappy girl uttered one of those horrible cries which have no orthography in any human language.
"Stop!" said Charmolue to Pierrat. "Do you confess?"he said to the gypsy.
"All!" cried the wretched girl. "I confess! I confess! Mercy!"She had not calculated her strength when she faced the torture. Poor child, whose life up to that time had been so joyous, so pleasant, so sweet, the first pain had conquered her!
"Humanity forces me to tell you," remarked the king's procurator, "that in confessing, it is death that you must expect.""I certainly hope so!" said she. And she fell back upon the leather bed, dying, doubled up, allowing herself to hang suspended from the strap buckled round her waist.
"Come, fair one, hold up a little," said Master Pierrat, raising her. "You have the air of the lamb of the Golden Fleece which hangs from Monsieur de Bourgogne's neck."Jacques Charmolue raised his voice, "Clerk, write. Young Bohemian maid, you confess your participation in the feasts, witches' sabbaths, and witchcrafts of hell, with ghosts, hags, and vampires? Answer.""Yes," she said, so low that her words were lost in her breathing.
"You confess to having seen the ram which Beelzebub causes to appear in the clouds to call together the witches' sabbath, and which is beheld by socerers alone?""Yes."
"You confess to having adored the heads of Bophomet, those abominable idols of the Templars?""Yes."
"To having had habitual dealings with the devil under the form of a goat familiar, joined with you in the suit?""Yes."
"Lastly, you avow and confess to having, with the aid of the demon, and of the phantom vulgarly known as the surly monk, on the night of the twenty-ninth of March last, murdered and assassinated a captain named Phoebus de Chateaupers?"She raised her large, staring eyes to the magistrate, and replied, as though mechanically, without convulsion or agitation,--"Yes."
It was evident that everything within her was broken.
"Write, clerk," said Charmolue. And, addressing the torturers, "Release the prisoner, and take her back to the court."When the prisoner had been "unbooted," the procurator of the ecclesiastical court examined her foot, which was still swollen with pain. "Come," said he, "there's no great harm done. You shrieked in good season. You could still dance, my beauty!"Then he turned to his acolytes of the officiality,--"Behold justice enlightened at last! This is a solace, gentlemen! Madamoiselle will bear us witness that we have acted with all possible gentleness."
