lugubrious outline of the gibbet, erected and first used by Enguerrand de Marigny. Never before had it been so adorned.
The ushers and guards went forward and made a wide circle around the enclosure. As they drew near, the crows perched on the gibbet flew away with croakings of despair.
The gibbet erected at Montfaucon generally offered behind its posts a shelter for the dogs that gathered there attracted by frequent prey, and for philosophic bandits who came to ponder on the sad chances of fortune.
That day at Montfaucon there were apparently neither dogs nor bandits. The ushers and guards had scared away the dogs together with the crows, and the bandits had mingled with the throng so as to make some of the lucky hits which are the more cheerful vicissitudes of their profession.
The procession moved forward; the King and Catharine arrived first, then came the Duc d’Anjou, Duc d’Alençon, the King of Navarre, Monsieur de Guise, and their followers, then Madame Marguerite, the Duchesse de Nevers, and all the women who composed what was called the queen’s flying squadron; then the pages, squires, attendants, and people — in all ten thousand persons.
From the principal gibbet hung a misshapen mass, a black corpse stained with coagulated blood and mud, whitened by layers of dust. The carcass was headless, and it was hung by the legs, and the populace, ingenious as it always is, had replaced the head with a bunch of straw, to which was fastened a mask; and in the mouth of this mask some wag, knowing the admiral’s habit, had introduced a toothpick.
At once appalling and singular was the spectacle of all these elegant lords and handsome ladies like a procession painted by Goya, riding along in the midst of those blackened carcasses and gibbets, with their long lean arms.
The noisier the exultation of the spectators, the more strikingly it contrasted with the melancholy silence and cold insensibility of those corpses — objects of ridicule which made even the jesters shudder.
Many could scarcely endure this horrible spectacle, and by his pallor might be distinguished, in the centre of collected Huguenots, Henry, who, great as was his power of self-control and the degree of dissimulation conferred on him by Heaven, could no longer bear it.
He made as his excuse the strong stench which emanated from all those human remains, and going to Charles, who, with Catharine, had stopped in front of the admiral’s dead body, he said:
“Sire, does not your Majesty find that this poor carcass smells so strong that it is impossible to remain near it any longer?”
“Do you find it so, Harry?” inquired the King, his eyes sparkling with ferocious joy.
“Yes, sire.”
“Well, then, I am not of your opinion; a dead enemy’s corpse always smells sweet.”
“Faith, sire,” said Tavannes, “since your Majesty knew that we were going to make a little call on the admiral, you should have invited Pierre Ronsard, your teacher of poetry; he would have extemporized an epitaph for the old Gaspard.”
“There is no need of him for that,” said Charles IX., after an instant’s thought:
“Ci-gît — mais c’est mal entendu, Pour lui le mot est trop honnête — Ici l’amiral est pendu Par les pieds, à faute de tête.“4
“Bravo! bravo!” cried the Catholic gentlemen in unison, while the collected Huguenots scowled and kept silent, and Henry, as he was talking with Marguerite and Madame de Nevers, pretended not to have heard.
“Come, come, sir!” said Catharine, who, in spite of the perfumes with which she was covered, began to be made ill by the odor. “Come, however agreeable company may be, it must be left at last; let us therefore say good-by to the admiral, and return to Paris.”
She nodded ironically as when one takes leave of a friend, and, taking the head of the column, turned to the road, while the cortège defiled before Coligny’s corpse.
The sun was sinking in the horizon.
The throng followed fast on their majesties so as to enjoy to the very end all the splendors of the procession and the details of the spectacle; the thieves followed the populace, so that in ten minutes after the King’s departure there was no person about the admiral’s mutilated carcass on which now blew the first breezes of the evening.
When we say no person, we err. A gentleman mounted on a black horse, and who, doubtless, could not contemplate at his ease the black mutilated trunk when it was honored by the presence of princes, had remained behind, and was examining, in all their details, the bolts, stone pillars, chains, and in fact the gibbet, which no doubt appeared to him (but lately arrived in Paris, and ignorant of the perfection to which things could be brought in the capital) the paragon of all that man could invent in the way of awful ugliness.
We need hardly inform our friends that this man was M. Annibal de Coconnas.
A woman’s practised eye had vainly looked for him in the cavalcade and had searched among the ranks without being able to find him.
Monsieur de Coconnas, as we have said, was standing ecstatically contemplating Enguerrand de Marigny’s work.
But this woman was not the only person who was trying to find Monsieur de Coconnas. Another gentleman, noticeable for his white satin doublet and gallant plume, after looking toward the front and on all sides, bethought him to look back, and saw Coconnas’s tall figure and the silhouette of his gigantic horse standing out strongly against the sky reddened by the last rays of the setting sun.
Then the gentleman in the white satin doublet turned out from the road taken by the majority of the company, struck into a narrow footpath, and describing a curve rode back toward the gibbet.
Almost at the same time the lady whom we have recognized as the Duchesse de Nevers, just as we recognized the tall gentleman on the black horse as Coconnas, rode alongside of Marguerite and said to her:
“We were both mistaken, Marguerite, for the Piedmontese has remained behind and Monsieur de la Mole has gone back to meet him.”
“By Heaven!” exclaimed Marguerite, laughing, “then something is going to happen. Faith, I confess I should not be sorry to revise my opinion about him.”
Marguerite then turned her horse and witnessed the manoeuvre which we have described La Mole as performing.
The two princesses left the procession; the opportunity was most favorable: they were passing by a hedge-lined footpath which led up the hill, and in doing so passed within thirty yards of the gibbet. Madame de Nevers whispered a word in her captain’s ear, Marguerite beckoned to Gillonne, and the four turned into this cross path and went and hid behind the shrubbery nearest to the place where the scene which they evidently expected to witness was to take place. It was about thirty yards, as we have already said, from the spot where Coconnas in a state of ecstasy was gesticulating before the admiral.
Marguerite dismounted, Madame de Nevers and Gillonne did the same; the captain then got down and took the bridles of the four horses. Thick green furnished the three women a seat such as princesses often seek in vain. The glade before them was so open that they would not miss the slightest detail.
La Mole had accomplished his circuit. He rode up slowly and took his stand behind Coconnas; then stretching out his
