Catherine De Medici, Honoré de Balzac [best short novels of all time TXT] 📗

were given to you without being sealed or enveloped, contained a treaty between the rebels and Queen Catherine. You must have seen that they exposed you to the punishment of all those who assist in a rebellion."

"Yes."

"The persons who persuaded you to this act of high treason must have promised you rewards and the protection of the queen-mother."

"I did it out of attachment to Chaudieu, the only person whom I saw in the matter."

"Do you persist in saying you did not see the Prince de Conde?"

"Yes."

"The Prince de Conde did not tell you that the queen-mother was inclined to enter into his views against the Messieurs de Guise?"

"I did not see him."

"Take care! one of your accomplices, La Renaudie, has been arrested. Strong as he is, he was not able to bear the 'question,' which will now be put to you; he confessed at last that both he and the Prince de Conde had an interview with you. If you wish to escape the torture of the question, I exhort you to tell me the simple truth. Perhaps you will thus obtain your full pardon."

Christophe answered that he could not state a thing of which he had no knowledge, or give himself accomplices when he had none. Hearing these words, the provost-marshal signed to the executioner and retired himself to the inner room. At that fatal sign Christophe's brows contracted, his forehead worked with nervous convulsion, as he prepared himself to suffer. His hands closed with such violence that the nails entered the flesh without his feeling them. Three men seized him, took him to the camp bed and laid him there, letting his legs hang down. While the executioner fastened him to the rough bedstead with strong cords, the assistants bound his legs into the "boots." Presently the cords were tightened, by means of a wrench, without the pressure causing much pain to the young Reformer. When each leg was thus held as it were in a vice, the executioner grasped his hammer and picked up the wedges, looking alternately at the victim and at the clerk.

"Do you persist in your denial?" asked the clerk.

"I have told the truth," replied Christophe.

"Very well. Go on," said the clerk, closing his eyes.

The cords were tightened with great force. This was perhaps the most painful moment of the torture; the flesh being suddenly compressed, the blood rushed violently toward the breast. The poor boy could not restrain a dreadful cry and seemed about to faint. The doctor was called in. After feeling Christophe's pulse, he told the executioner to wait a quarter of an hour before driving the first wedge in, to let the action of the blood subside and allow the victim to recover his full sensitiveness. The clerk suggested, kindly, that if he could not bear this beginning of sufferings which he could not escape, it would be better to reveal all at once; but Christophe made no reply except to say, "The king's tailor! the king's tailor!"

"What do you mean by those words?" asked the clerk.

"Seeing what torture I must bear," said Christophe, slowly, hoping to gain time to rest, "I call up all my strength, and try to increase it by thinking of the martyrdom borne by the king's tailor for the holy cause of the Reformation, when the question was applied to him in presence of Madame la Duchesse de Valentinois and the king. I shall try to be worthy of him."

While the physician exhorted the unfortunate lad not to force them to have recourse to more violent measures, the cardinal and the duke, impatient to know the result of the interrogations, entered the hall and themselves asked Christophe to speak the truth, immediately. The young man repeated the only confession he had allowed himself to make, which implicated no one but Chaudieu. The princes made a sign, on which the executioner and his assistant seized their hammers, taking each a wedge, which then they drove in between the joints, standing one to right, the other to left of their victim; the executioner's wedge was driven in at the knees, his assistant's at the ankles.

The eyes of all present fastened on those of Christophe, and he, no doubt excited by the presence of those great personages, shot forth such burning glances that they appeared to have all the brilliancy of flame. As the third and fourth wedges were driven in, a dreadful groan escaped him. When he saw the executioner take up the wedges for the "extraordinary question" he said no word and made no sound, but his eyes took on so terrible a fixity, and he cast upon the two great princes who were watching him a glance so penetrating, that the duke and cardinal were forced to drop their eyes. Philippe le Bel met with the same resistance when the torture of the pendulum was applied in his presence to the Templars. That punishment consisted in striking the victim on the breast with one arm of the balance pole with which money is coined, its end being covered with a pad of leather. One of the knights thus tortured, looked so intently at the king that Philippe could not detach his eyes from him. At the third blow the king left the chamber on hearing the knight summon him to appear within a year before the judgment-seat of God,--as, in fact, he did. At the fifth blow, the first of the "extraordinary question," Christophe said to the cardinal: "Monseigneur, put an end to my torture; it is useless."

The cardinal and the duke re-entered the adjoining hall, and Christophe distinctly heard the following words said by Queen Catherine: "Go on; after all, he is only a heretic."

She judged it prudent to be more stern to her accomplice than the executioners themselves.

The sixth and seventh wedges were driven in without a word of complaint from Christophe. His face shone with extraordinary brilliancy, due, no doubt, to the excess of strength which his fanatic devotion gave him. Where else but in the feelings of the soul can we find the power necessary to bear such sufferings? Finally, he smiled when he saw the executioner lifting the eighth and last wedge. This horrible torture had lasted by this time over an hour.

The clerk now went to call the physician that he might decide whether the eighth wedge could be driven in without endangering the life of the victim. During this delay the duke returned to look at Christophe.

"_Ventre-de-biche_! you are a fine fellow," he said to him, bending down to whisper the words. "I love brave men. Enter my service, and you shall be rich and happy; my favors shall heal those wounded limbs. I do not propose to you any baseness; I will not ask you to return to your party and betray its plans,--there are always traitors enough for that, and the proof is in the prisons of Blois; tell me only on what terms are the queen-mother and the Prince de Conde?"

"I know nothing about it, monseigneur," replied Christophe Lecamus.

The physician came, examined the victim, and said that he could bear the eighth wedge.

"Then insert it," said the cardinal. "After all, as the queen says, he is only a heretic," he added, looking at Christophe with a dreadful smile.

At this moment Catherine came with slow steps from the adjoining apartment and stood before Christophe, coldly observing him. Instantly she was the object of the closest attention on the part of the two brothers, who watched alternately the queen and her accomplice. On this solemn test the whole future of that ambitious woman depended; she felt the keenest admiration for Christophe, yet she gazed sternly at him; she hated the Guises, and she smiled upon them!

"Young man," said the queen, "confess that you have seen the Prince de Conde, and you will be richly rewarded."

"Ah! what a business this is for you, madame!" cried Christophe, pitying her.

The queen quivered.

"He insults me!" she exclaimed. "Why do you not hang him?" she cried, turning to the two brothers, who stood thoughtful.

"What a woman!" said the duke in a glance at his brother, consulting him by his eye, and leading him to the window.

"I shall stay in France and be revenged upon them," thought the queen. "Come, make him confess, or let him die!" she said aloud, addressing Montresor.

The provost-marshal turned away his eyes, the executioners were busy with the wedges; Catherine was free to cast one glance upon the martyr, unseen by others, which fell on Christophe like the dew. The eyes of the great queen seemed to him moist; two tears were in them, but they did not fall. The wedges were driven; a plank was broken by the blow. Christophe gave one dreadful cry, after which he was silent; his face shone,--he believed he was dying.

"Let him die?" said the cardinal, echoing the queen's last words with a sort of irony; "no, no! don't break that thread," he said to the provost.

The duke and the cardinal consulted together in a low voice.

"What is to be done with him?" asked the executioner.

"Send him to the prison at Orleans," said the duke, addressing Monsieur de Montresor; "and don't hang him without my order."

The extreme sensitiveness to which Christophe's internal organism had been brought, increased by a resistance which called into play every power of the human body, existed to the same degree, in his senses. He alone heard the following words whispered by the Duc de Guise in the ear of his brother the cardinal:

"I don't give up all hope of getting the truth out of that little fellow yet."

When the princes had left the hall the executioners unbound the legs of their victim roughly and without compassion.

"Did any one ever see a criminal with such strength?" said the chief executioner to his aids. "The rascal bore that last wedge when he ought to have died; I've lost the price of his body."

"Unbind me gently; don't make me suffer, friends," said poor Christophe. "Some day I will reward you--"

"Come, come, show some humanity," said the physician. "Monseigneur esteems the young man, and told me to look after him."

"I am going to Amboise with my assistants,--take care of him yourself," said the executioner, brutally. "Besides, here comes the jailer."

The executioner departed, leaving Christophe in the hands of the soft-spoken doctor, who by the aid of Christophe's future jailer, carried the poor boy to a bed, brought him some broth, helped him to swallow it, sat down beside him, felt his pulse, and tried to comfort him.

"You won't die of this," he said. "You ought to feel great inward comfort, knowing that you have done your duty.--The queen-mother bids me take care of you," he added in a whisper.

"The queen is very good," said Christophe, whose terrible sufferings had developed an extraordinary lucidity in his mind, and who, after enduring such unspeakable sufferings, was determined not to compromise the results of his devotion. "But she might have spared me much agony be telling my persecutors herself the secrets that I know nothing about, instead of urging them on."

Hearing that reply, the doctor took his cap and cloak and left Christophe, rightly judging that he could worm nothing out of a man of that stamp. The jailer of Blois now ordered the poor lad to be carried away on a stretcher by four men, who took him to the prison in the town, where Christophe immediately