"Let us hear the man," an officer who was in command of the Regiment de Montemar said. "If he endeavours to lie or to deceive us the----" and he glanced towards the executioner as he leant against the column.
"Bring in the man, Francbois," De Violaine said now, addressing some of the soldiers who were near Bevill, and a few moments later the already condemned traitor stood before those who had judged him yesterday.
Whether it was the horror of that condemnation which now sat heavily on his soul, or whether it was the fear of what might be the outcome of any evidence he should soon give--he had glanced affrightedly at the rack and the great water-pots and the grim attendant of both as he was brought in--he presented now a pitiable aspect. His face was colourless, or almost ashy grey, and resembled more the appearance of a terrified Asiatic, or an Asiatic whose blood was mixed with that of some white race, than the appearance of a European. His eyes had in them the terrified look of the hare as it glances back, only to see the hound that courses it upon its flank; his whole frame, in its tremblings and flaccidity, bespoke the awful terror that possessed him.
"_Pasquedieu!_" the young Duc de Guise muttered, as his eyes glanced from the shivering object to the tall, sturdy form and calm, unruffled, though solemn, countenance of the man against whom the other was to testify. "_Pasquedieu!_ that this one should have his life in the hand of such as that." And, though those by his side did not hear the words muttered beneath the Duke's slight moustache, it may well be that their thoughts kept company with his.
"Tell your tale again as you told it to me when you came here to inform against this Englishman," De Violaine said now in an icy tone; "and tell it truthfully, remembering that----" but he, too, paused in his words, the sentence being finished by the one glance he cast towards the column down the hall.
Then, in a voice that trembled in unison with the tremors of his frame, though it gained strength--or was it audacity?--as he proceeded without interruption from any of those listeners seated before him, Francbois told the same story he had told at first to the Governor, Only, if he were to die, as die he now knew he must, he was resolved that he would leave no loophole through which this other--this accursed, contemptuous Englishman who stood by his side so calmly, as though he, too, were a judge and not a prisoner--should escape and live.