As he concluded, and ere the silence could be broken, there came from the lips of Fleur de Mai an awful sound. One that was neither groan nor gasp nor wail, but a combination of all three. It seemed to those present that the ruffian was choking to death or that some terrible stroke had fallen on him. His great hands tore at the dirty, soiled lace around his neck and at the tags of his jacket, as though he would free his throat and obtain breath; his face was purple, his eyes started from his head, his great, coarse lips were swollen. And through those lips issued sounds that none could comprehend: a jargon of oaths and strange words jumbled pell-mell together without sense or coherence.
Standing by the chair from which he had risen, looking calmly at him, Boisfleury muttered inwardly, "The murder will out and Boisfleury pays for it!" and then turned away his face so that none should see the look upon it that he knew it bore.
Before the night came and ere that Commission had finished its labours much more had to be done. Based upon such matter as had been extracted from them in the numerous interrogatories to which they had all been subjected since their arrest, each and every one had been examined by the Court, while, with one exception--that of Van den Enden, who had not been believed and who was reserved for something still worse than examination, namely torture--what they had told or refused to tell was considered sufficient for the purposes of the Judges. One of the witnesses, however, had been spared the pain of testifying, since Boisfleury's evidence was considered enough--that one being Humphrey West.
"It is true," D'Aligre said to the others seated with him, "that he overheard the plot discussed at Basle. But all that he heard is nothing in comparison with what we now know to have taken place in Brussels, in Normandy, and elsewhere. He has endured enough. We may absolve him from further suffering."
"To which has to be added," remarked Laisné de la Marguerie, another of the Judges, a bitter, sarcastic man, "the fact that the young man stands high in the graces of his Majesty and is like to stand still higher ere long."
"While," said Quintin de Richebourg, _maître de requêtes_, a kindly hearted lawyer, "he was once a friend of, and befriended by, De Beaurepaire. No need to force him to speak against one who, at least, never harmed him."