Charmolue hesitated a moment, with the doubtful face of a poet in search of a rhyme.
“With the buskin,” said he at last.
The unfortunate girl felt herself so wholly forsaken by God and man, that her head fell upon her breast like a lifeless thing destitute of all strength.
The torturer and the doctor approached her together. At the same time the two assistants began to rummage in their hideous arsenal.
At the clink of that frightful heap of iron, the unhappy creature trembled like a dead frog when galvanism is applied to it. “Oh,” she murmured in so low a tone that no one heard it, “oh, my Ph?bus!” Then she relapsed into her former immobility and marble-like silence. The sight would have wrung any heart save the hearts of judges. She seemed some poor sinning soul questioned by Satan at the scarlet gates of hell. Could it be that this gentle, fair, and fragile creature, a poor grain of millet given over by human justice to be ground in the fearful mills of torture, was the miserable body upon which that frightful array of saws, wheels, and racks was to fasten,—the being whom the rough hands of executioners and pincers were to handle?
But the horny fingers of Pierrat Torterue’s assistants had already brutally bared that charming leg and that tiny foot, which had so often amazed the by-standers with their grace and beauty in the streets of Paris.
“‘Tis a pity!” growled the torturer, as he looked at the dainty and delicate limb.
Had the archdeacon been present, he would certainly have recalled at this moment his symbol of the spider and the fly. Soon the wretched victim saw, through a cloud which spread before her eyes, the buskin approach; soon she saw her foot, locked between the iron-bound boards, hidden by the hideous machine. Then terror restored her strength.
“Take it off!” she cried frantically; and starting up all disheveled, “Mercy!”
She sprang from the bed to fling herself at the feet of the king’s proxy; but her leg was held by the heavy mass of wood and iron, and she sank down upon the buskin, more helpless than a bee with a leaden weight upon its wing.
At a sign from Charmolue she was replaced upon the bed, and two coarse hands bound about her slender waist the strap which hung from the ceiling.
“For the last time, do you confess the facts in the case?” asked Charmolue with his unshaken benevolence.
“I am innocent.”
“Then, young lady, how do you explain the circumstances brought against you?”
“Alas! sir, I do not know!”
“Then you deny everything?”
“Everything!”
“Proceed,” said Charmolue to Pierrat.
Pierrat turned the handle of the screw-jack, the buskin contracted, and the wretched girl uttered one of those terrible shrieks which defy all orthography in any human language.
“Stop!” said Charmolue to Pierrat. “Do you confess?” said he to the gipsy.
“Everything!” cried the miserable girl. “I confess, I confess! Mercy!”
She had not calculated her strength when she braved the torture. Poor child! her life thus far had been so joyous, so sweet, so smooth, the first pang vanquished her.
“Humanity compels me to tell you,” remarked the king’s proxy, “that if you confess, you can look for nothing but death.”
“I hope so, indeed!” said she. And she fell back upon the leather bed, almost fainting, bent double, suspended by the strap buckled around her waist.
“There, my beauty, hold up a little,” said Master Pierrat, lifting her. “You look like the golden sheep which hangs on my Lord of Burgundy’s neck.”
Jacques Charmolue raised his voice,— “Clerk, write. Young gipsy girl, you confess your complicity in the love-feasts, revels, and evil practices of hell, with wizards, demons, and witches? Answer!”
“Yes,” said she, in so low a voice that it was scarcely more than a whisper.
“You confess that you have seen the ram which Beelzebub reveals in the clouds to summon his followers to the Witches’ Sabbath, and which is only seen by sorcerers?”
“Yes.”
“You confess that you have worshiped the heads of Bophomet, those abominable idols of the Templars?”
“Yes.”
“That you have held constant intercourse with the devil in the shape of a tame goat, included in the trial?”
“Yes.”
“And, finally, you acknowledge and confess that, with the help of the foul fiend and the phantom commonly called the goblin monk, on the night of the 29th of March last you did murder and assassinate a certain captain named Ph?bus de Chateaupers?”