“Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intraverunt aqu? usque ad animam meam.
“Infixus sum in limo profundi; et non est substantia.”de
At the same time another voice, apart from the choir, intoned from the steps of the high altar this mournful offertory:— “Qui verbum meum audit, et credit ei qui misit me, habet vitam, ?ternam et in judicium non venit; sed transit a morte in vitam.”df
This chant, sung afar off by a few old men lost in the darkness, over that beautiful being full of life and youth, caressed by the warm air of spring, bathed in sunshine, was a part of the mass for the dead.
The people listened quietly.
The wretched victim, in her terror, seemed to lose all power of sight and thought in the dark interior of the church. Her pale lips moved as if in prayer, and when the hangman’s assistant approached to help her down from the cart, he heard her murmur in an undertone the word “Ph?bus.”
Her hands were untied, and she alighted, accompanied by her goat, which was also unbound, and which bleated with delight at regaining its freedom; and she was then led bare-footed over the hard pavement to the foot of the steps leading to the porch. The cord about her neck trailed behind her, like a serpent pursuing her.
Then the chanting in the church ceased. A great gold cross and a file of tapers began to move in the gloom; the halberds of the beadles in their motley dress clashed against the floor; and a few moments later a long procession of priests in chasubles and deacons in dalmatics marched solemnly towards the prisoner, singing psalms as they came. But her eyes were fixed upon him who walked at their head, immediately after the cross-bearer.
“Oh,” she whispered shudderingly, “there he is again! the priest!”
It was indeed the archdeacon. On his left was the assistant precentor, and on his right the precentor himself, armed with the wand of his office. He advanced, with head thrown back, eyes fixed and opened wide, chanting in a loud voice:— “De ventre inferi clamavi, et exaudisti vocem meam.
“Et projecisti me in profundum in corde maris, et flumem circumdedit me.”dg
When he appeared in full daylight under the lofty pointed arch of the portal, wrapped in a vast cope of cloth of silver embroidered with a black cross, he was so pale that more than one of the crowd thought that he must be one of those marble bishops kneeling upon the monuments in the choir, who had risen and come forth to receive on the threshold of the tomb her who was about to die.
She, no less pale and no less rigid, hardly noticed that a heavy lighted taper of yellow wax had been placed in her hand; she did not hear the shrill voice of the clerk reading the fatal lines of the penance; when she was told to answer “Amen,” she answered “Amen.” Nor was she restored to any slight sense of life and strength until she saw the priest sign to her jailers to retire, and himself advance alone towards her.
Then the blood boiled in her veins, and a lingering spark of indignation was rekindled in that already numb, cold soul.
The archdeacon approached her slowly; even in this extremity she saw him gaze upon her nakedness with eyes glittering with passion, jealousy, and desire. Then he said to her aloud, “Young girl, have you asked God to pardon your faults and failings?”
He bent to her ear and added （the spectators supposed that he was receiving her last confession）。 “Will you be mine? I can save you even yet!”
She gazed steadily at him: “Begone, demon! or I will denounce you!”
He smiled a horrible smile. “No one will believe you; you would only add a scandal to a crime. Answer quickly! Will you be mine?”
“What have you done with my Ph?bus?”
“He is dead!” said the priest.
At this moment the miserable archdeacon raised his head mechanically, and saw at the opposite end of the square, upon the balcony of the Gondelaurier house, the captain standing beside Fleur-de-Lys. He staggered, passed his hand over his eyes, looked again, murmured a curse, and all his features were violently convulsed.
“So be it! die yourself!” he muttered. “No one else shall possess you.”
Then, raising his hand above the gipsy girl’s head, he exclaimed in funereal tones, “I nunc, anima anceps, et sit tibi Deus misericors!”dh
This was the awful formula with which these somber ceremonies were wont to close. It was the signal agreed upon between the priest and the executioner.
The people knelt.
“Kyrie, eleison,” said the priests beneath the arch of the portal.
“Kyrie, eleison,” repeated the multitude with a noise which rose above their heads like the roar of a tempestuous sea.