“I have already said,” she answered brokenly, “I do not know. It is a priest, a priest who is unknown to me; a devilish priest who persecutes me—”

“There you have it,” interrupted the judge; “the spectre-monk.”

“Oh, my lords, have pity! I am but a poor girl— ”

“Of Egypt,” said the judge.

Maître Jacques Charmolue here interposed in his mildest tones: “In view of the painful obstinacy of the accused, I demand that she be put to the question.”

“Accorded,” said the President.

A shudder ran through the frame of the hapless girl. She rose, however, at the order of the partisan- bearers, and walked with a tolerably firm step, preceded by Charmolue and the priests of the Office and between two lines of halberds, towards a masked door, which suddenly opened and shut again upon her, seeming to the dejected Gringoire like a horrible maw swallowing her up.

After she had disappeared a plaintive bleat was heard. It was the little goat.

The sitting was suspended. A councillor having observed that the gentleman were fatigued, and that it would be a long time to wait till the torture was over, the President replied that a magistrate should be able to sacrifice himself to his duty.

“The troublesome and vexatious jade,” said an old judge, “to force us to apply the question when we have not yet supped!”