The sun rose at this moment, and already there was a considerable crowd of people in the Place looking from a distance at what was being dragged over the ground to the gibbet. For this was Tristan’s way at executions. His one idea was to prevent the curious from coming too near.

There was nobody at the windows. Only, in the far distance, on the summit of that tower of Notre-Dame which looks towards the Grève, two men, their dark figures standing out black against the clear morning sky, appeared to be watching the scene.

Henriet Cousin stopped with his burden at the foot of the fatal ladder, and with faltering breath, such a pity did he think it, he passed the rope round the girl’s exquisite neck. At the horrible contact of the hempen rope, the poor child opened her eyes and beheld the skeleton arm of the gibbet extended over her head. She struggled to free herself, and cried out in an agonized voice: “No! no! I will not! I will not!”The mother, whose head was buried in her daughter’s robe, said no word, but a long shudder ran through her whole frame, and they could hear the frenzied kisses she bestowed upon her child. The hangman seized this moment to wrench asunder the arms clasped round the doomed girl, and whether from exhaustion or despair, they yielded. He then lifted the girl to his shoulder, where the slender creature hung limp and helpless against his uncouth head, and set foot upon the ladder to ascend.

At this moment the mother, who had sunk in a heap on the ground, opened her eyes wide. A blood- curdling look came over her face; without a word she started to her feet, and in a lightning flash flung herself, like a wild beast on its prey, on the hangman’s hand, biting it to the bone. The man howled with pain; the others ran to his assistance, and with difficulty released his bleeding hand from the mother’s teeth. Still she uttered no sound. They thrust her back with brutal roughness, and she fell, her head striking heavily on the stones. They raised her up; she fell back again. She was dead.

The hangman, who had kept his hold on the girl, began once more to ascend the ladder.