It being now near five o’clock, the hour which was appointed for the execution, he was informed that he must descend into the court of the prison. As he was quitting the chapel, he caught sight of the executioner. “Begone!” vociferated he: “touch me not till it is time; if you come near me till then, I swear that I will strangle you!” He twice repeated the command and the threat when he was at the scaffold. Looking round on the soldiers, he mournfully said, “Would but some one of you fire his musket through my body, how thankful I should be! What misery it is to die so wretchedly, and by so shameful a blow!” The sentence was then read again, and again he lost all patience at being accused of planning Henry’s death. It was with much difficulty that the clerk of the parliament completed the reading of the sentence, his voice being almost drowned by the clamour of the prisoner. Thrice Biron tied a handkerchief over his eyes, and as often he tore it off again, and once more he vented his rage on the executioner, who had maddened him by wishing to cut off his hair behind. “Touch me not,” he cried, “except with the sword. If you lay hands on me while I am alive, if I am driven into a fury, I will strangle half the folks that are here, and compel the rest to kill me.” So terrible were his looks and his tone, that several of the persons present were on the point of taking flight. It was believed that he meditated seizing the death-sword, but the executioner had prudently desired his attendant to conceal it till it was wanted. At last, after long delay, the marshal requested Baranton, one of the officers of the Bastile, to bandage his eyes and tuck up his hair; and, when this was done, he laid his head upon the block. “Be quick! be quick!” were his last words, and they were promptly obeyed. They were scarcely out of the mouth of the speaker when the sword descended, and by a single blow Biron ceased to exist. The remains of Biron were interred in the church of St. Paul. Not only was his funeral followed by multitudes, but multitudes visited the church afterwards, for the purpose of sprinkling his grave with holy water. “Never was there a tomb,” says de Thou, “on which so much holy water was poured; a circumstance rather disagreeable to the court, which was vexed to see that a step which all ought to have deemed necessary for the safety of the king and state, was so wrongly interpreted as to become a subject of public dissatisfaction.”