"'Zounds! It was here that the gibbet stood--and the pillory, and the platform on which the wheel was set up! On the days of execution! Facing the entrance of Vannerie Street! I never crossed this Place without saying to my comrades, to the Burgundian, Fancy Man, Gastelard, and Sheep's-head, "_We must avoid the wheel._" And a lot of use it was to them!' "'_Nor to you, either!_' retorted Adolphe. 'It was here that you were executed! It was here that you were broken on the wheel!' "I burst out laughing in his face. "'Who told you that piece of idiocy?' I said indignantly. "'All the historians are agreed...' "'The silly idiots! I know perfectly well that I died at the Gallows of Montfaucon!' I said with absolute assurance. "'You? You died at the Gallows of Montfaucon?' cried Adolphe beside himself. 'You died in 1721 at the Gallows of Montfaucon? But it was years since they had executed anyone there!' "But I protested still louder than he, so that we became the centre of a little crowd. "'I didn't say that I was hanged at Montfaucon! the Gallows of Montfaucon! I said that I died there!' I cried. "As I shouted it, I must have seemed to call to witness the truth of my words the forty persons who seemed interested in our altercation, of which indeed they can have understood nothing, with the exception of one gentleman who seemed to have caught its meaning, for he said to Adolphe with the utmost calmness, and with extreme politeness: "'_Surely you're not going to teach this gentleman how he died!_' "Adolphe admitted himself worsted; and we walked along arm in arm towards the Pont-Neuf." CHAPTER XII THE HOUSE OF STRANGE WORDS Among all the papers I found in the sandalwood box, by Theophrastus himself, by M. Lecamus, or by Commissary Mifroid, those which relate to the death of Cartouche are beyond doubt the most curious and the most interesting. They are indeed of great historical interest since they contradict history. Moreover they contradict it with such force and with such irrefutable reasoning that one asks how men of such weight as Barbier, who was in the best position of all not to be duped, since he lived at the time, could have been the victims of a very poor comedy, and how succeeding generations have failed to suspect the truth. History then, serious history, teaches us that Cartouche, after having undergone the Question in its cruellest form without revealing one single name or fact,--how Cartouche, who had only to die and nothing to hope, was brought to the Place de Grève to be executed, and that there he decided to confess; that they took him to the Hôtel-de-Ville, and that he delivered to justice his chief accomplices; after which he was broken on the wheel.