“She should be at the scaffold by now, and in five minutes, perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less, the pretty rogue will have given up the ghost. Some of the hanged give no trouble to the executioner. No sooner is the cord round their neck than they quietly expire. But there are others who positively live at the rope’s end, and make a furious to-do about it. The most demoniacal of all was a priest, who was sentenced last year for forging the Royal signature on lottery tickets. For more than twenty minutes he fought like a carp on the end of a line. “He! He!” chuckled the little old man, “the Abbé was modest and did not want the honour of a step up in the world. I saw him when they took him out of the cart. He cried and struggled so that the hangman said to him: ‘Do not be a child, Monsieur l’Abbé!’ But the oddest thing was, that, there being another thief along with him, he was, at first, taken for the chaplain, and that by the executioner, whom the police-officer had the greatest difficulty in undeceiving. Wasn’t that amusing?” “No, Monsieur,” replied my good master, letting the fish, he had held to his lips for some moments, fall on his plate. “No, it is not amusing, and the thought that that nice-looking girl is at this moment yielding up her soul spoils the taste of my gudgeons for me, and the joy of seeing the sky above, which smiled on me but a moment back.” “Ah, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said the little official, “if you are so sensitive as all that, you could never have witnessed without fainting what my father saw with his own eyes, when yet a child, at Dijon, his native town. Have you ever heard speak of Hélène Gillet?” “Never,” said my master. “In that case I will tell you her story, as my father, many a time, told it to me.” He drank off his wine, wiped his lips with a corner of the cloth, and recounted the history I here repeat. XIX THE BEADLE’S STORY In the year 1624, in the month of October, Hélène Gillet, aged twenty-two, daughter of the governor-royal of Bourg-en-Bresse, who was still under the paternal roof, along with her brothers yet of tender years, showed such visible signs of being with child that it was the talk of the town, and the young girls of Bourg ceased to associate with her. It was noticed next that her figure went down, and such comments were made that the _Lieutenant-Criminel_ ordered her to be examined by a jury of matrons. These latter reported that she had been with child and that her confinement had taken place at least fifteen days before. On their report, Hélène Gillet was put in prison and was questioned by the Court of First Instance. She there made a confession: