"Bring in the man, Francbois," De Violaine said now, addressing some
of the soldiers who were near Bevill, and a few moments later the
already condemned traitor stood before those who had judged him
yesterday.
Whether it was the horror of that condemnation which now sat heavily
on his soul, or whether it was the fear of what might be the outcome
of any evidence he should soon give--he had glanced affrightedly at
the rack and the great water-pots and the grim attendant of both as he
was brought in--he presented now a pitiable aspect. His face was
colourless, or almost ashy grey, and resembled more the appearance of
a terrified Asiatic, or an Asiatic whose blood was mixed with that of
some white race, than the appearance of a European. His eyes had in
them the terrified look of the hare as it glances back, only to see
the hound that courses it upon its flank; his whole frame, in its
tremblings and flaccidity, bespoke the awful terror that possessed
him.
"_Pasquedieu!_" the young Duc de Guise muttered, as his eyes glanced
from the shivering object to the tall, sturdy form and calm,
unruffled, though solemn, countenance of the man against whom the
other was to testify. "_Pasquedieu!_ that this one should have his
life in the hand of such as that." And, though those by his side did
not hear the words muttered beneath the Duke's slight moustache, it
may well be that their thoughts kept company with his.
"Tell your tale again as you told it to me when you came here to
inform against this Englishman," De Violaine said now in an icy tone;
"and tell it truthfully, remembering that----" but he, too, paused in
his words, the sentence being finished by the one glance he cast
towards the column down the hall.
Then, in a voice that trembled in unison with the tremors of his
frame, though it gained strength--or was it audacity?--as he proceeded
without interruption from any of those listeners seated before him,
Francbois told the same story he had told at first to the Governor,
Only, if he were to die, as die he now knew he must, he was resolved
that he would leave no loophole through which this other--this
accursed, contemptuous Englishman who stood by his side so calmly, as
though he, too, were a judge and not a prisoner--should escape and
live.
He pictured him as a browbeating, turbulent Briton even in those
far-off days in Paris when both he and Bracton were schoolmates; he
told how he was ever filled with hatred of France and Frenchmen; and
how, even here in Liége, Bracton had boasted that he would outwit any
Frenchman in and around it, and slay all who attempted to thwart him.
And, next, he told how he and Sparmann, going to the Weiss Haus to
arrest this man, had been set upon in the dark by him; how Bracton had
stabbed Sparmann through the breast and disarmed him, Francbois, so
that he was unable to succour his companion.
But now he was forced to stop in the unfolding of his narrative.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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