A sob stronger than stoicism or pride shook Lenet's frame. He stepped back and wept bitterly. Canolles thereupon fixed his piercing gaze upon the men who stood about him, but could see on every side none but faces rendered stern and pitiless by Richon's cruel death, and among them a very few timid creatures, who were stiffening their muscles to conceal their emotion and help them to swallow their tears and sighs. "Oh! it is terrible to think upon," murmured the youth, in a moment of superhuman clearness of vision which opens before the soul a boundless field of view over what men call life,--that is to say, a few brief instants of happiness scattered here and there like islands in the midst of an ocean of tears and suffering,--"terrible to think upon! I had in my arms the woman I adore, who had just told me for the first time that she loved me; I had before me a long and blissful life, the realization of my fondest dream; and lo! in a moment, in a second, death takes the place of it all!" He felt a tightness at his heart, and a pricking sensation in his eyes as if he were going to weep; but he remembered in time that he was, as Lenet said, a soldier and a gentleman. "O pride," he said to himself, "the only form of courage that has any real existence, come to my aid! Should I bewail the loss of so vain and futile a thing as life? How they would laugh if they could say: 'On learning that he was to die, Canolles wept!' How did I bear myself on the day I was besieged at Saint-Georges, when the Bordelais showed the same eagerness for my death as to-day? I fought, I jested, I laughed. Very good! by the heaven above, which hears my words and is mayhap dealing wrongfully with me; by the devil who is struggling at this moment with my good angel, I will bear myself to-day as I bore myself on that day, and if I no longer fight, I will at least continue to jest, and will laugh on to the end." At once his face became calm, as if all emotion had vanished from his heart; he passed his hand through his beautiful black hair, and walked up to Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld and Lenet with a smile upon his lips. "Messieurs," said he, "as you know, one requires time to become accustomed to everything in this world, which is so filled with strange and unexpected events; I have taken, and I did wrong not to ask your leave to take, a moment to accustom myself to the thought of death; if it was too long a time, I ask your pardon for compelling you to wait." Profound astonishment was depicted on the faces of all the bystanders, and the prisoner was aware that that feeling soon gave place to admiration; his strength was increased tenfold by his consciousness of that sentiment, so honorable to him. "Whenever you are ready, messieurs," said he; "I am waiting for you now." The duke, dumbfounded for an instant, at once resumed his usual phlegmatic demeanor, and gave the signal. Thereupon the gates were opened and the procession made ready to set out.