His first panic past, Christophe collected all his courage. The hour of his martyrdom was come. He now looked on with cold curiosity at the arrangements made by the executioner and his varlets. After hastily making up a bed, they proceeded to prepare a machine called the boot, consisting of boards, between which each leg of the victim was placed, surrounded with pads. The machinery used by bookbinders to press the volumes between two boards, which they tighten with cords, will give a very exact idea of the way in which each leg was encased. It is easy, then, to imagine the effect of a wedge driven home by a mallet between the two cases in which the legs were confined, and which, being tightly bound with rope, could not yield. The wedges were driven in at the knees and ankles, as if to split a log of wood. The choice of these two spots where there is least flesh, and where, in consequence, the wedge found room at the expense of the bones, made this form of torture horribly painful. In ordinary torture four wedges were driven in--two at the knees and two at the ankles; in extraordinary torture as many as eight were employed, if the physician pronounced that the victim's powers of endurance were not exhausted. At this period the boots were also applied to the hands; but as time pressed, the Cardinal, the Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and the Chancellor spared Christophe this. The preamble to the examination was written; the provost himself had dictated a few sentences, walking about the room with a meditative air, and requiring Christophe to tell him his name--Christian name--age, and profession; then he asked him from whom he had received the papers he had delivered to the Queen. "From Chaudieu the minister," said he. "Where did he give them to you?" "At my own home in Paris." "When he handed them to you, he must have told you whether the Queen-mother would receive you well." "He told me nothing of the kind," replied Christophe. "He only desired me to give them secretly to Queen Catherine." "Then have you often seen Chaudieu, that he knew that you were coming here?" "It was not from me that he heard that I was to carry the furs to the two Queens, and at the same time to ask in my father's behalf for the money owed him by the Queen-mother; nor had I time to ask him who had told him." "But those papers, given to you without any wrapper or seal, contain a treaty between the rebels and Queen Catherine. You must have known that they exposed you to the risk of suffering the punishment dealt out to those who are implicated in a rebellion." "Yes." "The persons who induced you to commit an act of high treason must have promised you some reward and the Queen-mother's patronage." "I did it out of attachment to Chaudieu, the only person I saw." "Then you persist in declaring that you did not see the Prince de Condé?" "Yes."