"Stop," exclaimed the Père Bourdaloue advancing, his Crucifix in his hands. "Stop! He has confessed something far better than that which you seek to extort from him. Van den Enden," he said, approaching the old man whose eyes were now so turned up in his head that nothing but the whites were visible, while his face was a mass of perspiration, "you are no atheist, praised be God above. You term yourself one, yet in your hour of tribulation you call upon the God you pretend to deny. Van den Enden, look upon this symbol, 'tis the symbol of One who suffered more than you can ever suffer, yet Who was pure and holy; Who was God incarnate. Kiss it, Van den Enden. Acknowledge at last the error of your ways." "No! no!" groaned the victim, half delirious from pain. "No! no! I believe nothing. I--I--ah! Ask Spinosa. And--and--I was born a Jew." "So," said Bourdaloue, "was He." "Mercy! Mercy!" "He must reply," De Pomereu said in answer to a look of appeal from the priest; "or the wedges must be struck deeper. Speak, Van den Enden," he continued. "Did De Beaurepaire say he would possess himself of the King's sacred person?" "No. Ah!" and again he called on the Deity as the torturer struck at the great wedge. "Ah! Ah! Yes. Yes. Mercy. I--I--am dying. Save me." "Remove him," De Pomereu ordered, "and bring in the other. La Preaux." When, however, this adventurer was subjected to similar treatment to that which Van den Enden had endured nothing was to be obtained from him. Whether, knowing that death was certain in any case, or determined that, as he had lived without fear--with one exception, namely his cowardice when thinking he was about to be slain by Humphrey West--so he would die, it is at least certain that he was bold enough to bear the torture without uttering one word or one cry. By some superhuman, perhaps by some devilish, courage, he forced himself to refrain from emitting any sound when the torture was applied, and, though his great coarse lips were horribly thrust out and pursed up by the agony he was suffering, no moan issued from them. To all questions put to him by De Pomereu and De Caumartin he returned but one answer, "I am innocent of any knowledge of the plot," and nothing more could be extorted from him. An hour later, De Beaurepaire accompanied by Bourdaloue and another priest, Le Père Talon, was led into the prison chapel in which were already Van den Enden and La Preaux, or Fleur de Mai. The former had been supported to this spot between two guards; the latter, indomitable as ever, had managed to limp from his cell to the chapel. Emérance was not there. "To your knees," whispered the priests to the unhappy conspirators. "To your knees and hear the sentences passed on you."