By this time the others were ready. _La toilette des morts_ was made for all. The hair was now all cut away from the neck of Emérance; the executioner had gently turned down the collar of her white robe so that her neck was bare to her shoulders, her wrists were tied together behind. As regards Fleur de Mai, he also was prepared and stood calmly regarding the enormous concourse of people, as though endeavouring to discover among it some friends or acquaintances who might be able to testify how he had died. Later, when the executioner was interrogated by La Reynie as to the events of that day, the man stated that Fleur de Mai hummed a tune as he was being made ready. It had been ordained that De Beaurepaire's head was to fall first, Fleur de Mai's the second, and that of Emérance the third, and, though the latter had pleaded against this refinement of cruelty to a woman, she was told that her prayer to be executed first could not be granted. And now the time had come. With a touch of his hand, a glance of his eyes through the hideous mask he wore, the executioner motioned each to their respective blocks. Fleur de Mai was placed before the outer block on the right of the scaffold, Emérance before the extreme one on the left, De Beaurepaire between them. "_Altesse_," the headsman whispered. "It is the moment." Amidst a silence such as perhaps no crowd--perhaps no French crowd!--had ever before maintained, De Beaurepaire turned towards the woman he had learnt to love so fondly. "Adieu," he whispered, bending down to her so that, for the last time in life, their lips met--embrace they could not, since their hands were tied behind their backs. "Adieu for ever, _ma adorée_." But from her lips as they met his, the word "Adieu" did not proceed, but, instead, the word "Wedded." As she spoke he saw that she smiled at him. Advancing now towards the block, he was about to kneel by it; with a sign from his eyes he signalled to the executioner's assistant to give him his hand to assist him in doing so, when, to his astonishment, as well as to that of all in the vast concourse, De Brissac's powerful voice rang out on the dense silence. From his lips were heard to issue the order: "Stop. Defer your task. Proceed no farther in it as yet." As he thus commanded, his eyes, glancing over the head of the crowd from where he sat above them on his horse, were directed towards a man clad in the _soutane_ of a priest, one who was frantically waving a paper in the air. A priest who was seated by the side of the coachman on the box of one of the royal carriages.