"What does this mean?" De Beaurepaire asked in a hoarse tone, while, as he did so, his eyes were directed towards Emérance who had reeled back as she heard De Brissac's stern command and was now supported by one of the monks who had followed the condemned on to the scaffold. In that look he saw that she was white as marble, that her eyes had in them a strange unnatural glance, a glance perceptible even through their half-closed lids. "Has the King relented at the last moment?" De Brissac muttered to himself. After which he cried to his men: "Make way through your ranks for the Reverend Father. Let him approach at once. It is," he whispered to the officer nearest to him, "the King's Confessor." This order was easily to be obeyed in so far as the troops were concerned, but more difficult of accomplishment as regarded the crowd behind them. Nor--since it must be told!--was the majority of that crowd very willing to see any interruption of _le spectacle_ take place. They had stood here since the November dawn had broken, wet, cold and foggy to observe three men and a woman die, and now, it would appear, they were to be baulked of their sport. Moreover, there was happening to them that which has always been, and still is, obnoxious to a large multitude of Parisians gathered together, either for their amusement or for the gratification of a sickly, a neurotic curiosity. The troops were dominating them; they were being dispersed, pushed away at the very moment when the great tableau was to have been presented to their gaze. Slowly backing their horses, the troopers of the Garde du Roi and of the two corps of Mousquetaires were driving back, and, above all, parting the mass of spectators; in a few moments the closely serried gathering was split apart--the priest escorted by some of the men of the Regiment de Rouen was nearing the steps of the scaffold. "It is an infamy," many in the great gathering muttered. "Has the Splendid one become a Nero?" exclaimed others. "It is torture to them and an insult to us," said still more. "In what days are we living?" While one or two exclaimed, "It has never been done before." "You are wrong, my son," the priest said, overhearing this last remark and turning round to look at one of the speakers. "I myself have stood on the scaffold and seen a man reprieved, set free; a man to whom I had already given the last absolution. And your mother could not have paid for you to learn the history of your own country. Did you never hear of Saint Vallier, father of Diane de Poitiers, who was spared as he stood on the scaffold through her prayers to the King, even as this man is saved from death--but death alone--through the prayers of his mother to our King?" "His mother!" many of the dispersed assembly muttered now, a different chord struck by that word so sacred to all French. "His mother. Ah! _Grand Dieu, c'est autre chose_. His mother has saved him! The King has a heart within his bosom. _Vive le Roi!_"