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Marie Antoinette wore a white gown, a white handkerchief covered her shoulders, a white cap her hair; a black ribbon bound this cap round her temples .... The cries, the looks, the laughter, the jests of the people overwhelmed her with humiliation; her colour, changing continually from purple to paleness, betrayed her agitation .... On reaching the scaffold she inadvertently trod on the executioner's foot.
The king looked down at her with infinite contempt, though without anger, and pushing her away with his foot said: "Out of my sight, you dog of a woman! Blood like yours would soil the executioner's axe. Out of my sight!" Mandane needed no second command to depart. The words "out of my sight" sounded like sweet music in her ears.
When they were taken hold of by the executioner's men, and were just going to be led up to the scaffold where the headsman was standing with naked sword, a coach drawn by four blood-red chestnut horses came up suddenly, driving so fast that fire flashed from the stones, and someone made signs from the window with a white handkerchief.
Certain it was, that when I recovered my presence of mind, when I was enabled to collect my scattered thoughts, the executioner's daughter was no longer near me. I was in despair at the revelation which had been made overwhelmed with grief, too, at having suffered her thus to depart for I feared that I should never see her more.
The big hound, Nero, seemed the most sorrowful of all, and putting his head as high as he could reach he uttered a deep hollow howl, that to my excited fancy sounded like "Poooooor boooooy!" just as Mr Solomon, with a face as stern as an executioner's might have been as he led someone to the Tower block, threw open the great door in the wall and said shortly: "Go on!"
His father had been killed, he thought, on one of those riots which, in a small way, repeat the olden revolutions of Poland against the triumvirate of oppression, Austria, Prussia and Russia. But he had heard a tutor say, when he was not supposed in hearing, that he had perished by the executioner's steel. "A death honorable as under the bullets," said Claudius, but half doubtingly.
When the executioner's assistants drew near to support him he once more refused their help, and again set himself in motion, advancing with short steps, but as quickly and as straightly as the rope hampering his legs permitted. All at once Guillaume felt that Salvat's eyes were fixed upon him.
The last words of the Burgomaster as he bowed his neck to the executioner's stroke were, "Voor wel gedaan, kwaclyk beloud," "For faithful service, evil recompense."
In defiance of your command, my Sovereign, but in virtue of the full powers you once gave me, I have ordered the grandson of Amasis to be the executioner's first victim. You have just heard the sound of a horn; that was the sign that the last heir to the Egyptian throne born on the shores of the Nile has been gathered to his fathers. I am aware of the fate I have to expect, Cambyses.
Thanks to certain accessory details, it is possible to assume that Lupa is the symbol of the "God without a name" of Celtic mythology, and it is she who finally venges herself by decapitating the pilgrim saint. The disciples of St. James laid his corpse in a cart, together with the executioner's axe and the pilgrim's staff.
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