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Updated: May 16, 2025
One of the archers, called Claude, Rolla, perceiving her intention, contrived to get the pin out of her mouth. After this, Desgrais commanded that she should be doubly watched. They stopped for supper. An archer called Antoine Barbier was present at the meal, and watched so that no knife or fork should be put on the table, or any instrument with which she could wound or kill herself.
Meanwhile he, at the risk of his life, watched alone in the most secret hiding-places, and followed, at a distance, this or the other person who seemed, by the looks of him, to be likely to have jewels about him. But those whom he was watching were unharmed, so that this artifice of his was as well known, to the culprits as everything else seemed to be. Desgrais was in utter despair.
Desgrais and his men tried in vain to shake her off, and raise her from the ground, till at length a rough, powerful fellow, gripping her arms with his strong hands, dragged her away from Desgrais by sheer force. Stumbling awkwardly, he let the girl go, and she went rolling down the stone steps, and lay like one dead on the pavement. Mademoiselle Scuderi could contain herself no longer.
"In Christ's name!" she cried, "what has happened? What is going forward here?" She hastily opened the carriage-door and stepped out. The crowd made way for her deferentially; and when she saw that one or two compassionate women had lifted up the girl, laid her on the steps, and were rubbing her brow with strong waters, she went up to Desgrais, and with eagerness repeated her question.
"Vanished! through the wall! Are you out of your senses?" La Regnie cried, stepping three steps backwards, and striking his hands together. "Call me as great a madman as you please, Monsieur," said Desgrais, rubbing his forehead like one tortured by evil thoughts. "Call me a madman, or a silly spirit-seer; but what I have told you is the literal truth.
Desgrais had just the manner of the younger son of a great house: he was as flattering as a courtier, as enterprising as a musketeer. In this first visit he made himself attractive by his wit and his audacity, so much so that more easily than he had dared to hope, he got leave to pay a second call. The second visit was not long delayed: Desgrais presented himself the very next day.
Desgrais was there, and at his feet a young girl, beautiful as the day, half-dressed, with dishevelled hair, and wild grief, inconsolable despair in her face, holding his knees embraced, and crying in tones of the bitterest and profoundest anguish, "He is innocent! he is innocent!"
Madame de Sevigne says, that when on the hurdle, on her way to the scaffold, she entreated her confessor to exert his influence with the executioner to place himself next to her, that his body might hide from her view "that scoundrel, Desgrais, who had entrapped her."
"A terrible thing has happened," said Desgrais. "René Cardillac was found, this morning, killed by a dagger-thrust. His journeyman, Olivier, is the murderer, and has just been taken to prison." "And the girl " "Is Madelon," interrupted Desgrais, "Cardillac's daughter.
The marquise looked fully at Desgrais for some time, praying for him; then, fixing her eyes on the crucifix, began to pray for herself: this incident occurred in front of the church of Sainte-Genevieve des Ardents. But, slowly as it moved, the tumbril steadily advanced, and at last reached the place of Notre-Dame.
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