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Updated: May 14, 2025
The room was filled with stacks of faggots. We returned home late, my companion in excessively bad humor at the fruitlessness of the expedition. We were caught in the skirt of a snowstorm as we got into the chestnut woods. The sight of the snow falling gently, of the earth and bushes whitened all round, made me feel back at Posen, once more a child. I sang and shouted, to my companion's horror.
But that tablinum, formerly the gayest state-room of the Roman lord, was now filled with various lumber, piles of faggots, and farming utensils. One side of the ancient peristyle, which was of vast extent, was now converted into stabling, sties for swine, and stalls for oxen.
In the morning they all set out, as their father and mother had agreed on; and Hop-o'-my-thumb did not say a word to any of his brothers about what he had heard. They came to a forest that was so very thick that they could not see each other a few yards off. The faggot-maker set to work cutting down wood; and the children began to gather the twigs, to make faggots of them.
Bestir yourselves, good Christian folk, in such a terrible mischance!" The peasants stood round in a crowd, doing nothing but staring at the fire. No one knew what to do, no one had the sense to do anything, though there were stacks of wheat, hay, barns, and piles of faggots standing all round. Kiryak and old Osip, his father, both tipsy, were standing there, too.
After which Catherine Hayes being brought to the stake, was chained thereto with an iron chain running round her waist and under her arms and a rope about her neck, which was drawn through a hole in the post; then the faggots, intermixed with light brush wood and straw, being piled all round her, the executioner put fire thereto in several places, which immediately blazing out, as soon as the same reached her, with her arms she pushed down those which were before her.
Unfortunately for him, the young Toparca died just at this time, and suspicion at once fell on the hapless general, who, after the mockery of a trial, was burnt to death as soon as Pizarro reached Almagro's camp his own followers piling up the faggots.
The relieving army had little food with them, and, if they acted at all, must act quickly. They spread over the country collecting faggots to fill the trenches, and making ladders to storm the walls. At midnight they began their assault on the lines in the plain; and Vercingetorix, hearing by the cries that the work had begun, gave his own signal for a general sally.
It was a stake driven into the ground, at a distance of not more than a rod from where he stood, around which several Indians were heaping up faggots of dry sticks and broken branches. Spikeman shuddered, and tasted, in almost as lively a manner as if he were already experiencing them, the agonies that awaited him, for he could not doubt that the preparations were made on his account.
Slowly the procession wound its way into the Square, on one side of which was now seen a scaffold with a pulpit raised above it, and a booth or stand, covered with cloth, with seats arranged within. At one end were two lofty gibbets; while below, in the open space, two stout posts appeared fixed in the ground, with iron chains hanging to them, and near at hand large piles of faggots.
Attempts were made, by pouring water down upon the faggots, to extinguish the flames; but the time taken, in conveying the water up from the courtyard, enabled the fire to get such hold that the attempt was abandoned. "It is just as well," Francois said. "If we could extinguish the fire, we should lose the benefit of the surprise we have prepared for them."
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