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Updated: May 27, 2025
Jacques Maubel was taken back to the Conciergerie; here he wrote a letter while he waited the hour of execution, which was to take place the same evening, by torchlight: My dear sister, The tribunal sends me to the scaffold, affording me the only joy I have been able to appreciate since the death of my adored Nieves.
Next came a tumbrel bearing the naked corpses of the slain, whose faces, mutilated by their wounds and disfigured by blood, glared horribly up, with open eyes, in the red torchlight that flared in the night blast around!
The princely sprezzatura of its ancient occupants, careless of these unfinished courts and unroofed galleries amid the splendor of their purfled silks and the glitter of their torchlight pageantry, has yielded to sullen cynicism the cynicism of arrested ruin and unreverend age.
He had been everywhere; had added gaiety and sunshine to the Flower Show; had preached a most wonderful sermon at the evening service on the Tuesday; had addressed, from the steps of his house, the Torchlight Procession in exactly the right words; had patted all the children on the head at the Mayor's tea for the townspeople; had enchanted everywhere.
The first persons who appeared were a company of buffoons; after them four janissaries, carrying silver maces; then the male friends, bearing colored lanterns and perfumed torches, raised on gilded poles; then the females, among whom I saw some beautiful Madonna faces in the torchlight; and finally the bride herself, covered from head to foot with a veil of cloth of gold, and urged along by two maidens: for it is the etiquette of such occasions that the bride should resist being taken, and must be forced every step of the way, so that she is frequently three hours in going the distance of a mile.
It would be hard to say which was the prouder the person under the banner or the one on top of it. Anyhow, Chirpy Cricket was prouder than both of them together, because his torchlight procession promised to be a great success. "Are you ready?" he cried, looking back at the marchers, who stretched behind him in a long line beside the stone wall. Everybody shouted "Aye, aye, sir!"
Amongst the rites as to which the poet thus drops significant hints are the preliminary fast of the candidates for initiation, the torchlight procession, the all-night vigil, the sitting of the candidates, veiled and in silence, on stools covered with sheepskins, the use of scurrilous language, the breaking of ribald jests, and the solemn communion with the divinity by participation in a draught of barley-water from a holy chalice.
A loud cheer greeted this declaration, then came more egg-nog, handshakes, embraces and torchlight serenades until midnight before the little house of the baobab. Tartarin-Sancho, however, was far from pleased.
Meanwhile the night had fallen so intensely dark that the completion of the task of feeding us unfortunates had to be accomplished by torchlight; and we had not been very long left to ourselves before the faint flickering of distant lightning and the low muttering and grumbling of thunder warned us to expect a storm of more than ordinary violence.
The Abbe de Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, assisted by the Bishop of Chartres and Pere de la Chaise, had the honour of blessing this marriage and presenting the rings of gold. After the ceremony, which took place at an early hour, and even by torchlight, there was a slight repast in the small apartments.
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