"Ask him - if you have any
sense of your duty - ask him am I not Marcel de Bardelys."
"Silence!" blazed the President back at me. "You shall not fool us
any longer, you nimble-witted liar!"
My head drooped. This coward had, indeed, shattered my last hope.
"Some day, monsieur," I said very quietly, "I promise you that your
behaviour and these gratuitous insults shall cost you your position.
Pray God they do not cost you also your head!"
My words they treated as one might treat the threats of a child.
That I should have had the temerity to utter them did but serve
finally to decide my doom, if, indeed, anything had been wanting.
With many epithets of opprobrium, such as are applied to malefactors
of the lowest degree, they passed sentence of death upon me, and
with drooping spirits, giving myself up for lost and assured that
I should be led to the block before many hours were sped, I
permitted them to reconduct me through the streets of Toulouse to
my prison.
I could entertain you at length upon my sensations as I walked
between my guards, a man on the threshold of eternity, with hundreds
of men and women gaping at me - men and women who would live for
years to gape upon many another wretch in my position. The sun
shone with a brilliance that to such eyes as mine was a very mockery.
Thus would it shine on through centuries, and light many another
unfortunate to the scaffold. The very sky seemed pitiless in the
intensity of its cobalt.
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