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Cinq Mars — Volume 2 by Alfred de Vigny
page 8 of 68 (11%)
infractions and used for interrogating women and children. For more
serious crimes the suspect (and sometimes the witnesses) were put to
the extraordinary question by the officiating priests. D.W.]

the roll of distant thunder--all combined to increase the disorder. If
the ear was astonished, the eyes were no less so. A few dismal torches
lighted up the corners of the streets; their flickering gleams showed
soldiers, armed and mounted, dashing along, regardless of the crowd, to
assemble in the Place de St. Pierre; tiles were sometimes thrown at them
on their way, but, missing the distant culprit, fell upon some
unoffending neighbor. The confusion was bewildering, and became still
more so, when, hurrying through all the streets toward the Place de St.
Pierre, the people found it barricaded on all sides, and filled with
mounted guards and archers. Carts, fastened to the posts at each corner,
closed each entrance, and sentinels, armed with arquebuses, were
stationed close to the carts. In the centre of the Place rose a pile
composed of enormous beams placed crosswise upon one another, so as to
form a perfect square; these were covered with a whiter and lighter wood;
an enormous stake arose from the centre of the scaffold. A man clothed
in red and holding a lowered torch stood near this sort of mast, which
was visible from a long distance. A huge chafing-dish, covered on
account of the rain, was at his feet.

At this spectacle, terror inspired everywhere a profound silence; for an
instant nothing was heard but the sound of the rain, which fell in
floods, and of the thunder, which came nearer and nearer.

Meanwhile, Cinq-Mars, accompanied by MM. du Lude and Fournier and all the
more important personages of the town, had sought refuge from the storm
under the peristyle of the church of Ste.-Croix, raised upon twenty stone
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