steps. The pile was in front, and from this height they could see the
whole of the square. The centre was entirely clear, large streams of
water alone traversed it; but all the windows of the houses were
gradually lighted up, and showed the heads of the men and women who
thronged them.

The young D'Effiat sorrowfully contemplated this menacing preparation.
Brought up in sentiments of honor, and far removed from the black
thoughts which hatred and ambition arouse in the heart of man, he could
not conceive that such wrong could be done without some powerful and
secret motive. The audacity of such a condemnation seemed to him so
enormous that its very cruelty began to justify it in his eyes; a secret
horror crept into his soul, the same that silenced the people. He almost
forgot the interest with which the unhappy Urbain had inspired him, in
thinking whether it were not possible that some secret correspondence
with the infernal powers had justly provoked such excessive severity;
and the public revelations of the nuns, and the statement of his
respected tutor, faded from his memory, so powerful is success, even in
the eyes of superior men! so strongly does force impose upon men,
despite the voice of conscience!

The young traveller was asking himself whether it were not probable that
the torture had forced some monstrous confession from the accused, when
the obscurity which surrounded the church suddenly ceased. Its two great
doors were thrown open; and by the light of an infinite number of
flambeaux, appeared all the judges and ecclesiastics, surrounded by
guards. Among them was Urbain, supported, or rather carried, by six men
clothed as Black Penitents--for his limbs, bound with bandages saturated
with blood, seemed broken and incapable of supporting him. It was at
most two hours since Cinq-Mars had seen him, and yet he could hardly