“Hardquanonne! when by us, the sheriff, this bottle, on which is your name, was for the first time shown, exhibited, and presented to you, you at once, and willingly, recognized it as having belonged to you.  Then, the parchment being read to you which was contained, folded and enclosed within it, you would say no more; and in the hope, doubtless, that the lost child would never be recovered, and that you would escape punishment, you refuse to answer.  As the result of your refusal, you have had applied to you the peine forte et dure; and the second reading of the said parchment, on which is written the declaration and confession of your accomplices, was made to you, but in vain.

“This is the fourth day, and that which is legally set apart for the confrontation, and he who was deserted on the twenty-ninth of January, one thousand six hundred and ninety, having been brought into your presence, your devilish hope has vanished, you have broken silence, and recognized your victim.”

The prisoner opened his eyes, lifted his head, and, with a voice strangely resonant of agony, but which had still an indescribable calm mingled with its hoarseness, pronounced in excruciating accents, from under the mass of stones, words to pronounce each of which he had to lift that which was like the slab of a tomb placed upon him.  He spoke,—­

“I swore to keep the secret.  I have kept it as long as I could.  Men of dark lives are faithful, and hell has its honour.  Now silence is useless.  So be it!  For this reason I speak.  Well—­yes; ’tis he!  We did it between us—­the king and I:  the king, by his will; I, by my art!”

And looking at Gwynplaine,—­

“Now laugh for ever!”

And he himself began to laugh.

This second laugh, wilder yet than the first, might have been taken for a sob.

The laughed ceased, and the man lay back.  His eyelids closed.

The sheriff, who had allowed the prisoner to speak, resumed,—­

“All which is placed on record.”

He gave the secretary time to write, and then said,—­

“Hardquanonne, by the terms of the law, after confrontation followed by identification, after the third reading of the declarations of your accomplices, since confirmed by your recognition and confession, and after your renewed avowal, you are about to be relieved from these irons, and placed at the good pleasure of her Majesty to be hung as plagiary.”

“Plagiary,” said the serjeant of the coif.  “That is to say, a buyer and seller of children.  Law of the Visigoths, seventh book, third section, paragraph Usurpaverit, and Salic law, section the forty-first, paragraph the second, and law of the Frisons, section the twenty-first, Deplagio; and Alexander Nequam says,—­

“‘Qui pueros vendis, plagiarius est tibi nomen.’”

The sheriff placed the parchment on the table, laid down his spectacles, took up the nosegay, and said,—­