“Sir, you are right, and I am very wrong to feel such a fancy as this:  may God forgive me; and pray remember this fault on the scaffold, when you give me the absolution you promise, that this too may be pardoned me.”  Then she turned to the executioner and said, “Please sit where you were before, that I may see M. Desgrais.”  The man hesitated, but on a sign from the doctor obeyed.  The marquise looked fully at Desgrais for some time, praying for him; then, fixing her eyes on the crucifix, began to pray for herself:  this incident occurred in front of the church of Sainte-Genevieve des Ardents.

But, slowly as it moved, the tumbril steadily advanced, and at last reached the place of Notre-Dame.  The archers drove back the crowding people, and the tumbril went up to the steps, and there stopped.  The executioner got down, removed the board at the back, held out his arms to the marquise, and set her down on the pavement.  The doctor then got down, his legs quite numb from the cramped position he had been in since they left the Conciergerie.  He mounted the church steps and stood behind the marquise, who herself stood on the square, with the registrar on her right, the executioner on her left, and a great crowd of people behind her, inside the church, all the doors being thrown open.  She was made to kneel, and in her hands was placed the lighted torch, which up to that time the doctor had helped to carry.  Then the registrar read the ’amende honorable’ from a written paper, and she began to say it after him, but in so low a voice that the executioner said loudly, “Speak out as he does; repeat every word.  Louder, louder!” Then she raised her voice, and loudly and firmly recited the following apology.

“I confess that, wickedly and for revenge, I poisoned my father and my brothers, and attempted to poison my sister, to obtain possession of their goods, and I ask pardon of God, of the king, and of my country’s laws.”

The ‘amende honorable’ over, the executioner again carried her to the tumbril, not giving her the torch any more:  the doctor sat beside her:  all was just as before, and the tumbril went on towards La Greve.  From that moment, until she arrived at the scaffold, she never took her eyes off the crucifix, which the doctor held before her the whole time, exhorting her with religious words, trying to divert her attention from the terrible noise which the people made around the car, a murmur mingled with curses.

When they reached the Place de Greve, the tumbril stopped at a little distance from the scaffold.  Then the registrar M. Drouet, came up on horseback, and, addressing the marquise, said, “Madame, have you nothing more to say?  If you wish to make any declaration, the twelve commissaries are here at hand, ready to receive it.”

“You see, madame,” said the doctor, “we are now at the end of our journey, and, thank God, you have not lost your power of endurance on the road; do not destroy the effect of all you have suffered and all you have yet to suffer by concealing what you know, if perchance you do know more than you have hitherto said.”