It was now seven in the evening, and the crowd began to murmur at the long delay.  At length the criminal reappeared.  An onlooker who saw him go to the Hotel de Ville, and who was carried by the movement of the crowd to the foot of the scaffold, says that when handed over to the executioner he took off his clothes himself.  He kissed the instrument of punishment with devotion, then extended himself on the St. Andrew’s cross, asking with a resigned smile that they would make his sufferings as short as possible.  As soon as his head was covered, the executioner gave the signal.  One would have thought a very few blows would have finished so frail a being, but he seemed as hard to kill as the venomous reptiles which must be crushed and cut to pieces before life is extinct, and the coup de grace was found necessary.  The executioner uncovered his head and showed the confessor that the eyes were closed and that the heart had ceased to beat.  The body was then removed from the cross, the hands and feet fastened together, and it was thrown on the funeral pile.

While the execution was proceeding the people applauded.  On the morrow they bought up the fragments of bone, and hastened to buy lottery tickets, in the firm conviction that these precious relics would bring luck to the fortunate possessors!

In 1777, Madame Derues was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, and confined at the Salpetriere.  She was one of the first victims who perished in the prison massacres.

LA CONSTANTIN—­1660

CHAPTER I

Before beginning our story, we must warn the reader that it will not be worth his while to make researches among contemporary or other records as to the personage whose name it bears.  For in truth neither Marie Leroux, widow of Jacques Constantin, nor her accomplice, Claude Perregaud, was of sufficient importance to find a place on any list of great criminals, although it is certain that they were guilty of the crimes with which they were charged.  It may seem strange that what follows is more a history of the retribution which overtook the criminals than a circumstantial description of the deeds for which they were punished; but the crimes were so revolting, and so unsuitable for discussion, that it was impossible for us to enter into any details on the subject, so that what we offer in these pages is, we confess quite openly, not a full, true, and particular account of a certain series of events leading up to a certain result; it is not even a picture wherein that result is depicted with artistic completeness, it is only an imperfect narrative imperfectly rounded off.  We feel sure, however, that the healthy-minded reader will be grateful for our reticence and total disregard of proportion.  In spite of the disadvantage which such a theme imposes on any writer with a deep sense of responsibility, we have resolved to let in some light on these obscure figures; for we can imagine no more effective way of throwing into high relief the low morals and deep corruption into which all classes of society had sunk at the termination of the factious dissensions of the Fronde, which formed such a fitting prelude to the licence of the reign of the grand roi.