The process was rapid.  A summons from Brussels was expected every hour from the general government, ordering the cases to be brought before the federal tribunal; and as the Walloon provinces were not yet ready for open revolt, the order would be an inconvenient one.  Hence the necessity for haste.  The superior court of Artois, to which an appeal from the magistrates lay, immediately held a session in another chamber of the Hotel de Ville while the lower court was trying the prisoners, and Bertoul, Crugeot, Mordacq, with several others, were condemned in a few hours to the gibbet.  They were invited to appeal, if they chose, to the council of Artois, but hearing that the court was sitting next door, so that there was no chance of a rescue in the streets, they declared themselves satisfied with the sentence.  Gosson had not been tried, his case being reserved for the morrow.

Meantime, the short autumnal day had drawn to a close.  A wild, stormy, rainy night then set in, but still the royalist party—­citizens and soldiers intermingled—­all armed to the teeth, and uttering fierce cries, while the whole scene was fitfully illuminated with the glare of flambeaux and blazing tar-barrels, kept watch in the open square around the city hall.  A series of terrible Rembrandt-like nightpieces succeeded—­grim, fantastic, and gory.  Bertoul, an old man, who for years had so surely felt himself predestined to his present doom that he had kept a gibbet in his own house to accustom himself to the sight of the machine, was led forth the first, and hanged at ten in the evening.  He was a good man, of perfectly blameless life, a sincere Catholic, but a warm partisan of Orange.

Valentine de Mordacq, an old soldier, came from the Hotel de Ville to the gallows at midnight.  As he stood on the ladder, amid the flaming torches, he broke forth into furious execrations, wagging his long white beard to and fro, making hideous grimaces, and cursing the hard fate which, after many dangers on the battle-field and in beleaguered cities, had left him to such a death.  The cord strangled his curses.  Crugeot was executed at three in the morning, having obtained a few hours’ respite in order to make his preparations, which he accordingly occupied himself in doing as tranquilly as if he had been setting forth upon an agreeable journey.  He looked like a phantom, according to eye-witnesses, as he stood under the gibbet, making a most pious and, Catholic address to the crowd.

The whole of the following day was devoted to the trial of Gosson.  He was condemned at nightfall, and heard by appeal before the superior court directly afterwards.  At midnight, of the 25th of October, 1578, he was condemned to lose his head, the execution to take place without delay.  The city guards and the infantry under Capres still bivouacked upon the square; the howling storm still continued, but the glare of fagots and torches made the place as light as day.  The ancient advocate, with haggard