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 eyes and features distorted by wrath, walking between the sheriff and a Franciscan monk, advanced through the long lane of halberdiers, in the grand hall of the Town House, and thence emerged upon the scaffold erected before the door.  He shook his fists with rage at the released magistrates, so lately his prisoners, exclaiming that to his misplaced mercy it was owing that his head, instead of their own, was to be placed upon the block.  He bitterly reproached the citizens for their cowardice in shrinking from dealing a blow for their fatherland, and in behalf of one who had so faithfully served them.  The clerk of the court then read the sentence amid a silence so profound that every syllable he uttered, and, every sigh and ejaculation of the victim were distinctly heard in the most remote corner of the square.  Gosson then, exclaiming that he was murdered without cause, knelt upon the scaffold.  His head fell while an angry imprecation was still upon his lips.