The two other balconies were filled by invited guests, courtiers, and persons on duty about the court.  In short, the whole company of the chateau de Blois had come to Amboise to assist at this festival of death, precisely as it passed, a little later, from the pleasures of a court to the perils of war, with an easy facility, which will always seem to foreigners one of the main supports of their policy toward France.

The poor syndic of the furriers of Paris was filled with the keenest joy at not seeing his son among the fifty-seven gentlemen who were condemned to die.

At a sign from the Duc de Guise, the clerk seated on the scaffold cried in a loud voice:—­

“Jean-Louis-Alberic, Baron de Raunay, guilty of heresy, of the crime of lese-majeste, and assault with armed hand against the person of the king.”

A tall handsome man mounted the scaffold with a firm step, bowed to the people and the court, and said: 

“That sentence lies.  I took arms to deliver the king from his enemies, the Guises.”

He placed his head on the block, and it fell.  The Reformers chanted:—­

  “Thou, O God! hast proved us;
    Thou hast tried us;
  As silver is tried in the fire,
    So hast thou purified us.”

“Robert-Jean-Rene Briquemart, Comte de Villemongis, guilty of the crime of lese-majeste, and of attempts against the person of the king!” called the clerk.

The count dipped his hands in the blood of the Baron de Raunay, and said:—­

“May this blood recoil upon those who are really guilty of those crimes.”

The Reformers chanted:—­

  “Thou broughtest us into the snare;
    Thou laidest afflictions upon our loins;
  Thou hast suffered our enemies
    To ride over us.”

“You must admit, monseigneur,” said the Prince de Conde to the papal nuncio, “that if these French gentlemen know how to conspire, they also know how to die.”

“What hatreds, brother!” whispered the Duchesse de Guise to the Cardinal de Lorraine, “you are drawing down upon the heads of our children!”

“The sight makes me sick,” said the young king, turning pale at the flow of blood.

“Pooh! only rebels!” replied Catherine de’ Medici.

The chants went on; the axe still fell.  The sublime spectacle of men singing as they died, and, above all, the impression produced upon the crowd by the progressive diminution of the chanting voices, superseded the fear inspired by the Guises.

“Mercy!” cried the people with one voice, when they heard the solitary chant of the last and most important of the great lords, who was saved to be the final victim.  He alone remained at the foot of the steps by which the others had mounted the scaffold, and he chanted:—­

  “Thou, O God, be merciful unto us,
    And bless us,
  And cause thy face to shine upon us. 
    Amen!”