“I don’t give up all hope of getting the truth out of that little fellow yet.”

When the princes had left the hall the executioners unbound the legs of their victim roughly and without compassion.

“Did any one ever see a criminal with such strength?” said the chief executioner to his aids.  “The rascal bore that last wedge when he ought to have died; I’ve lost the price of his body.”

“Unbind me gently; don’t make me suffer, friends,” said poor Christophe.  “Some day I will reward you—­”

“Come, come, show some humanity,” said the physician.  “Monseigneur esteems the young man, and told me to look after him.”

“I am going to Amboise with my assistants,—­take care of him yourself,” said the executioner, brutally.  “Besides, here comes the jailer.”

The executioner departed, leaving Christophe in the hands of the soft-spoken doctor, who by the aid of Christophe’s future jailer, carried the poor boy to a bed, brought him some broth, helped him to swallow it, sat down beside him, felt his pulse, and tried to comfort him.

“You won’t die of this,” he said.  “You ought to feel great inward comfort, knowing that you have done your duty.—­The queen-mother bids me take care of you,” he added in a whisper.

“The queen is very good,” said Christophe, whose terrible sufferings had developed an extraordinary lucidity in his mind, and who, after enduring such unspeakable sufferings, was determined not to compromise the results of his devotion.  “But she might have spared me much agony be telling my persecutors herself the secrets that I know nothing about, instead of urging them on.”

Hearing that reply, the doctor took his cap and cloak and left Christophe, rightly judging that he could worm nothing out of a man of that stamp.  The jailer of Blois now ordered the poor lad to be carried away on a stretcher by four men, who took him to the prison in the town, where Christophe immediately fell into the deep sleep which, they say, comes to most mothers after the terrible pangs of childbirth.

IX

THE TUMULT AT AMBOISE

By moving the court to the chateau of Amboise, the two Lorrain princes intended to set a trap for the leader of the party of the Reformation, the Prince de Conde, whom they had made the king summon to his presence.  As vassal of the Crown and prince of the blood, Conde was bound to obey the summons of his sovereign.  Not to come to Amboise would constitute the crime of treason; but if he came, he put himself in the power of the Crown.  Now, at this moment, as we have seen, the Crown, the council, the court, and all their powers were solely in the hands of the Duc de Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine.  The Prince de Conde showed, at this delicate crisis, a presence of mind and a decision and willingness which made him the worthy exponent of Jeanne d’Albret and the valorous general of the Reformers.  He travelled at the rear of the conspirators as far as