But no sooner had she left the chamber than a thought which angered him came like a flash, and stepping to the door, he called them back.
"You say these men are your sons?" he said severely, when she had come into the room; "let me see your face."
She shrank from him and hid it more deeply in her hood.
"The man who was a cultivator is forty years of age; you are no more," he pronounced, "how can you be his mother?"
A few mumbled words passed her lips, but he did not listen to them.
"The three are from three different families, three different ranks, three different Provinces, and yet you have pretended to be the parent of all of them. You are the parent of none of them, but have come here to shamefully impose upon my feelings. What you are is a confederate of the gang. Had you been the woman you have pretended I was ready to make sacrifices for you, the extent of which you cannot know. But if, instead of returning sons to a mother, I am to loose again three most dangerous criminals upon the country, it is a different affair. Be well satisfied that I do not immediately have yourself convicted as their accomplice." In his anger he motioned her to be off, and she, dropping the piece of gold which he had given her, crept away with alacrity, not daring to venture a word.
It was only as she passed down through the Prince's halls behind Dominique that she allowed her fury full possession of her, and as she glanced about on the evidences of luxury, she gnashed her teeth and hissed half aloud--
"Ah, but I would stick your throats, you fat hogs!"
"What do you say, Madame?" inquired Dominique.
Germain threw himself again upon his chair and gave himself up to misery.
The prisoners were condemned to death, in the terrible form of breaking on the wheel. Wife Gougeon and the Admiral returned late on the last night before the execution to the old-iron shop, dismayed and ferocious. Her vanity was deeply hurt by the failure of her plan. In the back of the shop, among piles of horse-shoes, locks, spikes, and bars, a meeting of the Big Bench of the Galley-on-land was held to decide the course to be taken. The yellow light of the dip threw their shadows into the recesses and shed its flicker on their faces. Gougeon sat picking at the candle-grease in his apathetic way. Hache cheerfully threw himself on a long box. The Admiral stood wrapped in his cloak, melodramatic as usual.