Here Olivier Delagarde sat crouched over a tiny fire, with some bread and a jar of water at his hand, gesticulating and talking to himself. The long white hair and beard, with the benevolent forehead, gave him the look of some latter-day St. Helier, grieving for the sins and praying for the sorrows of mankind; but from the hateful mouth came profanity fit only for the dreadful communion of a Witches’ Sabbath.
Hearing the footsteps of Ranulph and Dormy, he crouched and shivered in terror, but Ranulph, who knew too well his revolting cowardice, called to him reassuringly. On their approach he stretched out his talon-like fingers in a gesture of entreaty.
“You’ll not let them hang me, Ranulph--you’ll save me,” he whimpered.
“Don’t be afraid, they shall not hang you,” Ranulph replied quietly, and began warming his hands at the fire. “You’ll swear it, Ranulph--on the Bible?”
“I’ve told you they shall not hang you. You ought to know by now whether I mean what I say,” his son answered more sharply.
Assuredly Ranulph meant that his father should not be hanged. Whatever the law was, whatever wrong the old man had done, it had been atoned for; the price had been paid by both. He himself had drunk the cup of shame to the dregs, but now he would not swallow the dregs. An iron determination entered into him. He had endured all that he would endure from man. He had set out to defend Olivier Delagarde from the worst that might happen, and he was ready to do so to the bitter end. His scheme of justice might not be that of the Royal Court, but he would defend it with his life. He had suddenly grown hard--and dangerous.
The Royal Court was sitting late. Candles had been brought to light the long desk or dais where sat the Bailly in his great chair, and the twelve scarlet-robed jurats. The Attorney-General stood at his desk, mechanically scanning the indictment read against prisoners charged with capital crimes. His work was over, and according to his lights he had done it well. Not even the Undertaker’s Apprentice could have been less sensitive to the struggles of humanity under the heel of fate and death. A plaintive complacency, a little righteous austerity, and an agreeable expression of hunger made the Attorney-General a figure in godly contrast to the prisoner awaiting his doom in the iron cage opposite.