"Now tell your story," said Doltaire to this last.
The man, with broken voice and breath catching, said that they
had erred. They had been hired to kidnap Madame Cournal, not
Mademoiselle Duvarney.
Doltaire's eyes flashed. "I see, I see," he said aside to me.
"The wretch speaks truth."
"Who was your master?" he asked of the sturdiest of the
villains; and he was told that Monsieur Cournal had engaged them.
To the question what was to be done with Madame Cournal, another
answered that she was to be waylaid as she was coming from the
Intendance, kidnapped, and hurried to a nunnery to be imprisoned
for life.
Doltaire sat for a moment, looking at the men in silence. "You
are not to hang," he said at last; "but ten days hence, when you
have had one hundred lashes more, you shall go free. Fifty for
you," he continued to the weakest who had first told the story.
"Not fifty nor one!" was the shrill reply, and, being unbound,
the prisoner snatched something from a bench near; there was a
flash of steel, and he came huddling in a heap on the floor,
muttering a malediction on the world.
"There was some bravery in that," said Doltaire, looking at the
dead man.
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