第34章 CHAPTER VI(5)

The next day Louis held another meeting of his council,and ordered that Charles should have his throat cut on the very spot where poor Andre had been hanged.He then sent the other princes of the blood,loaded with chains,to Hungary,where they were long kept prisoners.

Charles,quite thunderstruck by such an unexpected blow,overwhelmed by the thought of his past crimes,trembled like a coward face to face with death,and seemed completely crushed.Bowed,upon his knees,his face half hidden in his hands,from time to time convulsive sobs escaped him,as he tried to fix the thoughts that chased each other through his mind like the shapes of a monstrous dream.Night was in his soul,but every now and then light flashed across the darkness,and over the gloomy background of his despair passed gilded figures fleeing from him with smiles of mockery.In his ears buzzed voices from the other world;he saw a long procession of ghosts,like the conspirators whom Nicholas of Melazzo had pointed out in the vaults of Castel Nuovo.But these phantoms each held his head in his hand,and shaking it by the hair,bespattered him with drops of blood.Some brandished whips,some knives:each threatened Charles with his instrument of torture.Pursued by the nocturnal train,the hapless man opened his mouth for one mighty cry,but his breath was gone,and it died upon his lips.Then he beheld his mother stretching out her arms from afar,and he fancied that if he could but reach her he would be safe But at each step the path grew more and more narrow,pieces of his flesh were torn off by the approaching walls;at last,breathless,naked and bleeding,he reached his goal;but his mother glided farther away,and it was all to begin over again.The,phantoms pursued him,grinning and screaming in his ears:--"Cursed be he who slayeth his mother!"

Charles was roused from these horrors by the cries of his brothers,who had come to embrace him for the last time before embarking.The duke in a low voice asked their pardon,and then fell back into his state of despair.The children were dragged away,begging to be allowed to share their brother's fate,and crying for death as an alleviation of their woes.At length they were separated,but the sound of their lamentation sounded long in the heart of the condemned man.After a few moments,two soldiers and two equerries came to tell the duke that his hour had come.

Charles followed them,unresisting,to the fatal balcony where Andre had been hanged.He was there asked if he desired to confess,and when he said yes,they brought a monk from the sane convent where the terrible scene had been enacted:he listened to the confession of all his sins,and granted him absolution.The duke at once rose and walked to the place where Andre had been thrown down for the cord to be put round his neck,and there,kneeling again,he asked his executioners--"Friends,in pity tell me,is there any hope for my life?"And when they answered no,Charles exclaimed:

"Then carry out your instructions."

At these words,one of the equerries plunged his sword into his breast,and the other cut his head off with a knife,and his corpse was thrown over the balcony into the garden where Andre's body had lain for three days unburied.