"
The two other balconies were filled by invited guests, courtiers, and
persons on duty about the court. In short, the whole company of the
chateau de Blois had come to Amboise to assist at this festival of
death, precisely as it passed, a little later, from the pleasures of a
court to the perils of war, with an easy facility, which will always
seem to foreigners one of the main supports of their policy toward
France.
The poor syndic of the furriers of Paris was filled with the keenest
joy at not seeing his son among the fifty-seven gentlemen who were
condemned to die.
At a sign from the Duc de Guise, the clerk seated on the scaffold
cried in a loud voice:--
"Jean-Louis-Alberic, Baron de Raunay, guilty of heresy, of the crime
of /lese-majeste/, and assault with armed hand against the person of
the king."
A tall handsome man mounted the scaffold with a firm step, bowed to
the people and the court, and said:
"That sentence lies. I took arms to deliver the king from his enemies,
the Guises."
He placed his head on the block, and it fell. The Reformers chanted:--
"Thou, O God! hast proved us;
Thou hast tried us;
As silver is tried in the fire,
So hast thou purified us.
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