Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

forty-first, paragraph the second, and law of the Frisons, section the
twenty-first, _Deplagio_; and Alexander Nequam says,--
"'_Qui pueros vendis, plagiarius est tibi nomen_.'"
The sheriff placed the parchment on the table, laid down his spectacles,
took up the nosegay, and said,--
"End of _la peine forte et dure_. Hardquanonne, thank her Majesty."
By a sign the justice of the quorum set in motion the man dressed in
leather.
This man, who was the executioner's assistant, "groom of the gibbet,"
the old charters call him, went to the prisoner, took off the stones,
one by one, from his chest, and lifted the plate of iron up, exposing
the wretch's crushed sides. Then he freed his wrists and ankle-bones
from the four chains that fastened him to the pillars.
The prisoner, released alike from stones and chains, lay flat on the
ground, his eyes closed, his arms and legs apart, like a crucified man
taken down from a cross.
"Hardquanonne," said the sheriff, "arise!"
The prisoner did not move.
The groom of the gibbet took up a hand and let it go; the hand fell
back. The other hand, being raised, fell back likewise.
The groom of the gibbet seized one foot and then the other, and the
heels fell back on the ground.
The fingers remained inert, and the toes motionless. The naked feet of
an extended corpse seem, as it were, to bristle.
The doctor approached, and drawing from the pocket of his robe a little
mirror of steel, put it to the open mouth of Hardquanonne. Then with his
fingers he opened the eyelids. They did not close again; the glassy
eyeballs remained fixed.
The doctor rose up and said,--
"He is dead."
And he added,--
"He laughed; that killed him."
"'Tis of little consequence," said the sheriff. "After confession, life
or death is a mere formality."
Then pointing to Hardquanonne by a gesture with the nosegay of roses,
the sheriff gave the order to the wapentake,--
"A corpse to be carried away to-night."