Page 268 (1/1)
Then she felt her blood boil in her head, and a renation flashed up in that soul already benumbed and cold
The archdeacon approached her slowly; even in that extre with sensuality, jealousy, and desire, over her exposed forirl, have you asked God's pardon for your faults and shortcos?"
He bent down to her ear, and added (the spectators supposed that he was receiving her last confession): "Will you have one, deave vent to a horrible smile: "You will not be believed You will only add a scandal to a crime Reply quickly! Will you have me?"
"What have you done with my Phoebus?"
"He is dead!" said the priest
At that moment the wretched archdeacon raised his head mechanically and beheld at the other end of the Place, in the balcony of the Gondelaurier ered, passed his hand across his eyes, looked again, muttered a curse, and all his features were violently contorted
"Well, die then!" he hissed between his teeth "No one shall have you" Then, raising his hand over the gypsy, he exclaimed in a funereal voice:--"~I nunc, anima anceps, et sit tibi Deusin the balance, and God have mercy upon thee"
This was the dread forlooreed upon between the priest and the executioner
The crowd knelt
"~Kyrie eleison~," said the priests, who had remained beneath the arch of the portal
"Lord havein that murmur which runs over all heads, like the waves of a troubled sea
"Amen," said the archdeacon
He turned his back on the condeirl, his head sank upon his breast once more, he crossed his hands and rejoined his escort of priests, and a moment later he was seen to disappear, with the cross, the candles, and the copes, beneath the misty arches of the cathedral, and his sonorous voice was extinguished by degrees in the choir, as he chanted this verse of despair,-"~Oites tui et fluctus tui super one over me"
At the same time, the interradually dying away a the columns of the nave, produced the effect of a clock ha the last hour of the condemned