Swear that he beat you unmercifully and you will save him from the
guillotine.' All the dupes learned their lesson with a certainty which
reflects infinite credit upon the Abbe's method of instruction.
For once in his life the Abbe had been moved by greed as well as by
villainy. His early exploits had no worse motive than the satisfaction
of an inhuman lust for cruelty and destruction. But the Marquise was
rich, and when once her husband's head were off, might not the Abbe reap
his share of the gathered harvest? The stakes were high, but the game
was worth the playing, and Rosselot played it with spirit and energy
unto the last card. His appearance in court is ever memorable, and as
his ferret eyes glinted through glass at the President, he seemed the
villain of some Middle Age Romance. His head, poised upon a lean, bony
frame, was embellished with a nose thin and sharp as the blade of a
knife; his tightly compressed lips were an indication of the rascal's
determination. 'Long as a day in Lent'--that is how a spectator
described him; and if ever a sinister nature glared through a sinister
figure, the Abbe's character was revealed before he parted his lips in
speech. Unmoved he stood and immovable; he treated the imprecations of
the Marquis with a cold disdain; as the burden of proof grew heavy on
his back, he shrugged his shoulders in weary indifference. He told his
monstrous story with a cynical contempt, which has scarce its equal in
the history of crime; and priest, as he was, he proved that he did
not yield to the Marquis himself in the Rabelaisian amplitude of his
vocabulary.
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