at the eleventh hour, the period of the execution
was deferred. On the day when her ashes
were to have been cast to the winds, she was
still in her prison, a living, breathing woman.
Her limbs were spared from the torture, her
body was released from the stake, until the
twenty-ninth of July, seventeen hundred and
eighty-two. On that day her reprieve was
to end, and the execution of her sentence was
absolutely to take place.

During the short period of grace which
was now to elapse, the situation of the friendless
girl, accused of such incredible crimes
and condemned to so awful a doom, was
discussed far and wide in French society.
The case became notorious beyond the limits
of Caen. The report of it spread by way of
Rouen, from mouth to mouth, till it reached
Paris; and from Paris it penetrated into the
palace of the King at Versailles. That
harmless, weak, unhappy man, whose dreadful
destiny it was to pay the penalty which the
long and noble endurance of the French
people had too mercifully abstained from
inflicting on his guilty predecessors, had then
lately mounted the fatal steps of the Throne.
Louis the Sixteenth was sovereign of France
when the story of the poor servant-girl
obtained its first court-circulation at Versailles.

The conduct of the King, when the main
facts of Marie's case came to his ears, did
all honour to his sense of duty and his sense
of justice. He instantly despatched his Royal
order to suspend the execution of the
sentence. The report of Marie's fearful
situation had reached him so short a time
before the period appointed for her death,
that the Royal mandate was only delivered to
the parliament of Rouen on the twenty-
sixth of July.

The girl's life now hung literally on a
thread. An accident happening to the
courier, any delay in fulfilling the wearisome
official formalities proper to the occasion,
and the execution might have taken its
course. The authorities at Rouen, feeling that
the King's interference implied a rebuke of
their inconsiderate confirmation of the Caen
sentence, did their best to set themselves
right for the future by registering the Royal
order on the day when they received it. The
next morning, the twenty-seventh, it was
sent to Caen; and it reached the authorities
there on the twenty-eighth.

That twenty-eighth of July, seventeen
hundred and eighty-two, fell on a Sunday.
Throughout the day and night, the order lay
in the office unopened. Sunday was a holiday,
and Procurator Revel was not disposed
to desecrate it by so much as five minutes
performance of week-day work.

On Monday, the twenty-ninth, the crowd
assembled to see the execution. The stake
was set up, the soldiers were called out, the
executioner was ready. All the preliminary
horror of the torturing and burning was
suffered to darken round the miserable
prisoner, before the wretches in authority saw
fit to open the message of mercy and to
deliver it at the prison-gate.

She was now saved, as if by a miracle, for the
second time! But the cell-door was still
closed on her. The only chance of ever opening
it—the only hope of publicly asserting her
innocence, lay in appealing to the King's
justice by means of a written statement of
her case, presenting it exactly as it stood in
all its details, from the beginning at Madame
Duparc's to the end in the prison of Caen.
The production of such a document as this
was beset with obstacles; the chief of them
being the difficulty of gaining access to the
voluminous reports of the evidence given at
the trial, which were only accessible in those
days to persons professionally connected with
the courts of law. If Marie's case was to be
placed before the King, no man in France who
was not a lawyer could undertake the duty with
the slightest chance of serving the interests
of the prisoner and the interests of truth.

In this disgraceful emergency a man was
found to plead the girl's cause, whose profession
secured to him the indispensable privilege
of examining the evidence against her.
This man—a barrister, named Lecauchois—
not only undertook to prepare a statement of
the case from the records of the court—but
further devoted himself to collecting money
for Marie, from all the charitably-disposed
inhabitants of the town. It is to be said to
his credit that he honestly faced the
difficulties of his task, and industriously
completed the document which he had engaged
to furnish. On the other hand, it must be
recorded to his shame, that his motives were
interested throughout, and that with almost
incredible meanness, he paid himself for the
employment of his time by putting the
greater part of the sum which he had
collected for his client in his own pocket.
With her one friend, no less than with all her
enemies, it seems to have been Marie's hard
fate to see the worst side of human nature,
on every occasion when she was brought into
contact with her fellow-creatures,

The statement pleading for the revision of
Marie's trial was sent to Paris. An eminent
barrister at the Court of Requests, framed a
petition from it, the prayer of which was
granted by the king. Acting under the
Royal order, the judges of the Court of
Requests, furnished themselves with the
reports of the evidence as drawn up at Caen;
and after examining the whole case,
unanimously decided that there was good and
sufficient reason for the revision of the trial.
The order to that effect was not issued to
the parliament of Rouen before the twenty-fourth
of May, seventeen hundred and
eighty-four—nearly two years after the
king's mercy had saved Marie from the
executioner. Who can say how slowly that
long, long time must have passed to the poor
girl who was still languishing in her prison?