Page:Gaston Leroux--The man with the black feather.djvu/182

160 "At that epoch—my friend Adolphe, who's as serious as a donkey, will tell you so—they no longer hung people at the Gallows of Montfaucon, but they used to throw into the charnel-house of those gallows the remains of people whom they hung elsewhere. That's how it was that this poor Gastelard, whose skeleton I recognised just now, was dragged to the charnel-house after having been hung in the Place de Grève. Gastelard, my dear M. St. Elmo's-Fire—"

"De Saint-Elme," M. Lecamus corrected him again.

"My dear M. de Saint-Elme, Gastelard was n't up to much, a poor beggar full of imagination, who, having one day disguised himself as a King's deputy, demanded his sword from a gentleman, showing him at the same time an Order of Committal. The gentleman believed that he was being duly arrested, and handed over his sword, the hilt of which was gold and the most beautiful you ever saw. The story ended with Gastelard at the end of a rope. But I 'll be hanged, my dear M. de l'Equinox—"

"De la Nox," insisted Adolphe.

"De la Nose, my dear M. de la Nose, I 'll be hanged if I ever expected that I should one