Page:Musset - Gamiani, or Two Passionate Nights.djvu/142

 he would split on them outside and cause a scandal concerning the convent.

I begged them not to do this, but in a second they had let down one of the hanging lamps, and attached the cord round his neck, then as they pulled him up, and hanged him, I turned my eyes away from the horrible sight. But to the great surprise of the mad creatures, the hanging produced a not unusual effect. Surprised and delighted at this nervous and muscular demonstration the superior took a ladder, and mounting to the proper height impaled herself on the projection, and thus married a corpse in mid-air to the frenzied applause of her worthy accomplices.

This however, is not quite the end of the story. The rope was too thin or worn to support the weight of two bodies, so it broke, and the dying man and living woman fell to the ground together so heavily that she broke both her legs, and the cord loosening, the dying man came to life sufficiently to try to strangle the superior with a death grip in his expiring convulsions.

The fall of a thunderbolt would not have caused more consternation amongst the nuns than this event. They all scattered, frightened to death that Satan himself was amongst