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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: and windows were let at ten pounds apiece,--an enormous sum in those
days. The poor old father had engaged, as we may well believe, one of
the best places from which the eye could take in the whole of the
terrible scene, where so many men of noble blood were to perish on a
vast scaffold covered with black cloth, erected in the middle of the
open square. Thither, on the morning of the fatal day, they brought
the /chouquet/,--a name given to the block on which the condemned man
laid his head as he knelt before it. After this they brought an arm-
chair draped with black, for the clerk of the Parliament, whose
business it was to call up the condemned noblemen to their death and
read their sentences. The whole square was guarded from early morning
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