In The Little Chapter-House

The sun was an hour high, and in Angers the shops and booths, after the
early fashion of the day, were open or opening. Through all the gates
country folk were pressing into the gloomy streets of the Black Town with
milk and fruit; and at doors and windows housewives cheapened fish, or
chaffered over the fowl for the pot. For men must eat, though there be
gibbets in the Place Ste.-Croix: gaunt gibbets, high and black and
twofold, each, with its dangling ropes, like a double note of
interrogation.

But gibbets must eat also; and between ground and noose was so small a
space in those days that a man dangled almost before he knew it. The
sooner, then, the paniers were empty, and the clown, who pays for all,
was beyond the gates, the better he, for one, would be pleased. In the
market, therefore, was hurrying. Men cried their wares in lowered
voices, and tarried but a little for the oldest customer. The bargain
struck, the more timid among the buyers hastened to shut themselves into
their houses again; the bolder, who ventured to the Place to confirm the
rumour with their eyes, talked in corners and in lanes, avoided the open,
and eyed the sinister preparations from afar. The shadow of the things
which stood before the cathedral affronting the sunlight with their gaunt
black shapes lay across the length and breadth of Angers. Even in the
corners where men whispered, even in the cloisters where men bit their
nails in impotent anger, the stillness of fear ruled all. Whatever Count
Hannibal had it in his mind to tell the city, it seemed unlikely--and
hour by hour it seemed less likely--that any would contradict him.