Charlemont kills his intended assassin. D'Amville is able to arrange the arrest of Charlemont and Castabella on a false charge of adultery. But the aristocrat's machinations begin to sour; Sebastian is killed in a duel with his lover's husband, Baron Belforest, and the sickly Rousard dies as well. D'Amville, facing the collapse of his dynastic ambitions, begins to lose his reason. In the play's climactic scene, Charlemont and Castabella are on the scaffold, facing their death sentences; but D'Amville smashes his own skull with the axe intended for them. With his dying breaths he confesses his murder of Montferrers and his other crimes. Charlemont and Castabella are freed, and can marry, as originally intended, at the play's end.