of only a single copy of the "Tigre," and this
was found in the house of one Martin Lhomme, or Lhommet, a printer
by trade, and miserably poor. There was no evidence at all that he
had had any part in printing or publishing it. None the less did
the judges of parliament, and particularly M. Du Lyon, to whom the
case was specially confided, prosecute the trial with relentless
ardor. On the 15th of July, the unfortunate Lhomme, after having
been subjected to torture to extract information respecting his
supposed accomplices, was publicly hung on a gibbet on the Place
Maubert, in Paris. The well-informed Regnier de La Planche (p. 313)
is our authority for the statement that Du Lyon having, at a
supper, a few days later, been called to account for the iniquity
of his decision, made no attempt to defend it, but exclaimed: "Que
voulez-vous? We had to satisfy Monsieur le Cardinal with something,
since we had failed to catch the author; for otherwise he would
never have given us any peace (il ne nous eust jamais donne
relasche)." Still more unreasonable was the infliction of the
death-penalty upon Robert Dehors, a merchant of Rouen, who had
chanced to ride into Paris just as Lhomme was being led to
execution. Booted as he still was, he became a witness of the
brutality with which the crowd followed the poor printer, and
seemed disposed to snatch him from the executioner's hands in order
to tear him in pieces. Indignant at this violation of decency,
Dehors had the imprudence to remonstrate with those about him,
dissuading them from imbruing their hands in the blood of a
wretched man, when their desire was so soon to be accomplished by
the minister of the law. The Rouen merchant little understood the
ferocity of the Parisian populace. The mob instantly turned their
fury upon him, and but for the intervention of the royal archers he
would have met on the spot the fate from which he had sought to
rescue another to whose person and offence he was an utter
stranger. As it was, he escaped instant death only to become a
victim to the perverse ingenuity of the same judges, and be hung on
the same Place Maubert, "for the sedition and popular commotion
caused by him, at the time of the execution of Martin Lhomme, by
means of scandalous expressions and blasphemies utte