uillier, from the Chatelet
of Paris. The others were of an inferior station in life--a fruitster, a
maker of wire-baskets, and a joiner. All, however, with almost equal
composure, submitted to their fate as to the will of Heaven, rather than
the sentence of human judges; scarcely seeming, in their firm
anticipation of an immortal crown, to notice the tumultuous outcries of
an infuriated mob which nearly succeeded in snatching them from the
officers of the law, in order to have the satisfaction of tearing their
bodies to pieces.[353]

[Sidenote: Ingenious contrivance for protracting torture.]

It would seem, however, that the most relentless enemy could scarcely
have complained that any womanish indulgence had been shown to the
persons singled out to expiate the crime of posting the placard against
the mass. To delay the advent of death, the sole term of their
excruciating sufferings, an ingeniously contrived instrument of torture
was put in play, which if not altogether novel, had at least been but
seldom employed up to this time. Instead of being bound to the stake
and simply roasted to death by means of the fagots heaped up around him,
the victim was now suspended by chains over a blazing fire, and was
alternately lowered into it and drawn out--a refinement of cruelty whose
principal recommendation to favor lay in the fact that the diversion it
afforded the spectators could be made to last until they were fully
satisfied, and the executioner chose to allow the writhing sufferer to
be suffocated in the flames.[354] So satisfactory were the results of
the _Estrapade_, that it came to be universally employed as the
instrument for executing "Lutherans," with the exception of a favored
few, to whom the privilege was accorded of being hung or strangled
before their bodies were thrown into the fire. Such was, soon after this
time, the fate of a woman, a school-teacher by profession, found guilty
of heresy. In any case, the judges took effectual measures to forestall
the deplorable consequences that might ensue from permitting the
"Lutherans" to address the by-standers, and so pervert them from the
orthodox faith. The hangman was instructed to pierce their tongue with a
hot iron, or to cut it out altogether; just as, at a later date, the
sound of the drum was employed to drown the last utterances of the
victims of despotism.[355]

[Sidenote: Flight of Marot.]

The flames of persecution were not extinguished with the concl