iptures, to have recourse to the authority of the church. In the end
the theologians covered their retreat with indignant remonstrances
addressed to parliament for listening to such seductive speakers; and
the majority of the judges, mastering their first inclination to acquit
Chapot, condemned him to the stake, reserving for him the easier death
by strangling, in case he recanted. An unusual favor was allowed him. He
was permitted to make a short speech previously to his execution. Faint
and utterly unable to stand, in consequence of the tortures by which his
body had been racked, he was supported on either side by an attendant,
and thus from the funeral cart explained his belief to the by-standers.
But when he reached the topic of the Lord's Supper, he was interrupted
by one of the priests. The milder sentence of the halter was inflicted,
in order to create the impression that he had been so weak as to repeat
the "_Ave Maria_." But the practice henceforth uniformly followed by the
"_Chambre ardente_" of parliament, of cutting out the tongues of the
condemned before sending them to public execution, confirmed the report
that Maillard had exclaimed that "all would be lost, if such men were
suffered to speak to the people."[515]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 449: This was true particularly of the wealthy noble family to
whom belonged the fief of Cental, perhaps at a somewhat later date.
Among the Waldensian villages owned by it were those of La Motte
d'Aigues, St. Martin, Lourmarin, Peypin, and others in the same
vicinity. Bouche, Histoire de Provence, i. 610.]

[Footnote 450: Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta (Geneva, 1560), fols. 88,
90, 100.]

[Footnote 451: Ibid., _ubi supra_, fol. 100; Garnier, Histoire de
France, xxvi. 27.]

[Footnote 452: Leber, Collection de pieces rel. a l'hist. de France,
xvii. 550.]

[Footnote 453: The Comtat Venaissin was not reincorporated in the French
monarchy until 1663. Louis XIV., in revenge for the insult offered him
when, on the twentieth of August of the preceding year, his ambassador
to the Holy See was shot at by the pontifical troops, and some of his
suite killed and wounded, ordered the Parliament of Aix to re-examine
the title by which the Pope held Avignon and the Comtat. The parliament
cited the pontiff, and, when he failed to appear, loyally declared his
title unsound, and, under the lead of their first president (another
Meynier, Baron d'Oppede), proceeded at once to execute se