immoral tendency of such a practice became more and more
manifest. Fear and shame led to woeful entreaties and
unworthy bargains.

Girard knew that a girl like Cadiere, all unused to shame, and very
modest--for what she had hitherto suffered took place unknown to
herself in her sleep--would feel so cruelly tortured, so fatally
crushed by this unseemly chastisement, as utterly to lose what little
buoyancy she had. She was pretty sure too, if we must speak out, to be
yet more cruelly mortified than other women, in respect of the pang
endured by her woman's vanity. With so much suffering, and so many
fasts, followed by her late miscarriage, her body, always delicate,
seemed worn away to a shadow. All the more surely would she shrink
from any exposure of a form so lean, so wasted, so full of aches. Her
swollen legs and such-like small infirmities would serve to enhance
her humiliation.

We lack the courage to relate what followed. It may all be read in
those three depositions, so artless, so manifestly unfeigned, in
which, without being sworn, she made it her duty to avow what
self-interest bade her conceal, owning even to things which were
afterwards turned to the cruellest account against her.

Her first deposition was made on the spur of the moment, before the
spiritual judge who was sent to take her by surprise. In this we seem
to be ever hearing the utterances of a young heart that speaks as
though in God's own presence. The second was taken before the King--I
should rather say before the magistrate who represented him, the
Lieutenant Civil and Criminal of Toulon. The last was heard before
the great assembly of the Parliament of Aix.

Observe that all three, agreeing as they do wonderfully together, were
printed at Aix under the eye of her enemies, in a volume where, as I
shall presently prove, an attempt was made to extenuate the guilt of
Girard, and fasten the reader's gaze on every point likely to tell
against Cadiere. And yet the editor could not help inserting
depositions like these, which bear with crushing weight on the man he
sought to uphold.

It was a monstrous piece of inconsistency on Girard's part. He first
frightened the poor girl, and then suddenly took a base, a cruel
advantage of her fears.

In this case no plea of love can be offered in extenuation. The truth
is far otherwise: he loved her no more. And this forms the most
dreadful part of the story. We have seen how cruelly he drugged