uld command were echelonned in the streets,
opposing a sort of dam to the torrent of the raging crowd. The sudden
insatiable cruelty that too often degrades human nature had awaked in
the populace: all heads were turned with hatred and frenzy; all
imaginations inflamed with the passion for revenge; groups of men and
women, roaring like wild beasts, threatened to knock down the walls of
the prison, if the condemned were not handed over to them to take to the
place of punishment: a great murmur arose, continuous, ever the same,
like the growling of thunder: the queen's heart was petrified with
terror.

That same evening the sentence, to the great joy of all, was proclaimed,
that Joan was innocent and acquitted of all concern in the assassination
of her husband. But as her conduct after the event and the indifference
she had shown about pursuing the authors of the crime admitted of no
valid excuse, the pope declared that there were plain traces of magic,
and that the wrong-doing attributed to Joan was the result of some
baneful charm cast upon her, which she could by no possible means
resist.

MARTIN GUERRE mguer10.txt or mguer10.zip [Etext #2752]

MARTIN GUERRE

On the 10th of, August 1557, an inauspicious day in the history of
France, the roar of cannon was still heard at six in the evening in the
plains of St. Quentin; where the French army had just been destroyed by
the united troops of England and Spain, commanded by the famous Captain
Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy. An utterly beaten infantry, the
Constable Montmorency and several generals taken prisoner, the Duke
d'Enghien mortally wounded, the flower of the nobility cut down like
grass,--such were the terrible results of a battle which plunged France
into mourning, and which would have been a blot on the reign of Henry
II, had not the Duke of Guise obtained a brilliant revenge the following
year.

This sentence substituted the gallows for the decapitation decreed by
the first judge, inasmuch as the latter punishment was reserved for
criminals of noble birth, while hanging was inflicted on meaner persons.

ALI PACHA

Albania was one of the most difficult provinces to manage. Its
inhabitants were poor, brave, and, the nature of the country was
mountainous and inaccessible. The pashas had great difficulty in
collecting tribute, because the people were given to fighting for their
bread. Whether Mahomedans or Christians, the Albanians were a