at the archiepiscopal prison and at the Roanne,
summoned the inmates to abjure their faith and go to mass. Only thirty
persons in the one, and about twenty in the other, consented. These were
sent to the Celestine monastery and afterward released. Of the others a
careful list was drawn up. Their fate was sealed; but an unexpected
difficulty arose. The public hangman refused to execute the sentence of an
unauthorized tribunal. So did the soldiers. At last assassins were
obtained from the ranks of the turbulent inhabitants. About three o'clock
that afternoon the archbishop's prison was visited. To describe with
minuteness the scene of horror that ensued would scarcely be possible. Two
hundred and sixty-three persons,[1111] of the very best and most
industrious part of the population of Lyons,[1112] called by name
according to the roll previously made, were murdered in rapid succession.
Never was there an exhibition of more pitiless cruelty. Meanwhile, where
was the governor? He had gone, in company with the commandant of the
citadel, to suppress a threatened disturbance in the Faubourg de la
Guillotiere, on the left bank of the Rhone. He returned only in time to
find the deed done, and to disperse those who had gone to the Roanne to
repeat it there. His demonstrations of anger were loud, and a liberal
reward was offered for the detection of any that had participated in the
slaughter.[1113] But this did not prevent the same body of cutthroats from
visiting the Roanne, soon after nightfall, and despatching all the
Protestants that were there, to the number of about seventy. Many of them,
by an excess of barbarity, the assassins tied together by a single rope,
and threw, while yet alive, into the water. On the following day the
bodies which had not yet found a watery grave were carried to the other
side of the Saone, where, stripped and mangled, they were about to be
buried in the cemetery of the Abbaye d'Esnay, when the monks refused them
admission into the consecrated ground, and pointed to the Rhone as a more
fitting destination. Even now they were not spared further mutilation; for
an apothecary of Lyons, having initiated the murderers into the valuable
properties of human fat as a medicinal substance, the miserable remains
were put to new use before being consigned to the river. Down to the
Mediterranean these ghastly witnesses of the ferocity of the passions of
the Lyonnese Roman Catholics carried fear and disgust, and f