he
said, "I appeal to the king:" whereupon he was taken back to prison. The
sentence was to be carried out the same day about three P. M. A great
crowd of more than twenty thousand persons, says a contemporary
chronicler, rushed to the bridges, the streets, the squares, where this
solemn expiation was to take place. The commissioner of police, the
officer of the Chatelet, the archers, crossbowmen, and arquebusiers of
the city had repaired to the palace to form the escort; but when they
presented themselves at the prison to take Berquin, he told them that he
had appealed to the king, and that he would not go with them. The escort
and the crowd retired disappointed. The president convoked the tribunal
the same evening, and repairing to the prison, he made Berquin sign the
form of his appeal. William Bude hurried to the scene, and vehemently
urged the prisoner to give it up. "A second sentence," said he, "is
ready, and it pronounces death. If you acquiesce in the first, we shall
be able to save you later on. All that is demanded of you is to ask
pardon: and have we not all need of pardon?" It appears that for a moment
Berquin hesitated, and was on the point of consenting; but Bude remained
anxious. "I know him," said he; "his ingenuousness and his confidence in
the goodness of his cause will ruin him." The king was at Blois, and his
sister Marguerite at St. Germain; on the news of this urgent peril she
wrote to her brother, "I for the last time, make you a very humble
request; it is, that you will be pleased to have pity upon poor Berquin,
whom I know to be suffering for nothing but loving the word of God and
obeying yours. You will be pleased, Monseigneur, so to act that it be
not said that separation has made you forget your most humble and most
obedient subject and sister, Marguerite." We can discover no trace of
any reply whatever from Francis I. According to most of the documentary
evidence, uncertainty lasted for three days. Berquin persisted in his
resolution. "No," he to his friend Bude, who again came to the prison,
"I would rather endure death than give my approval, even by silence only
to condemnation of the truth." The president of the court went once more
to pay him a visit, and asked him if he held to his appeal. Berquin
said, "Yes." court revised its original sentence, and for the penalty of
perpetual imprisonment substituted that of the stake. On the 22d of
April, 1529, according to most of t