ircumspecta provisione ac provida circumspectione
indigent, ut remedientur, aut moderentur in melius, seu pocius totaliter
suspendantur propter nonnulla inconvenientia que consecuntur ex ipsis
circa liberum et expeditum cursum officii inquisitoris."

The feudal custom which supplied Beaumarchais with the argument of his
play recruits a stout believer in the historian of the Inquisition, who
assures us that the authorities may be found on a certain page of his
_Sacerdotal Celibacy_. There, however, they may be sought in vain. Some
dubious instances are mentioned, and the dissatisfied inquirer is passed
on to the Fors de Bearn, and to Lagreze, and is informed that M. Louis
Veuillot raised an unprofitable dust upon the subject. I remember that
M. Veuillot, in his boastful scorn for book learning, made no secret
that he took up the cause because the Church was attacked, but got his
facts from somebody else. Graver men than Veuillot have shared his
conclusion. Sir Henry Maine, having looked into the matter in his quick,
decisive way, declared that an instance of the _droit du seigneur_ was
as rare as the Wandering Jew. In resting his case on the Pyrenees, Mr.
Lea shows his usual judgment. But his very confident note is a too easy
and contemptuous way of settling a controversy which is still wearily
extant from Spain to Silesia, in which some new fact comes to light
every year, and drops into obscurity, riddled with the shafts of
critics.

An instance of too facile use of authorities occurs at the siege of
Beziers. "A fervent Cistercian contemporary informs us that when Arnaud
was asked whether the Catholics should be spared, he feared the heretics
would escape by feigning orthodoxy, and fiercely replied, 'Kill them
all, for God knows his own.'" Caesarius, to whom we owe the _locus
classicus_, was a Cistercian and a contemporary, but he was not so
fervent as that, for he tells it as a report, not as a fact, with a
caution which ought not to have evaporated. "Fertur dixisse: Caedite
eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius!" The Catholic defenders had been
summoned to separate from the Cathari, and had replied that they were
determined to share their fate. It was then resolved to make an example,
which we are assured bore fruit afterwards. The hasty zeal of Citeaux
adopted the speech of the abbot and gave it currency. But its rejection
by the French scholars, Tamizey de Larroque and Auguste Molinier, was a
warning against presen