enced in his work by the assurance of
obtaining the rewards promised by the Ban. During the intervals of repose
from the rack he conversed with ease, and even eloquence, answering all
questions addressed to him with apparent sincerity. His constancy in
suffering so astounded his judges that they believed him supported by
witchcraft. "Ecce homo!" he exclaimed, from time to time, with insane
blasphemy, as he raised his blood-streaming head from the bench. In order
to destroy the charm which seemed to render him insensible to pain, they
sent for the shirt of a hospital patient, supposed to be a sorcerer. When
clothed in this garment, however, Balthazar was none the less superior to
the arts of the tormentors, enduring all their inflictions, according to
an eye-witness, "without once exclaiming, Ah me!" and avowing that he
would repeat his enterprise, if possible, were he to die a thousand
deaths in consequence. Some of those present refused to believe that he
was a man at all. Others asked him how long since he had sold himself to
the Devil? to which he replied, mildly, that he had no acquaintance
whatever with the Devil. He thanked the judges politely for the food
which he received in prison, and promised to recompense them for the
favor. Upon being asked how that was possible, he replied; that he would
serve as their advocate in Paradise.

The sentence pronounced against the assassin was execrable--a crime
against the memory of the great man whom it professed to avenge. It was
decreed that the right hand of Gerard should be burned off with a red-hot
iron, that his flesh should be torn from his bones with pincers in six
different places, that he should be quartered and disembowelled alive,
that his heart should be torn from his bosom and flung in his face, and
that, finally, his head should be taken off. Not even his horrible crime,
with its endless consequences, nor the natural frenzy of indignation
which it had excited, could justify this savage decree, to rebuke which
the murdered hero might have almost risen from the sleep of death. The
sentence was literally executed on the 14th of July, the criminal
supporting its horrors with the same astonishing fortitude. So calm were
his nerves, crippled and half roasted as he was ere he mounted the
scaffold, that when one of the executioners was slightly injured in the
ear by the flying from the handle of the hammer with which he was
breaking the fatal pistol in pieces, as the f