with the answer, took the
bishop into another room, and summoned the accused to declare all the
circumstances: the poor wretches, half dead, fell at the vizier's feet.
The woman spoke, explaining that the necessity of defending life and
honour had driven them to take up arms to kill their enemy. She added
that God alone had witnessed their crime, and it would still be unknown
had not the law of the same God compelled them to confide it to the
ear of one of His ministers for their forgiveness. Now the priest's
insatiable avarice had ruined them first and then denounced them. The
vizier made them go into a third room, and ordered the treacherous
priest to be confronted with the bishop, making him again rehearse the
penalties incurred by those who betray confessions. Then, applying this
to the guilty priest, he condemned him to be burnt alive in a public
place;--in anticipation, said he, of burning in hell, where he would
assuredly receive the punishment of his infidelity and crimes. The
sentence was executed without delay.

In spite of the effect which the advocate intended to produce by these
three cases, either the judges rejected them, or perhaps they thought
the other evidence without the confession was enough, and it was soon
clear to everyone, by the way the trial went forward, that the marquise
would be condemned. Indeed, before sentence was pronounced, on the
morning of July 16th, 1676, she saw M. Pirot, doctor of the Sorbonne,
come into her prison, sent by the chief president. This worthy
magistrate, foreseeing the issue, and feeling that one so guilty should
not be left till the last moment, had sent the good priest. The
latter, although he had objected that the Conciergerie had its own two
chaplains, and added that he was too feeble to undertake such a task,
being unable even to see another man bled without feeling ill, accepted
the painful mission, the president having so strongly urged it, on the
ground that in this case he needed a man who could be entirely trusted.
The president, in fact, declared that, accustomed as he was to dealing
with criminals, the strength of the marquise amazed him. The day before
he summoned M. Pirot, he had worked at the trial from morning to night,
and for thirteen hours the accused had been confronted with Briancourt,
one of the chief witnesses against her. On that very day, there had
been five hours more, and she had borne it all, showing as much respect
towards her judges as