r.

"Better you had never been born," he said, "than have avenged your
father's death as you three have avenged it. Your own act has doomed
the guilty and the innocent to suffer alike."

Those words proved prophetic of the truth. The end came quickly, as
the priest had foreseen it, when he spoke his parting words.

The arrest of Cantegrel was accomplished without difficulty the next
morning. In the absence of any other evidence on which to justify this
proceeding, the private disclosure to the authorities of the secret
which the priest had violated became inevitable. The Parliament of
Languedoc was, under these circumstances, the tribunal appealed to; and
the decision of that assembly immediately ordered the priest and the
three brothers to be placed in confinement, as well as the murderer
Cantegrel. Evidence was then immediately sought for, which might
convict this last criminal without any reference to the revelation that
had been forced from the priest--and evidence enough was found to
satisfy judges whose minds already possessed the foregone certainty of
the prisoner's guilt. He was put on his trial, was convicted of the
murder, and was condemned to be broken on the wheel. The sentence was
rigidly executed, with as little delay as the law would permit.

The cases of Monsieur Chaubard, and of the three sons of Siadoux, next
occupied the judges. The three brothers were found guilty of having
forced the secret of a confession from a man in holy orders, and were
sentenced to death by hanging. A far more terrible expiation of his
offense awaited the unfortunate priest. He was condemned to have his
limbs broken on the wheel, and to be afterward, while still living,
bound to the stake and destroyed by fire.

Barbarous as the punishments of that period were, accustomed as the
population was to hear of their infliction, and even to witness it, the
sentences pronounced in these two cases dismayed the public mind; and
the authorities were surprised by receiving petitions for mercy from
Toulouse, and from all the surrounding neighborhood. But the priest's
doom had been sealed. All that could be obtained, by the intercession
of persons of the highest distinction, was, that the executioner should
grant him the mercy of death before his body was committed to the
flames. With this one modification, the sentence was executed, as the
sentence had been pronounced, on the curate of Croix-Daurade.

The punishment of t