. 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
haughtiness towards the witness, reproaching him as a miserable valet,
given to drink, and protesting that as he had been dismissed for his
misdemeanours, his testimony against her ought to go for nothing. So the
chief president felt no hope of breaking her inflexible spirit, except by
the agency of a minister of religion; for it was not enough to put her to
death, the poisons must perish with her, or else society would gain
nothing. The doctor Pirot came to the marquise with a letter from her
sister, who, as we know, was a nun bearing the name of Sister Marie at
the convent Saint-Jacques. Her letter exhorted the marquise, in the most
touching and affectionate terms, to place her confidence in the good
priest, and look upon him not only as a helper but as