aded to take that course by the
interrogators, who promised them indemnity for life and fortune. Some
there were, of a truth, who suffered with marvellous patience and
constancy the torments inflicted on them, and would confess nothing
imputed to their charge; but they, too, had to give large sums to the
judges, who exacted that such of them as, notwithstanding their
mishandling, were still able to move, should banish themselves from that
part of the country." Monstrelet winds up this shocking narrative by
informing us "that it ought not to be concealed that the whole
accusation was a stratagem of wicked men for their own covetous
purposes, and in order, by these false accusations and forced
confessions, to destroy the life, fame, and fortune of wealthy persons."

Delrio himself confesses that Franciscus Balduinus gives an account of
the pretended punishment, but real persecution, of these Waldenses, in
similar terms with Monstrelet, whose suspicions are distinctly spoken
out, and adds that the Parliament of Paris, having heard the affair by
appeal, had declared the sentence illegal and the judges iniquitous, by
an arret dated 20th May, 1491. The Jesuit Delrio quotes the passage, but
adheres with lingering reluctance to the truth of the accusation. "The
Waldenses (of whom the Albigenses are a species) were," he says, "never
free from the most wretched excess of fascination;" and finally, though
he allows the conduct of the judges to have been most odious, he cannot
prevail on himself to acquit the parties charged by such interested
accusers with horrors which should hardly have been found proved even
upon the most distinct evidence. He appeals on this occasion to
Florimond's work on Antichrist. The introduction of that work deserves
to be quoted, as strongly illustrative of the condition to which the
country was reduced, and calculated to make an impression the very
reverse probably of that which the writer would have desired:--

"All those who have afforded us some signs of the approach of Antichrist
agree that the increase of sorcery and witchcraft is to distinguish the
melancholy period of his advent; and was ever age so afflicted with them
as ours? The seats destined for criminals before our judicatories are
blackened with persons accused of this guilt. There are not judges
enough to try them. Our dungeons are gorged with them. No day passes
that we do not render our tribunals bloody by the dooms which we
pronounce