Jourdan took advantage of the terror he had inspired; and in order to assure the victory to his party, he arrested, or had arrested, eighty persons, assassins or alleged assassins, of Lescuyer, and, in consequence, accomplices of Fargas. As for the latter, he was not arrested as yet; but they were sure that he would be, since all the gates of the city were carefully guarded and the Comte de Fargas was known to everybody.
Of the eighty persons arrested, more than thirty had not even set foot within the church; but when chance affords such an excellent opportunity of ridding one's self of enemies, it should be accepted. These eighty persons were thrust into the Trouillasse Tower.
This was the tower in which the Inquisition was wont to put its victims to the torture. The greasy soot from the funereal pyre which consumed human flesh can still be seen to this very day along the walls, and also all the implements of torture, which have been carefully preserved—the caldron, the oven, the wooden horses, the chains, the oubliettes, yes, even to the old bones—nothing is wanting.
It was in this tower, built by Clement IV., that they confined the eighty prisoners. When they were safely lodged there, their captors were much embarrassed.
Who should try them? There were no legally appointed courts save those of the pope. Should they kill these wretches as they had killed Lescuyer? As we have said, there was at least a third of them, possibly half, who not only had taken no part in the assassination, but who had not even set foot in the church. To make an end of them was the only safe way; the slaughter would pass under the head of reprisals.
But executioners were needed to kill these eighty people.
A sort of tribunal organized by Jourdan sat in one of the halls of the palace. They had a clerk named Raphel; a president, half Italian, half French, an orator in the popular dialect, named Barbe Savournin de la Roua; then there were three or four poor devils, a baker, a charcoal-burner (their names have been lost, because they were of low estate). These were the ones who exclaimed: "We must kill them all! If any escape they will bear witness against us."
Executioners were wanting; there were scarcely twenty men in the courtyard, all belonging to the lowest classes in Avignon—a wig-maker, a women's-shoemaker, a cobbler, a mason, a carpenter, all with weapons caught up at haphazard. One had a sword, another a bayonet, this one a bar of iron, that one a piece of wood that had been hardened in the fire. They were all shivering in a fine October rain. It would be difficult to make assassins of such creatures. Nonsense! is there anything difficult for the devil? There is a moment in such events when Providence seems to abandon its followers; then it is Satan's turn.
Satan in person entered this cold and muddy court disguised in the appearance, form and face of an apothecary of the neighborhood, named Mende. He set up a table, lighted by two lanterns. Upon it he placed glasses, pitchers, jugs, and bottles. What was the infernal beverage that was contained in these mysterious receptacles? No one knows; but its effect is well-known. All those who drank of that diabolical liquor were seized with a sudden fever that raged through their veins—the lust of blood and murder. After that they needed only to be shown the door, and they hurled themselves into the cells.