"For a moment it seemed as if he had not heard me, then he spoke again, and the holy calm of his expression, in spite of the death-struggle, bore testimony to his words, 'Happy—.' He tried to finish the sentence, but could not. He never uttered another word, but it was full night when a voice broke through the long stillness: 'Raphael is dead!'"
Cardinal Bibbiena in a letter to his niece Maria di Bibbiena.
Ravaillac (François, the assassin of Henry IV. of France), 1578-1610. "I receive absolution upon this condition." Ravaillac asked absolution of Dr. Filesac, who answered, "We are forbidden to give it in the case of a crime of high treason, unless the guilty one reveals his abettors and accomplices." Ravaillac replied, "I have none. It is I alone that did it. Give me a conditional absolution. You cannot refuse this." "Well, then," said Dr. Filesac, "I give it to you, but if the contrary be true, instead of absolution I pronounce your eternal damnation. Look to it." Ravaillac answered, "I receive absolution upon this condition."
On May 27, 1610, Ravaillac was declared by the Parliament guilty of divine and human high treason; condemned to have his flesh torn with hot pincers and the wounds filled with melted lead, boiling oil, etc.; to have his right hand, holding the regicidal knife, burned in a fire of sulphur; to be afterward torn to pieces alive by four horses, to have his members reduced to ashes and the ashes thrown to the winds. The same decree ordered that the house in which he was born be demolished; that his father and his mother leave the kingdom in fifteen days, with orders not to return, under penalty of being hung and strangled; and finally that his brothers, sisters, uncles, etc., give up the name of Ravaillac and take another, under pain of the same penalties.
Ravaillac, most fearless of fanatics and devotees, said, when interrogated before Parliament as to his estate and calling, "I teach children to read, write, and pray to God." At his third examination, he wrote beneath the signature which he had affixed to his testimony the following distich:
"Que toujours, dans mon cœur,
Jésus soit le vainqueur!"
and a member of Parliament exclaimed on reading it, "Where the devil will religion lodge next!"[42]
Raymond (John Howard, President of Vassar College), 1814—. "How easy—how easy—how easy to glide from work here to the work——" there, he evidently wished to add, but his voice failed him.
Reade (Charles, author of "Peg Woffington," "The Cloister and the Hearth," "Very Hard Cash," "Griffith Gaunt" and "Put Yourself in His Place"), 1814-1884. "Amazing, amazing glory! I am having Paul's understanding." He referred to 2 Cor. xii. 1-4, which had previously been a subject of conversation with a relative. In the epitaph which he wrote for his own tombstone, he shows his complete reliance for future happiness on the merits and mediation of Christ:
HERE LIE,
BY THE SIDE OF HIS BELOVED FRIEND,
THE MORTAL REMAINS OF
CHARLES READE,
DRAMATIST, NOVELIST AND JOURNALIST.
HIS LAST WORDS TO MANKIND ARE
ON THIS STONE.