On the 19th of February, at two o’clock in the afternoon, the mournful procession started on its way. Rochette was, according to the terms of the sentence, bareheaded, barefooted, with a halter hung about his neck, from which, before and behind, labels were suspended, with these words, Minister of the pretended Reformed religion.
When the array passed before the church of Saint Etienne, an attempt was made to force him, in pursuance of the terms of the Parliament’s condemnation, to kneel with a torch of yellow wax in his hand, and to ask pardon of God, the king, and justice, for all his crimes and misdeeds.
Rochette stepped down from the tumbril, and instead of abjuring or making a confession which his heart denied, he pronounced on his knees the following words: “I beseech God to pardon me for all my sins, and I firmly believe that they have been washed away by the blood of Jesus Christ, who has redeemed us so dearly. I have no pardon to ask of the king, whom I have ever honoured as the Lord’s anointed, and loved as the father of my native land; I have ever been a good and faithful subject, and of this I believe my judges to be convinced. I have always preached to my flock patience, obedience, and submission; and my sermons, which you possess, are summed up in these words, ‘Fear God, honour the king.’ If I have contravened the law touching religious assemblies, it was by God’s commandments I contravened them; God must be obeyed before men. As for justice and the law, I am guilty of no offence against them, and I pray God may pardon my judges.”
Every door, balcony, window, roof, and approach near to the place of execution, was covered with spectators. “Toulouse,” says Count de Gébelin, an eyewitness, who related these circumstances, “Toulouse, that city drunk with the blood of martyrs, seemed a Protestant town. People asked what was the creed of these heretics; and when they heard our martyrs speak of Jesus Christ and of his death, every one was surprised and afflicted. They were infinitely touched, also, with the lofty, yet mild bearing of the three brothers, which compelled their admiration almost as much as the inexpressible serenity of the minister, whose graceful and spiritual physiognomy, whose words full of firmness and courage, and whose youth, filled every beholder with interest, knowing, as all did, that he only died because he disdained to save his life by a lie.”[130]
Rochette was executed first. He exhorted his companions until the end, and sang the canticle of the Protestant martyrs: This is the blessed day. “Die a Catholic,” said the executioner, moved with pity. “Judge which is the better religion,” replied Rochette, “that which persecutes, or that which is persecuted.”
The youngest of the three brothers (he was only twenty-two years of age), hid his face in his hands to shut out this tragic scene. The two others contemplated it with calmness. As they were gentlemen,[131] their sentence was, to be beheaded They embraced each other, recommending their souls to God. The eldest offered his head to the axe first. When it came to the turn of the last, the executioner said: “You have seen your brothers die; change, lest you perish like them.” “Do thy duty,” said the martyr, and his head rolled upon the scaffold.
Count de Gébelin adds, as he concludes his recital: “Every one present returned home in silence, in a state of consternation, and unable to persuade themselves that there could be such courage and such cruelty in the world; and I, who describe it, cannot refrain from tears of joy and sadness, as I contemplate their blessed lot, and that our church should be still capable of affording examples of piety and firmness that will compare with the most illustrious monuments of the primitive church.”
Eighteen days afterwards, on the 9th of March, 1762, the scaffold rose again at Toulouse for the execution of Jean Calas, an old man of sixty-eight. The whole world is familiar with his trial, and all its circumstances. Every one knows that the unfortunate Calas was accused of having murdered his son, Marc-Anthony, in order to prevent him, it was said, from embracing (Roman) Catholicism. Every one knows that the priests of Toulouse inflamed the fanaticism of the populace by carrying the body of this young man in procession, who had really committed suicide, and by representing him upon a funereal bier as a skeleton holding in one hand a scroll, on which was written, abjuration of heresy, and in the other the palm-branch of the martyr. Every one, in short, knows that the magistracy and the clergy accused Calvin and his disciples of declaring abjuration a lawful cause of infanticide, and pretended that the assassination of Calas had been decided in a conventicle of Protestants.
These calumnies, which were not less stupid than detestable, were so credited by the fanatic people, that the advocate of Calas thought it necessary to procure from Geneva a solemn declaration, signed by the pastors and professors, attesting that neither synod nor any assembly whatsoever of the Reformation had ever approved of the doctrine that a father has the right of killing his child to prevent his changing his religion. Paul Rabaut published under this head, La Calumnie confondue (“Calumny Confounded”), a work in which he denied these execrable allegations with all the vehemence of a mind profoundly indignant. The Parliament of Toulouse answered it by ordering that the book should be torn and burned by the hand of the hangman.
In the most horrible agonies of the torture, Calas made no avowal, for he had none to make. He continually repeated: “Where there is no crime, there are no accomplices.” He suffered death with the serenity of innocence and the firmness of faith. His execution lasted two hours, his sentence having been to be broken on the wheel. He uttered all the while no words but those of piety and charity, breathing pardon to his judges, and expressive of his pain that the young Lavaïsse should have been implicated in his misfortunes.