[114] Muyart de Vouglans, in the sequel to his Loix Criminelles, 1780.
[115] Alluding to the cruelties dealt on the Huguenots by the French dragoons, at the close of Louis the Fourteenth’s reign.—Trans.
[116] This fact comes to us from an adviser to the Holy Office, still living.
[117] I am not speaking of executions done by the people of their own accord. A hundred years ago, in a village of Provence, an old woman on being refused alms by a landowner, said in her fury, “You will be dead to-morrow.” He was smitten and died. The whole village, high and low, seized the old woman, and set her on a bundle of vine-twigs. She was burnt alive. The Parliament made a feint of inquiring, but punished nobody.—[In 1751 an old couple of Tring, in Hertfordshire, according to Wright, were tortured, kicked, and beaten to death, on the plea of witchcraft, by a maddened country mob.—Trans.]
[118] There is a laughable tale which expresses the state of Parliament with singular nicety. The Recorder was reading his comments on the trial, on the share the Devil might have had therein, when a loud noise was heard. A black man fell down the chimney. In their fright they all ran away, save the Recorder only, who, being entangled in his robe, could not move. The man made some excuse. It was simply a chimneysweep who had mistaken his chimney.
[119] Touching this matter, Voltaire is very flippant: he scoffs at both parties, especially the Jansenists. The historians of our own day, MM. Cabasse, Fabre, Méry, not having read the Trial, believe themselves impartial, while they are bearing down the victim.
EPILOGUE.
A woman of genius, in a burst of noble tenderness, has figured to herself the two spirits whose strife moulded the Middle Ages, as coming at last to recognise each other, to draw together, to renew their olden friendship. Looking closer at each other, they discern, though somewhat late, the marks of a common parentage. How if they were indeed brethren, and this long battle nought but a mistake? Their hearts speak, and they are softened. The haughty outlaw and the gentle persecutor have forgotten everything: they dart forward and throw themselves into each other’s arms.—(Consuelo.)
A charming, womanly idea. Others, too, have dreamed the same dream. The sweet Montanelli turned it into a beautiful poem. Ay, who would not welcome the delightful hope of seeing the battle here hushed down and finished by an embrace so moving?
What does the wise Merlin think of it? In the mirror of his lake, whose depths are known to himself only, what did he behold? What said he in the colossal epic produced by him in 1860? Why, that Satan will not disarm, if disarm he ever do, until the Day of Judgment. Then, side by side, at peace with each other, the two will fall asleep in a common death.