The men amused their leisure with cards, while waiting, as he says, for the boiling oil; and the women were the last to turn their eyes from the hideous spectacle. Your correspondent may be glad to be informed that the same punishment was inflicted on Poltrot de Méré for the murder of the Duke of Guise, in 1563; on Salcède, in 1582, for conspiring against the Duke of Alençon; on Brilland, in 1588, for poisoning the Prince de Condé; on Bourgoing, Prior of the Jacobins, as an accessory to the crime of Jaques Clément, in 1590; and on Ravaillac, for the murder of Henry IV. in 1610. These, with the case of Jean Chastel, are all of which I am aware. If any of your readers can add to the list, I shall feel obliged.
As I am upon the subject of judicial horrors, I would ask, whether any of your correspondents can supply me with a reference to the case of a
woman executed, I think in Paris, and, if my recollection serves, for a systematic series of infanticides.
She was put to death by being suspended over a fire in an iron cage, in which a number of wild cats were shut up with her.
I read the story many years ago, and for some time have been vainly endeavouring to recover it.
J. S.
Torn by Horses (Vol. ii., p. 522.).—This cruel mode of execution was practised both in antiquity and the middle ages. Livy, speaking of Tullus Hostilius, says:—
"Exinde, duabus admotis quadrigis, in currus earum distentum illigat Mettum; deinde in diversum iter equi concitati, lacerum in utroque curru corpus, qua inhæserant vinculis membra, portantes. Avertere omnes a tantâ fœdidate spectaculi oculos."—L. i., c. 28.
Livy adds, that this was the first and last example of so savage a punishment among the Romans. The punishment, however, must have been well-known in antiquity, as it is alluded to by Seneca among the tortures which accompanied death.
"Cogita hoc loco carcerem, et cruces, et equleos, et uncum; et adactum per medium hominem, qui per os emergat, stipitem; et distracta in diversum actis curribus membra."—Epist. xiv. 4.