“Stop!” said Charmolue to Pierrat. “Do you confess?” he said to the gypsy.
“All!” cried the wretched girl. “I confess! I confess! Mercy!”
She had not calculated her strength when she faced the torture. Poor child, whose life up to that time had been so joyous, so pleasant, so sweet, the first pain had conquered her!
“Humanity forces me to tell you,” remarked the king’s procurator, “that in confessing, it is death that you must expect.”
“I certainly hope so!” said she. And she fell back upon the leather bed, dying, doubled up, allowing herself to hang suspended from the strap buckled round her waist.
“Come, fair one, hold up a little,” said Master Pierrat, raising her. “You have the air of the lamb of the Golden Fleece which hangs from Monsieur de Bourgogne’s neck.”
Jacques Charmolue raised his voice,
“Clerk, write. Young Bohemian maid, you confess your participation in the feasts, witches’ sabbaths, and witchcrafts of hell, with ghosts, hags, and vampires? Answer.”
“Yes,” she said, so low that her words were lost in her breathing.
“You confess to having seen the ram which Beelzebub causes to appear in the clouds to call together the witches’ sabbath, and which is beheld by socerers alone?”