"As he spoke there appeared by his side a lighted pile; a dreadful spectre, wearing round his neck a Spanish frill, arose half burned from the midst of the flames, with dreadful shrieks. 'Monster,' cried he; 'execrable monster, tremble! recognize that Servetus, whom you caused to perish by the most cruel torments, because he had disputed with you on the manner in which three persons can form one substance.' Then all the judges commanded that Cardinal Lorraine should be thrown into the abyss, but that Calvin should be punished still more rigorously.
"I saw a prodigious crowd of spirits, each of which said, 'I have believed, I have believed!' but on their forehead it was written, 'I have acted,' and they were condemned.
"The Jesuit Letellier appeared boldly with the bull Unigenitus in his hand. But there suddenly arose at his side a heap, consisting of two thousand lettres-de-cachet. A Jansenist set fire to them, and Letellier was burned to a cinder; while the Jansenist, who had no less caballed than the Jesuit, had his share of the flames.
"I saw approach, from right and left, troops of fakirs, talapoins, bonzes, and black, white, and gray monks, who all imagined that, to make their court to the Supreme Being, they must either sing, scourge themselves, or walk quite naked. 'What good have you done to men?' was the query. A dead silence succeeded to this question. No one dared to answer; and they were all conducted to the mad-houses of the universe, the largest buildings imaginable.
"One cried out that he believed in the metamorphoses of Xaca, another in those of Somonocodom. 'Bacchus stopped the sun and moon!' said this one. 'The gods resuscitated Pelops!' said the other. 'Here is the bull in cœna Domini!' said a newcomer—and the officer of the court exclaimed, 'To Bedlam, to Bedlam!'
"When all these causes were gone through, I heard this proclamation: 'By the Eternal Creator, Preserver, Rewarder, Revenger, Forgiver, etc., be it known to all the inhabitants of the hundred thousand millions of millions of worlds that it hath pleased us to form, that we never judge any sinners in reference to their own shallow ideas, but only as to their actions. Such is our Justice.'
"I own that this was the first time I ever heard such an edict; all those which I had read, on the little grain of dust on which I was born, ended with these words: 'Such is our pleasure.'"
DONATIONS.
The Roman Republic, which seized so many states, also gave some away. Scipio made Massinissa king of Numidia.