Page:Celebrated Trials - Volume 1.djvu/461

those whose business it was to attend she execution, had not room to range themselves, curiosity having drawn persons from all the provinces of the kingdom to this dismal spectacle.

A flying insect, like a wasp, was observed to buzz about Grandier's head; which gave a monk occasion to say it was Beelzebub hovering around him, to carry away his soul to hell; grounding upon what he had heard say, that Beelzebub signified, in Hebrew, the God of files.

The monks exorcised the air and the wood, and interrogated the patient, if he would not make a full confession? he answered, with the same softness, that he had nothing more to confess, and that he hoped that very day to enjoy his God. Then the clerk read his sentence for the fourth time, and asked him if he persisted in what he had said upon the rack? He answered, he did persist; and that he had delivered all the truth, and nothing but the truth. Upon which one of the monks said to the clerk, he made him speak too much; as if he had been impatient to see the last of his punishment. Grandier depended upon two promises, which the provost-deputy had given him; the first was, that he should be allowed some time to speak to the people; the second, that he should be strangled before the fire was kindled.

The exorcists determined to hinder the effect of these promises. He no sooner offered to speak, than they threw a great quantity of holy water in his face, which stifled his words: when he began to open his mouth a second time, one of them was ready to come up and kiss him, in order to stop his mouth. He saw through the thin artifice, and said to him: "This, Sir, is a Judas-kiss." This comparison kindled the fury of the monks, who thereupon smote him several times with an iron crucifix, under pretence of making him kiss it.

In order to keep him from being strangled before the pile was lighted, they made several knots upon the rope. When the executioner was going to set fire to the pile, Grandier cried out, "Is this the promise that was given me?" With these words, he lifted up the rope himself, and was going to put it about his neck, when Father