whole consideration." Pichel
flew into a violent passion and said, "You are mad! cannot you, after
the death of this, have a much worthier husband?" "No, sir, (replied
she) my affections are fixed upon this, and death itself shall not
dissolve my marriage vow." Pichel, however, continued inflexible, and
ordered the prisoners to be tied with their hands and feet behind them,
and in that manner be thrown into the river. As soon as this was put
into execution, the young lady watched her opportunity, leaped into the
waves, and embracing the body of her husband, both sunk together into
one watery grave. An uncommon instance of conjugal love in a wife, and
of an inviolable attachment to, and personal affection for, her husband.

The emperor Ferdinand, whose hatred to the Bohemian protestants was
without bounds, not thinking he had sufficiently oppressed them,
instituted a high court of reformers, upon the plan of the inquisition,
with this difference, that the reformers were to remove from place to
place, and always to be attended by a body of troops.

These reformers consisted chiefly of Jesuits, and from their decision,
there was no appeal, by which it may be easily conjectured, that it was
a dreadful tribunal indeed.

This bloody court, attended by a body of troops, made the tour of
Bohemia, to which they seldom examined or saw a prisoner, suffering the
soldiers to murder the protestants as they pleased, and then to make a
report of the matter to them afterward.

The first victim of their cruelty was an aged minister whom they killed
as he lay sick in his bed, the next day they robbed, and murdered
another, and soon after shot a third, as he was preaching in his pulpit.

A nobleman and clergyman, who resided in a protestant village, hearing
of the approach of the high court of reformers and the troops, fled from
the place, and secreted themselves. The soldiers, however, on their
arrival, seized upon a schoolmaster, asked him where the lord of that
place and the minister were concealed, and where they had hid their
treasures. The schoolmaster replied, he could not answer either of the
questions. They then stripped him naked, bound him with cords, and beat
him most unmercifully with cudgels. This cruelty not extorting any
confession from him, they scorched him in various parts of his body;
when, to gain a respite from his torments, he promised to show them
where the treasures were hid. The soldiers gave ear to this with