the
French and Anglo-Saxon laws, lewdness was thus punished.
Grimm, 679, 711. Sternhook, 19, 326. Ducange, iii. 52.
Michelet, _Origines_, 386, 389. By and by, the same rough
usage is dealt out to honest women, to citizen's wives, whose
pride the nobles seek to abase. We know the kind of ambush
into which the tyrant Hagenbach drew the honourable ladies of
the chief burghers in Alsace, probably in scorn of their rich
and royal costume, all silks and gold. In my _Origines_ I
have also related the strange claim made by the Lord of Pace,
in Anjou, on the pretty (and honest) women of the
neighbourhood. They were to bring to the castle fourpence and
a chaplet of flowers, and to dance with his officers: a
dangerous trip, in which they might well fear some such
affronts as those offered by Hagenbach. They were forced to
obey by the threat of being stripped and pricked with a goad
bearing the impress of the lord's arms.

And now she has borne such misery, such strokes, such sounding
buffets, that she sinks down in a swoon. On the cold stone threshold
she finds herself seated, naked, half-dead, her bleeding flesh covered
with little else than the waves of her long hair. Some one from the
castle says, "No more now! We do not want her to die."

They leave her alone, to hide herself. But in spirit she can see the
merriment going on at the castle. The lord however, somewhat dazed,
said that he was sorry for it. But the chaplain says, in his meek way,
"If this woman is _bedevilled_, as they say, my lord, you owe it to
your good vassals, you owe it to the whole country, to hand her over
to Holy Church. Since all that business with the Templars and the
Pope, what way the Demon is making! Nothing but fire will do for him."
Upon which a Dominican says, "Your reverence has spoken right well.
This devilry is a heresy in the highest degree. The bedevilled, like
the heretic, should be burnt. Some of our good fathers, however, do
not trust themselves now even to the fire. Wisely they desire that,
before all things, the soul may be slowly purged, tried, subdued by
fastings; that it may not be burnt in its pride, that it shall not
triumph at the stake. If you, madam, in the greatness of your piety,
of your charity, would take the trouble to work upon this woman,
putting her for some years _in pace_ in a safe cell, of which you
only should have the key,--by thus keeping up the cha