demning the celibacy of priests, and those who called him a wizard
themselves believed him to be a freethinker. They remembered the brave
words which the martyrs of free thought had thrown out against their
judges; they called to mind the last speech of Giordano Bruno, the
bold defiance of Vanini.[101] So they agreed with Grandier, that if he
were prudent, he should be saved from burning, perhaps be strangled.
The weak priest, being a man of flesh, yielded to this demand of the
flesh, and promised to say nothing. He spoke not a word on the road,
nor yet upon the scaffold. When he was fairly fastened to the post,
with everything ready, and the fire so arranged as to enfold him
swiftly in smoke and flames, his own confessor, a monk, set the
faggots ablaze without waiting for the executioner. The victim,
pledged to silence, had only time to say, "So, you have deceived me!"
when the flames whirled fiercely upwards, and the furnace of pain
began, and nothing was audible save the wretch's screams.

[101] Both Neapolitans, burnt alive, the former at Venice in
1600, the latter at Toulouse in 1619.--TRANS.

Richelieu in his Memoirs says little, and that with evident shame,
concerning this affair. He gives one to believe that he only followed
the reports that reached him, the voice of general opinion.
Nevertheless, by rewarding the exorcisers, by throwing the reins to
the Capuchins, and letting them triumph over France, he gave no slight
encouragement to that piece of knavery. Gauffridi, thus renewed in
Grandier, is about to reappear in yet fouler plight in the Louviers
affair.

In this very year, 1634, the demons hunted from Poitou pass over into
Normandy, copying again and again the fooleries of Sainte-Baume,
without any trace of invention, of talent, or of imagination. The
frantic Leviathan of Provence, when counterfeited at Loudun, loses his
Southern sting, and only gets out of a scrape by talking fluently to
virgins in the language of Sodom. Presently, alas! at Louviers he
loses even his old daring, imbibes the sluggish temper of the North,
and sinks into a sorry sprite.[102]

[102] Wright and Dumas both differ from M. Michelet in their
view of Urban Grandier's character. The latter especially,
regards him as an innocent victim to his own fearlessness and
the hate of his foes, among whom not the least deadly was
Richelieu himself, who bore him a deep personal
grudge.--TRANS.

CHAP