the investigation short, and cut down the number
of her witnesses. Out of the sixty-eight she summoned, they allowed
but thirty-eight to appear. Regardless alike of the delays and the
forms of justice, they hurried forward the confronting of witnesses.
Yet nothing was gained, thereby. On the 25th and again on the 26th
February, she renewed her crushing declarations.

Such was their rage thereat, that they declared their regret at the
want of torments and executioners in Toulon, "who might have made her
sing out a little." These things formed their _ultima ratio_. They
were employed, by the Parliaments through all that century. I have
before me a warm defence of torture,[114] written in 1780, by a
learned member of Parliament, who also became a member of the Great
Council; it was dedicated to the King, Louis XVI., and crowned with
the flattering approval of His Holiness Pius VI.

[114] Muyart de Vouglans, in the sequel to his _Loix
Criminelles_, 1780.

But, in default of the torture that would have made her sing, she was
made to speak by a still better process. On the 27th February, Guiol's
daughter, the lay-sister who acted as her jailer, came to her at an
early hour with a glass of wine. She was astonished: she was not at
all thirsty: she never drank wine, especially pure wine, of a morning.
The lay-sister, a rough, strong menial, such as they keep in convents
to manage crazy or refractory women, and to punish children,
overwhelmed the feeble sufferer with remonstrances that looked like
threats. Unwilling as she was, she drank. And she was forced to drink
it all, to the very dregs, which she found unpleasantly salt.

What was this repulsive draught? We have already seen how clever these
old confessors of nuns were at remedies of various kinds. In this case
the wine alone would have done for so weakly a patient. It had been
quite enough to make her drunk, to draw from her at once some
stammering speeches, which the clerk might have moulded into a
downright falsehood. But a drug of some kind, perhaps some wizard's
simple, which would act for several days, was added to the wine, in
order to prolong its effects and leave her no way of disproving
anything laid to her charge.

In her declaration of the 27th February, how sudden and entire a
change! It is nothing but a defence of Girard! Strange to say, the
commissioners make no remark on so abrupt a change. The strange,
shameful sight of a young girl drunk caus