he documents, but on the 17th,
according to the _Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris,_ which the details of
the last days render highly improbable, the officers of Parliament
entered Berquin's gloomy chamber. He rose quietly and went with them;
the procession set out, and at about three arrived at the Place de Greve;
where the stake was ready. "Berquin had a gown of velvet, garments of
satin and damask, and hosen of gold thread," says the Bourgeois de Paris.
"'Alas!' said some as they saw him pass, 'he is of noble lineage, a
mighty great scholar, expert in science and subtile withal, and
nevertheless he hath gone out of his senses.'" We borrow the account of
his actual death from a letter of Erasmus, written on the evidence of an
eye-witness: "Not a symptom of agitation appeared either in his face or
the attitude of his body: he had the bearing of a man who is meditating
in his cabinet on the subject of his studies, or in a temple on the
affairs of heaven. Even when the executioner, in a rough voice,
proclaimed his crime and its penalty, the constant serenity of his
features was not at all altered. When the order was given him to
dismount from the tumbrel, he obeyed cheerfully without hesitating;
nevertheless he had not about him any of that audacity, that arrogance,
which in the case of malefactors is sometimes bred of their natural
savagery; everything about him bore evidence to the tranquillity of a
good conscience. Before he died he made a speech to the people; but
none could hear him, so great was the noise which the soldiers made,
according, it is said, to the orders they had received. When the cord
which bound him to the post suffocated his voice, not a soul in the crowd
ejaculated the name of Jesus, whom it is customary to invoke even in
favor of parricides and the sacrilegious, to such extent was the
multitude excited against him by those folks who are to be found
everywhere, and who can do anything with the feelings of the simple and
ignorant." Theodore de Beze adds that the grand penitentiary of Paris,
Merlin, who was present at the execution, said, as he withdrew from the
still smoking stake, "I never saw any one die more Christianly." The
impressions and expressions of the crowd, as they dispersed, were very
diverse; but the majority cried, "He was a heretic." Others said, "God
is the only just Judge, and happy is the man whom He absolves." Some
said below their breath, "It is only through the cross th