ices, heard
of all the people, repudiated the confession, and declared that they
were wholly guiltless, and ready to suffer death. They had not long to
wait. Hurried counsel was held with the king, and that same night
Jacques de Molay and the preceptor of Normandy were brought to a
little island on the Seine, known as the Isle of the Trellises,[78]
and burnt to death, protesting their innocence to the last.

[Footnote 78: Or the isle of the Jews, which, with its sister islet of
Bussy, were subsequently joined to the island of the Cite, and now
form the Place Dauphine and the land that divides the Pont Neuf.
Philip watched the fires from his palace garden.]

"God pays debts, but not in money." An Italian chronicler relates that
the Master, while expiring in the flames, solemnly cited pope and king
to meet him before the judgment-seat of God. In less than forty days
Clement V. lay dead: in eight months Philip IV. was thrown by his
horse. Seven centuries later the grisly fortress of the Templars
opened its portals, and the last of the unbroken line of the kings of
France was led forth to a bloody death.

Those who would read the details of the dramatic examination at Paris
before the papal commissioners, may do so in the minutes published by
Michelet.[79] The great historian declares that a study of the
evidence shook his belief in the Templars' innocence, and that if he
were writing his history again, he must needs alter his attitude
towards them. Such is not the impression left on the mind of the
present writer. Moreover it has been pointed out that there is a
suspicious identity in the various groups of testimonies,
corresponding to the episcopal courts whence such testimonies came.
The royal officers, after the severest search, could find not a single
compromising document in the Templars' houses, nothing but a few
account books, works of devotion and copies of St. Bernard's Rule.
There were undoubtedly unworthy and vicious knights among the fifteen
thousand Templars belonging to the order, but the charges brought
against them are too monstrous for belief. The call which they had
responded to so nobly, however, had long ceased. They were wealthy,
proud and self-absorbed. Sooner or later they must infallibly have
gone the way of all organisations which have outlived their use and
purpose. It is the infamy of their violent destruction for which pope
and king must answer at the bar of history.

[Footnote 79: It is to