isonment. The Cardinal-Archbishop
of Albi ascended a raised platform: he read the confessions of the
Knights, the proceedings of the court; he enlarged on the criminality of
the order, on the holy justice of the Pope, and the devout,
self-sacrificing zeal of the King; he was proceeding to the final, the
fatal sentence. At that instant the grand master advanced; his gesture
implored silence; judges and people gazed in awestruck apprehension. In
a calm, clear voice Du Molay spoke: "Before heaven and earth, on the
verge of death, where the least falsehood bears like an intolerable
weight upon the soul, I protest that we have richly deserved death, not
on account of any heresy or sin of which ourselves or our order have
been guilty, but because we have yielded, to save our lives, to the
seductive words of the Pope and of the King; and so by our confessions
brought shame and ruin on our blameless, holy, and orthodox
brotherhood."

The cardinals stood confounded; the people could not suppress their
profound sympathy. The assembly was hastily broken up; the Provost was
commanded to conduct the prisoners back to their dungeons. "To-morrow we
will hold further counsel." But on the moment that the King heard these
things, without a day's delay, without the least consultation with the
ecclesiastical authorities, he ordered them to death as relapsed
heretics. On the island in the Seine, where now stands the statue of
Henry IV, between the King's garden on one side and the convent of the
Augustinian monks on the other, the two pyres were raised--two out of
the four had shrunk back into their ignoble confessions. It was the hour
of vespers when these two aged and noble men were led out to be burned;
they were tied each to the stake. The flames kindled dully and heavily;
the wood, hastily piled up, was green or wet; or in cruel mercy the
tardiness was designed that the victims might have time, while the fire
was still curling round their extremities, to recant their bold
recantation. But there was no sign, no word of weakness. Du Molay
implored that the image of the Mother of God might be held up before
him, and his hands unchained, that he might clasp them in prayer. Both,
as the smoke rose to their lips, as the fire crept up to their vital
parts, continued solemnly to aver the innocence and the Catholic faith
of the order. The King himself sat and beheld, it might seem without
remorse, this hideous spectacle; the words of Du Molay m