he magistrate to take off his hat and to kneel. He then read a
sentence condemning him to death. Profoundly astonished, Brisson demanded
to know of what crime he was accused; and under what authority. The
answer was a laugh; and an assurance that he had no time to lose. He then
begged that at least he might be imprisoned long enough to enable him to
complete a legal work on which he was engaged, and which, by his
premature death, would be lost to the commonwealth. This request produced
no doubt more merriment than his previous demands. His judges were
inflexible; and allowed him hardly time to confess himself. He was then
hanged in his dungeon.

Two other magistrates, Larcher and Tardif, were executed in the same way,
in the same place, and on the same night. The crime charged against them
was having spoken in a public assembly somewhat freely against the
Sixteen, and having aided in the circulation in Paris of a paper drawn up
by the Duke of Nevers, filled with bitterness against the Lorraine
princes and the League, and addressed to the late Pope Sixtus.

The three bodies were afterwards gibbeted on the Greve in front of the
Hotel de Ville, and exposed for two days to the insults and fury of the
populace.

This was the culminating point of the reign of terror in Paris. Never had
the sixteen tyrants; lords of the market halls, who governed the capital
by favour of and in the name of the populace, seemed more omnipotent. As
representatives or plenipotentiaries of Madam League they had laid the
crown at the feet of the King of Spain, hoping by still further drafts
on his exchequer and his credulity to prolong indefinitely their own
ignoble reign. The extreme democratic party, which had hitherto supported
the House of Lorraine and had seemed to idolize that family in the person
of the great Balafre, now believed themselves possessed of sufficient
power to control the Duke of Mayenne and all his adherents. They sent the
Jesuit Claude Mathieu with a special memorial to Philip II. That monarch
was implored to take, the sceptre of France, and to reign over them,
inasmuch as they most willingly threw themselves into his arms? They
assured him that all reasonable people, and especially the Holy League,
wished him to take the reins of Government, on condition of exterminating
heresy throughout the kingdom by force of arms, of publishing the Council
of Trent, and of establishing everywhere the Holy inquisition--an
institution fo