Lastly, when with pious love children tried to shield their parents in
the death-agony from his threats, or dead from his justice, by carrying
them, dead or dying, to some refuge in which they might hope to draw
their last breath in peace or to obtain Christian burial, he declared
that anyone who should open his door hospitably to such disobedience was
a traitor to religion, although among the heathen such pity would have
been deemed worthy of an altar.

Such was the man raised up to punish, who went on his way, preceded by
terror, accompanied by torture, and followed by death, through a country
already exhausted by long and bloody oppression, and where at every step
he trod on half repressed religious hate, which like a volcano was ever
ready to burst out afresh, but always prepared for martyrdom. Nothing
held him back, and years ago he had had his grave hollowed out in the
church of St. Germain, choosing that church for his last long sleep
because it had been built by Pope Urban IV when he was bishop of Mende.

Abbe Duchayla extended his visitation over six months, during which every
day was marked by tortures and executions: several prophets were burnt at
the stake; Francoise de Brez, she who had preached that the Host
contained a more venomous poison than a basilisk's head, was hanged; and
Laquoite, who had been confined in the citadel of Montpellier, was on the
point of being broken on the wheel, when on the eve of his execution his
cell was found empty. No one could ever discover how he escaped, and
consequently his reputation rose higher than ever, it being currently
believed that, led by the Holy Spirit as St. Peter by the angel, he had
passed through the guards invisible to all, leaving his fetters behind.

This incomprehensible escape redoubled the severity of the Arch-priest,
till at last the prophets, feeling that their only chance of safety lay