A verdict was consequently given, upon the 21st of August, 1667, which
sentenced the abbe and the chevalier de Ganges to be broken alive on the
wheel, the Marquis de Ganges to perpetual banishment from the kingdom,
his property to be confiscated to the king, and himself to lose his
nobility and to become incapable of succeeding to the property of his
children. As for the priest Perette, he was sentenced to the galleys for
life, after having previously been degraded from his clerical orders by
the ecclesiastical authorities.

This sentence made as great a stir as the murder had done, and gave rise,
in that period when "extenuating circumstances" had not been invented, to
long and angry discussions. Indeed, the marquis either was guilty of
complicity or was not: if he was not, the punishment was too cruel; if he
was, the sentence was too light. Such was the opinion of Louis XIV., who
remembered the beauty of the Marquis de Ganges; for, some time
afterwards, when he was believed to have forgotten this unhappy affair,
and when he was asked to pardon the Marquis de la Douze, who was accused
of having poisoned his wife, the king answered, "There is no need for a
pardon, since he belongs to the Parliament of Toulouse, and the Marquis
de Ganges did very well without one."

It may easily be supposed that this melancholy event did not pass without
inciting the wits of the day to write a vast number of verses and
bouts-rimes about the catastrophe by which one of the most beautiful
women of the country was carried off. Readers who have a taste for that
sort of literature are referred to the journals and memoirs of the times.

Now, as our readers, if they have taken any interest at all in the
terrible tale just narrated, will certainly ask what became of the
murderers, we will proceed to follow their course until the moment when