to have omitted taking the sacrament at the previous Easter. For these
offences he was beheaded, and his confiscated estate adjudged at an
almost nominal price to the secretary of Noircarmes, bidding for his
master. "You can do me no greater pleasure," wrote Noircarmes to the
council, "than to make quick work with all these rebels, and to proceed
with the confiscation of their estates, real and personal. Don't fail to
put all those to the torture out of whom anything can be got."

Notwithstanding the unexampled docility of the commissioners, they found
it difficult to extract from their redoubted chief a reasonable share in
the wages of blood. They did not scruple, therefore, to display their,
own infamy, and to enumerate their own crimes, in order to justify their
demand for higher salaries. "Consider," they said, in a petition to this
end, "consider closely, all that is odious in our office, and the great
number of banishments and of executions which we have pronounced among
all our own relations and friends."

It may be added, moreover, as a slight palliation for the enormous crimes
committed by these men, that, becoming at last weary of their business,
they urged Noircarmes to desist from the work of proscription.
Longehaye, one of the commissioners, even waited upon him personally,
with a plea for mercy in favor of "the poor people, even beggars, who,
although having borne arms during the siege, might then be pardoned."
Noircarmes, in a rage at the proposition, said that "if he did not know
the commissioners to be honest men, he should believe that their palms
had been oiled," and forbade any farther words on the subject. When
Longehaye still ventured to speak in favor of certain persons "who were
very poor and simple, not charged with duplicity, and good Catholics
besides," he fared no better. "Away with you!" cried Noircarmes in a
great fury, adding that he had already written to have execution done