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,