Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/86

 80 He replied, "I want neither your prayers nor your lectures."

He then called upon the sergeant to do his duty, and I was removed from the court.

I was placed, at eight o'clock in the morning, in a dark, miserable, filthy dungeon, in the Tower of Pons. It was already tenanted by one of the culprits, who was awaiting his trial for murder. "We had not much conversation with each other. He asked me if I knew what was the general opinion entertained of him. I told him that he was believed to be guilty of the crime of which he was accused. He then asked me if I could tell him any thing of the mode of examining by torture. I said that if they were really guilty of the crime, it was more than probable that some one of them would confess it, under torture, and his confession would be sufficient to condemn the rest.

"What," said he, "if I go through the torture without confessing, and another accuses me falsely, shall I be broken on the wheel all the same?"

I said that all the particulars might be given with such circumstantial detail, that he would find it impossible to deny any longer.

He cried out in great distress, "Ah Jesu Maria!" His tone of voice removed from my mind any doubt I might have entertained of his guilt. I felt compassion for the poor, wretched man, and tried to turn his mind to the contemplation of a future state. I told him that if he would only repent truly of his sins, he might be forgiven. God's mercy, I said, was still open, if he would only apply for it through the Saviour who died for him.

He was curious to know what crime could have brought