of July, a sheriff's officer visited the mortuary
house, drew up a proces-verbal of the state of
the body as it lay in the coffin, ordered it to be
transferred to an empty room in the Hôtel de
Ville, there to be examined by two surgeons
and a physician, sworn. Their report, without
amounting to an actual accusation of murder,
was full of inconsistencies and contradictions,
which caused the arrest of the husband and
wife. Seals were fixed in their house; the
pieces of furniture on which blood was found,
were taken to the Hôtel de Ville to serve as
material proofs. The Martins, who at first
declared they had heard nothing during the night
of the accident, whispered unfavourable
insinuations; interrogated a second time, they
recanted their original deposition, and testified
to the Monbaillys' guilt. It was a horrible
mode of gratifying their revenge. From that
moment, Moubailly and his wife, the victims of
popular credulity, were subjected to the most
rigorous proceedings; imprisoned separately,
they were not even allowed to see their relations.
Their poor little child died, probably of
neglect, during their imprisonment.

The end may be easily divined. The notice
to quit furnished the motive of the crime, the
bungling doctors adduced the proof. In spite
of the candid and straightforward way in which
the accused persons responded to every question,
on the 9th of November following they were
condemned to horrible tortures; their bodies to
be afterwards burnt.

Anne Danel, the wife, was respited. Three
days before his execution, Monbailly was
informed by his confessor, Father Kindt, the prior
of the Dominicans, that he would have to expiate
an imaginary crime by the most horrible torments.
That venerable pastor and another friar of the
same order, Father Vandesmet, remained day and
night with the wretched prisoner. They employed
the most urgent exhortations and the most
terrible threats in order to draw from him an avowal
of the pretended parricide. Monbailly's constant
answer was this: " You are anxious about my
salvation; reassure yourselves and banish all fear
on that account. I can say with a safe
conscience, and I say it in all sincerity, that I am
innocent of the crime for which I am about to
die."

Monbailly maintained great calmness and
presence of mind. The day before the execution,
he sent for one Sieur Pincedé and gave
him an account of the credits and the debits of
his maternal inheritance as tranquilly as if he were
about to start on a journey, and were entrusting
his affairs to a friend during his absence. On the
fatal day, he was first led to the sheriff's chamber,
where the clerk of the court, trembling all
the while, read to him the sentence.
Monbailly listened to it unmoved, but at the word
"parricide," he exclaimed, "I have not
committed that crime." The unhappy man was
then led back to prison to undergo the
preparations for execution.

About nine in the morning he left the prison,
got into the fatal tumbril, and after hearing the
public reading of his sentence, was driven before
the gate of the cathedral church, where he was
ordered to make an honourable amende. He
persisted in refusing to make the avowal which
they tried to draw from him by the most touching
entreaties, and energetically asserted his
innocence. The friars insisted. To Father Kindt,
who had exhausted the last resources of his
religious zeal and eloquence, he replied, " You
may hack me in pieces before I will confess to
a crime which I have never committed." And
then turning to Father Vandesmet, he said,
"Father, are you willing to take upon your
shoulders the lie that they want me to tell at
the door of this church, in which God is
present, and before whom I must appear within two
hours?"

The tumbril rolled on to the place of punishment.
Monbailly's demeanour on the way, his
protestations of innocence uttered in a firm
voice, made such an impression upon the
populace who had accused him, that this very
same populace did not hesitate to proclaim
aloud the innocence of the victim who was
about to die. At the foot of the scaffold,
resigned to death, he allowed himself to be
undressed; his eyes were bandaged, and he spoke
not a word. In a low voice he recommended
himself to God, the Virgin, and the angels.
He was seized by the executioner of Cambrai,
who, with him of Douai, came to lend their aid
to their professional brother at St. Omer. An
autograph manuscript left by Father Vandesmet
describes what occurred afterwards, but the
details are too cruelly sickening to be
reproduced here. The concluding refinement of
torture the priest relates thus:

"After he had been about an hour on the
wheel, when I had left him for a little while (for
the prior and myself talked to him by turns), the
Cambrai executioner came to me, and said, ' My
father, seeing how cold the weather is, it is
scarcely possible that the poor wretch can
endure another hour of such sharp pain without
falling into despair. Go, then, and speak to those
messieurs,' he added, ' and try to get leave for
me to put him off our hands. Everything is
ready; I will even contrive, if those messieurs
think fit, that nobody shall be aware of it. My
only motive,' he continued, ' for urging you to
take that step is the salvation of this unfortunate
man; for it would be a pity that any one
so patient, so Christian, who has cost you so
much trouble, should lose his soul for a moment
of despair.'

"This speech frightened me; I communicated
it to the prior, begging him to go and see those
messieurs; but he advised me to go myself. I
did not delay an instant; I ran there, got
myself announced, and obtained an audience
immediately. Having related to them what the
Cambrai executioner had just said to me, I
entreated them, if it were possible and in their
power, to abridge the sufferer's torments and to
expose him no longer to fall into despair. Those
messieurs having expressed the pain it gave
them at not being authorised to do that, M.