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Here he found three prisoners who were about to be shot; but Poul ordered that they should not be touched: not that he thought for an instant of sparing their lives, but that he wished to reserve them for a public execution. These three men were Nouvel, a parishioner of Vialon, Moise Bonnet of Pierre-Male, and Esprit Seguier the prophet.
"Have you no feeling of remorse for your crimes?" "My soul is as a garden full of shady groves and of peaceful fountains." Seguier was condemned to have his hands cut off at the wrist, and he burnt alive at Pont-de-Montvert. Nouvel, another of the prisoners, was broken alive at Ladevèze, and Bonnet, a third, was hanged at St. André. They all suffered without flinching.
Here was a good reason for the last; but in the course of his inspectorship he had given many stronger which all told in a contrary direction; and these he was now to hear. One by one, Séguier first, the Camisards drew near and stabbed him. "This," they said, "is for my father broken on the wheel. This for my brother in the galleys.
In the one case, it was the cruelty of the archpriest Chayla, the inventor of a new machine of torture called "the Squeezers," and in the other the cruelty of Archbishop Sharpe, the inventor of that horrible instrument called "the Iron Boot," that excited the fury of the people; and the murder of the one by Seguier and his band at Pont-de-Montvert, as of the other by Balfour of Burley and his companions on Magus Muir, proved the signal for a general insurrection of the peasantry in both countries.
Though this work was far advanced before he was employed by the Court of Sweden, it is evident from his letters that he made many additions and amendments to it during his embassy. He met with new difficulties after Cardinal Richelieu's death from the Chancellor Seguier, who never loved him.
The corpses were brought together in the garden, and Seguier and his companions, kneeling round them a grim and ghastly sight sang psalms until daybreak, the uncouth harmony mingling with the crackling of the flames of the dwelling overhead, and the sullen roar of the river rushing under the neighbouring bridge.
The financial condition of the empire was in a state of utter ruin a ruin so hopeless that the almost inconceivable story is told that the king actually suffered both for food and raiment. He at times made himself merry with his own ragged appearance. At one time he said gayly, when the Parliament sent the president, Seguier, to remonstrate against a fiscal edict,
He had the Chancellor Seguier brought to Lyons, to avoid, as he stated in the instructions he sent by Chavigny to the King Louis XIII "to avoid all the delays which would take place if he were not present.
"There is but one way." "What is that?" "That would be to charge Monsieur de Seguier, the keeper of the seals, with this mission. The matter enters completely into the duties of the post." "Let him be sent for instantly." "He is most likely at my hotel. I requested him to call, and when I came to the Louvre I left orders if he came, to desire him to wait." "Let him be sent for instantly."
At the head of the besiegers were Laporte and Esprit Seguier, one of whom had a father to avenge and the other a son, both of whom had been done to death by the abbe. They were not the only ones of the party who were fired by the desire of vengeance; twelve or fifteen others were in the same position.
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