The Devils of Loudun

by Aldous Huxley

  “Searcher of hearts, you know I am in no wise guilty of the crimes imputed to me, and that the fire which I must undergo is but the punishment of my concupiscence. Redeemer of mankind, forgive my enemies and my accusers; but cause them to see their sins, that they may repent. Holy Virgin, protector of the penitent, graciously receive my unhappy mother into your heavenly company; console her for the loss of a son who fears no other pains but those which she must endure on that earth, from which he is so soon to depart.”

  He was silent. Not my will, but Thine. God here, among the instruments of torture; Christ now, in the hour of extremest anguish.

  La Grange, the captain of the guard, was recording in his notebook what he remembered of the parson’s prayer. Laubardemont approached and asked the young officer what he was writing. Informed, he grew angry and wanted to confiscate the notebook. But La Grange defended his property, and the Commissioner had to be content with ordering him on no account to show what he had written to anyone else. Grandier was an unrepentant magician, and unrepentant magicians are not supposed to pray.

  In Father Tranquille’s account of the trial and execution, and in the other narratives written from the official standpoint, the parson is made to behave in the most naïvely diabolistic manner. Instead of praying, he sings an improper song. Presented with the Crucifix, he turns away in abhorrence. The name of the Blessed Virgin never passes his lips; and though he sometimes pronounces the word ‘God,’ it is obvious to every right-thinking person that what he really means is ‘Lucifer.’

  Unfortunately for their thesis, these pious propagandists were not the only ones to leave a record of the proceedings. Laubardemont might enjoin secrecy; but he had no way of compelling La Grange to obey his orders. And there were other unbiased observers of the events—some of them, such as Ismaël Boulliau, the astronomer, known to us by name, others whose surviving manuscripts remain anonymous.

  The clock struck, and the prisoner’s brief respite was at an end. He was bound, stretched out on the floor, with his legs, from the knees to the feet, enclosed between four oaken boards, of which the outer pair were fixed, while the two inner ones were movable. By driving wedges into the space separating the two movable boards, it was possible to crush the victim’s legs against the fixed framework of the machine. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary torture was measured by the number of progressively thicker wedges hammered home. Because it was invariably (though not immediately) fatal, the question extraordinary was administered only to condemned criminals, who were to be executed without delay.

  While the prisoner was being prepared for the question, Fathers Lactance and Tranquille exorcized the ropes, the boards, the wedges and the mallets. This was very necessary; for if they were not driven out of these objects, the devils might, by their infernal arts, prevent the torture from being as excruciating as it ought to be. When the friars had finished their sprinkling and their muttering, the executioner stepped forward, raised his ponderous mallet and, like a man splitting a knotty piece of timber, brought it down with all his force. There was an uncontrollable shriek of pain. Father Lactance bent over the victim and asked in Latin if he would confess. But Grandier only shook his head.

  The first wedge was driven home between the knees. Then another was inserted at the level of the feet and when that had been hammered to the head, the thin end of a third and heavier wedge was tapped into position immediately below the first. There was the thud of the mallet, the shriek of pain—then silence. The victim’s lips were moving. Was it a confession? The friar cupped his ear; but all he could hear was the word “God,” repeated several times, and then, “Do not abandon me, do not allow this pain to cause me to forget you.” He turned to the executioner and told him to get on with his work.

  At the second stroke on the fourth wedge, several bones of the feet and ankles had broken. For a moment, the parson fainted away.

  “Cogne, cogne!” Father Lactance yelled to the executioner. “Hit, hit!”

  The prisoner opened his eyes again.

  “Father,” he whispered, “where is the charity of St. Francis?”

  The disciple of St. Francis vouchsafed no answer.

  “Cogne!” he said again. And when the blow had fallen, he turned back to the prisoner. “Dicas, dicas!”

  But there was nothing to tell. A fifth wedge was inserted.

  “Dicas!” The mallet hung suspended. “Dicas!”

  The victim looked at the executioner, looked at the friar, then closed his eyes.

  “Torture me as you like,” he said in Latin. “In a little while it will be all one, for ever.”

  “Cogne!”

  The blow fell.

  Breathless and sweating in the summer heat, the executioner handed the mallet to his assistant. And now it was Tranquille’s turn to talk to the prisoner. In a tone of sweet reasonableness, he set forth the manifest advantages of a confession—advantages not merely in the next world, but here and now.

  The parson listened and, when he had finished, asked him a question.

  “Father,” he said, “do you believe on your conscience that a man ought, merely to be delivered from pain, to confess a crime he has not committed?”

  Brushing aside these obviously Satanic sophisms, Tranquille continued his urgings.

  The parson whispered that he was very ready to own up to all his real offences.

  “I have been a man, I have loved women. . . .”

  But that was not what Laubardemont and the Franciscans wished to hear.

  “You have been a magician, you have had commerce with devils.”

  And when the parson protested yet once more that he was innocent, a sixth wedge was hammered home, then a seventh, then an eighth. From ordinary, the question had reached the traditional limits of the extraordinary. The bones of the knees, the shins, the ankles, the feet—all were shattered. But still the friars could extort no admission of guilt—only that screaming, and in the intervals, the whispered name of God.

  The eighth wedge was the last of the regular set. Laubardemont called for more—for a cruelty beyond the merely extraordinary. The executioner went out to the storeroom and came back with two new wedges. When he learned that they were no thicker than the last of the original set, Laubardemont flew into a rage and threatened the man with a whipping. But meanwhile, as the friars pointed out, wedge number seven at the knee could be replaced by a duplicate of wedge number eight at the ankle. One of the new wedges was inserted between the boards and this time it was Father Lactance who swung the mallet.

  “Dicas!” he shouted after every blow. “Dicas, dicas!”

  Not to be outdone, Father Tranquille took the mallet from his colleague, adjusted the tenth wedge and, in three mighty strokes, banged it home.

  Grandier had fainted again, and it almost looked as if he might be dead before they could get him to the stake. Besides, there were no more wedges. Reluctantly—for this stubborn frustrator of all his best-laid plans deserved to be tortured for ever—Laubardemont called a halt. This first phase of Grandier’s martyrdom had lasted three-quarters of an hour. The machine was taken apart, and the executioners lifted their victim on to a stool. He looked down at his horribly mangled legs, then at the Commissioner and his thirteen accomplices.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus. Behold, and see if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow.”

  On Laubardemont’s orders he was carried to another room and laid on a bench. It was a stifling day in August; but the parson was shivering with the cold of extreme surgical shock. La Grange covered him with a rug and filled a glass of wine for him to drink.

  Meanwhile Lactance and Tranquille were trying to make the best of what had been a deplorably bad job. To all who questioned them they answered that indeed it was true—the magician had refused to confess, even under torture. And the reason was only too obvious. Grandier had called upon God to give him strength, and his God, who was Lucifer, had made him in
sensible to pain. They might have gone on all day, wedge after wedge; it would have availed them nothing.

  To prove to himself that this was true, another of the exorcists, Father Archangel, resolved to make a little experiment. This experiment was described, a few days later, in a public discourse, which was recorded as follows by one of the auditors. “The said Father Archangel remarked that the devil had granted him (Grandier) insensibility inasmuch as, being stretched out on a bench, with his knees, which had been crushed by the Gehenna, covered with a green rug, this rug being raised by the said Father somewhat roughly, and the said Father even poking his legs and knees, he did not complain of the pain which the said Father might be causing him.” From this it followed, first, that Grandier had felt no pain, second, that Satan had made him insensible, third, that (to quote the Capuchin’s very words) “when he spoke favourably of God, he meant the devil, and when he said that he detested the devil, he meant that he detested God,” and, fourthly and finally, that every precaution must be taken to make sure that, at the stake, he should feel the full effect of the flames.

  When Father Archangel had gone, it was the turn, yet once more, of the Commissioner. For more than two hours Laubardemont sat beside his victim, employing all the arts of persuasion to extort the signature which would excuse his own illegal proceedings, would whitewash the Cardinal, would justify the future use of inquisitorial methods in every case where hysterical nuns could be induced by their confessors to accuse the enemies of the regime. That signature was indispensable; but try as he might—and M. de Gastynes, who was present at the interview, declared that he had “never heard anything so abominable” as those specious arguments, those cajoleries, those hypocritical sighs and sobs—the Commissioner was unable to get what he wanted. To everything he could say, Grandier replied that it was morally impossible for him to put his name to a statement which he knew, and God knew (and doubtless the Commissioner knew), to be absolutely false. In the end Laubardemont had to admit defeat. He called La Grange and told him to send for the executioners.

  They came. Grandier was dressed in a shirt impregnated with sulphur; then a rope was tied round his neck and he was carried down to the courtyard, where a cart drawn by six mules was standing ready. He was hoisted up and set on a bench. The driver shouted to his beasts; and preceded by a company of archers and followed by Laubardemont and the thirteen tame magistrates, the cart rumbled slowly into the street. A halt was made, and the sentence was once more read aloud. Then the mules moved on. At the door of St. Peter’s—the door through which for so many years the parson had come and gone with his air of confident and majestic dignity dignity—the procession came to a standstill. The two-pound taper was placed in Grandier’s hand and he was lifted down from the cart to beg pardon, as the sentence had prescribed, for his crimes. But there were no knees to kneel on, and when they lowered him to the ground, he fell forward on his face. The executioners had to lift him up again. At this moment, Father Grillau, the Warden of the Cordeliers, issued from the church and, pushing past the archers of the guard, bent over the prisoner and embraced him.

  Deeply moved, Grandier asked for his prayers and the prayers of all his community—the only one in Loudun which had steadily refused to co-operate with the parson’s enemies.

  Grillau promised to pray for the condemned man, urged him to put his trust in God and the Redeemer, then gave him a message from his mother. She was praying for him at the feet of Our Lady, and she sent her blessing.

  Both men were weeping. A murmur of sympathy ran through the crowd. Laubardemont heard it and was furious. Would nothing ever go as he had planned it? By all the rules, the rabble should be trying to lynch this trafficker with the devil. Instead of which, they were lamenting his cruel fate. He hurried forward and peremptorily ordered the guards to send the Cordelier away. In the scuffle which followed, one of the attendant Capuchins took the opportunity to hit Grandier over his shaven head with a cudgel.

  When order had been restored, the parson said what he had to say—but added, after asking pardon of God, the King and Justice, that, though a great sinner, he was completely innocent of the crime for which he was now to suffer.

  While the executioners were carrying him back to the cart, a friar harangued the tourists and townspeople, assuring them that they would be committing a very grave sin if they ventured to pray for this unrepentant magician.

  The procession moved on. At the door of the Ursuline convent the ceremony of asking pardon of God, King and Justice was repeated. But when the clerk ordered him to ask pardon of the Prioress and all the good sisters, the prisoner answered that he had never done them any harm, and could only pray to God that He would forgive them. Then seeing Moussaut, the husband of Philippe Trincant and one of the most implacable of his enemies, he asked him to forget the past and added with a curious little touch of that courtly politeness for which he had been famous, “je meurs votre serviteur—I die your most obedient servant.” Moussaut turned away his face and refused to answer.

  Not all of Grandier’s enemies were so un-Christian. René Bernier, one of the priests who had testified against him when he was accused of improper behaviour, pushed his way through the crowd in order to ask the parson’s forgiveness and to offer to say a Mass on his behalf. The parson took his hand and gratefully kissed it.

  In the Place Sainte-Croix more than six thousand persons were jammed into a space which would have been uncomfortably narrow for half their number. Every window had been rented, and there were spectators even on the roofs and among the gargoyles of the church. A grandstand had been set up for the judges and Laubardemont’s particular friends; but the rabble had occupied every seat and had to be dislodged by the guards at the point of the pike and halberd. It was only after a pitched battle that these very important personages could be seated.

  Even the most important personage of all had the greatest difficulty in reaching the place appointed for him. It took the prisoner half an hour to cover the last hundred yards to the stake, and his guards were compelled to fight for every inch of the way.

  Not far from the north wall of the church a stout post, fifteen feet high, had been driven into the ground. About its base were piled layers of faggots, logs and straw, and since the victim was no longer capable of standing on those shattered feet of his, a small iron seat had been fastened to the post a couple of feet above the firewood. For all the importance of the event, all its enormous notoriety, the expenses of the execution were remarkably modest. A certain Deliard was paid nineteen livres sixteen sols for “the wood used for the bonfire of Master Urbain Grandier, together with the post to which he was tied.” For “an iron seat weighing twelve pounds, at the rate of three sols four deniers per pound, together with six nails wherewith to attach the said seat to Master Urbain Grandier’s stake,” Jacquet, the locksmith, received forty-two sols. For one day’s hire of five horses, used by the archers kindly lent for the occasion by the Provost of Chinon, and for one day’s hire of six mules, a cart and two men, the widow Morin was paid one hundred and eight sols. Four livres were spent on the prisoner’s two shirts—the plain one in which he was tortured and the sulphured article in which he was burned. The two-pound candle used in the ceremony of the amende honorable cost forty sols, and wine for the executioners, thirteen. Add to these expenses the payment for work done by the doorkeeper of Sainte-Croix and a couple of assistants, and you had a grand total of twenty-nine livres, two sols and six deniers.

  Grandier was taken down from the cart, lifted on to the iron seat and securely lashed to the post. His back was turned to the church, his face to the grandstand and the fa¸ade of a house in which he had once felt himself as much at home as in his own parsonage. It was the house where he had made all those jokes at the expense of Adam and Mannoury, where he had entertained the company with readings from Catherine Hammon’s letters, where he had taught a young girl Latin and seduced her, where he had transformed his best friend into the most relentless of his enemies. Louis Tr
incant was sitting now at the window of his drawing-room, and with him were Canon Mignon and Thibault. At the sight of the hairless clown who had once been Urbain Grandier, they laughed triumphantly. The parson looked up and met their eyes. Thibault waved his hand as though to an old friend, and M. Trincant, who was sipping white wine and water, raised his glass and drank to the father of his bastard grandchild.

  Partly in shame—for he remembered those Latin lessons and his abandonment of the desperately weeping girl—and partly out of a fear lest the spectacle of their triumph might move him to bitterness and make him forget that God was even here, even now, Grandier dropped his eyes.

  A hand touched him on the shoulder. It was La Grange, the captain of the guard, who had come to ask the parson’s forgiveness for what he had been obliged to do. Then he made two promises: the prisoner would be allowed to make a speech and, before the fire was lighted, he would be strangled. Grandier thanked him, and La Grange turned away to give his orders to the executioner, who immediately prepared a noose.

  Meanwhile the friars were busy with their exorcisms.

  “Ecce crucem Domini, fugite partes adversae, vicit leo de tribu Juda, radix David. Exorciso te, creatura ligni, in nomine Dei patris omnipotentis, et in nomine Jesus Christi filii ejus Domini nostri, et in virtute Spiritus sancti. . . .”1

  They sprinkled the wood, the straw, the glowing coals of the brazier that stood ready beside the pyre; they sprinkled the earth, the air, the victim, the executioners, the spectators. This time, they swore, no devil should prevent the wretch from suffering to the extreme limit of his capacity for pain. Several times the parson tried to address the crowd; but no sooner had he begun than they threw holy water in his face or hit him on the mouth with an iron crucifix. When he flinched from the blow, the friars would shout triumphantly that the renegade was denying his Redeemer. And all the time Father Lactance kept calling on the prisoner to confess.