The first thing that impresses one in considering this record is the extraordinary speed with which the work was done. The whole was despatched in six months, and there is no evidence that the labor was continuous--in fact, it could not have been so, for the inquisitor had to move from place to place, to grant the necessary delays, and must have been frequently interrupted to gather in the results of testimony which implicated recusants. With what reckless lack of consideration the penances were imposed is shown by the two hundred and nineteen penitents of Gourdon, whose confessions were taken down and whose sentences were pronounced within the four weeks of Advent; and even this is outstripped by the two hundred and fifty-two of Montauban, despatched in the week before Ascension, at the rate of forty-two for each working-day. In several cases two culprits are included in the same sentence. Even more significant than this, however, are the enormous numbers--two hundred and nineteen for a small town like Gourdon and eighty-four for Montcucq. The number of these who were really heretics, both Catharan and Waldensian, is large, and shows how thoroughly the population was interpenetrated with heresy. Even more, however, were good Catholics whose cases prove how amicably the various sects associated together, and how impossible it was for the most orthodox to avoid the association with heretics which rendered him liable to punishment. This friendly intercourse is peculiarly notable in the case of a priest who confessed to having gone to some heretics in a vineyard, where he read in their books and ate pears with them. He was rudely reminded of his indiscretion by being suspended from his functions, sent to Compostella and thence to Rome, with letters from the inquisitors which doubtless were not for his benefit, for apparently they felt unable to decide what ought to be done for an offence so enormous. Even the smallest derelictions of this sort were rigorously penanced. A citizen of Sauveterre had seen three heretics entering the house of a sick man, and heard that they had hereticated him, but knew nothing of his own knowledge, yet he was subjected to the disgrace of a penitential pilgrimage to Puy. Another, of Belcayre, had carried a message between two heretics, and was sent to Puy, St. Gilles, and Compostella. A physician of Montauban had bound up the arm of a heretic and was subjected to the same three pilgrimages, and the same penance was inflicted on a woman who had simply eaten at a table with heretics. The same was prescribed in several cases of boatmen who had ignorantly transported heretics, without recognizing them until the voyage was under way or finished. A woman who had eaten and drunk with another woman who she heard was a heretic was sentenced to the pilgrimages of Puy and St. Gilles, and the same penance was ordered for a man who had once seen heretics, and for a woman who had consulted a Waldensian about her sick son.