Navis breathed not a murmur; the feeling of his disobedience to his father closed his lips; it appears also that Blanchet recovered from his terror, dried his tears, and acknowledged his folly. Nothing indicates that the repentance of these two Genevan youths was truly christian; but it would be unjust to overlook their noble confession at the hour of death. The provost and his men, having received them from the hands of the magistrates, led them to the place of execution. Their appearance was becoming, and their look serious; they walked between their guards, calm, but without weakness or alarm. When they had mounted the scaffold, Navis spoke: ‘Wishing before all things to make amends for the evil we have done, we retract all that we have said touching certain of our countrymen, and declare that such avowals were extorted from us by the fear of torture. After proclaiming the innocence of others, we acknowledge ourselves guilty. Yes, we have lived in such a way that we justly deserve death, and we pray God, in this our last hour, to pardon our sins. Yet understand, that these sins are not those of which we are accused; we have done nothing contrary to the franchises and laws of Geneva: of that we are clean.... The sins which condemn us are our debaucheries.’ Navis would have continued, but the provost, vexed at what he had said already, ordered the executioner to do his duty. The man set to work instantly: the two young men knelt down, he raised his sword, and ‘thus they were beheaded, and then quartered.’[167] At last the bishop saw his desires satisfied; he had in his possession the heads and the quarters of two of the ‘children of Geneva.’ This little man, so frail, livid, hideous, reduced almost to a shadow, without genius and without will, had nevertheless the will and the genius of evil. Notwithstanding his protest against _the mutilation of limbs_, he decided that three of the quarters of the two bodies should be exposed over the gates of Turin, and reserved for his own share a quarter of Navis and of Blanchet, with the two heads. He had the flesh pickled, for he intended to keep them as long as possible; and when this savage operation, worthy of the Mohawks, was completed, he placed the heads and limbs in two barrels on which were marked the arms of the count, the duke’s brother. The bishop wished to show his flock a sample of his cleverness; and as the execution did not take place at Geneva, he intended at least to send the limbs of the victims ‘to stir up and terrify the scoundrels.’ The bearers of these two pickle-tubs started from Turin, crossed Mont Cenis, arrived in the basin of the Leman on Saturday, October 2, 1518, and lodged on ‘the other side of the Arve.’[168]