The judges determined to try what they could with the novice who had acted the part of the ghost; but if the monks were silent, sullen, and immovable, the novice was agitated and frightened out of his senses. The friars had uttered the most terrible threats; and hence, when he was interrogated, 'he held firm,' says the Geneva manuscript, 'fearing, if he spoke, that the cordeliers would kill him.' The judges then reminded him of the power of the parliament and the protection of the king. 'You shall never return into the hands of the monks,' they told him. At these words the poor young fellow began to breathe; he recovered from his great fright; his tongue was loosened, and he 'explained the whole affair to the judges,' says Beza. 'I made a hole in the roof,' he said, 'to which I applied my ear, to hear what the provincial said to me from below. Then I struck a plank which I held in my hand, and I hit it hard enough for the noise to be heard by the reverend fathers underneath. That was all the _fun_,' he added. [Sidenote: THEIR CONDEMNATION.] The friars were then confronted with the novice, who stoutly maintained the cheat got up by them. They were both indignant and alarmed at seeing this pitiful varlet turning against their reverences; but as it was now impossible to deny the fact, they began to protest against their judges, and to plead their privileges once more. They were condemned; the indignation was general, the king especially being greatly irritated. All his life long he looked upon the monks, black or white, as his personal enemies. Besides, the hatred he felt against that lazy and ignorant herd was, he thought, one of his attributes as the Father of Letters. His anger broke out in the midst of his court: 'I will pull down their convent!' he exclaimed, 'and build in its place a palace for the duke!' (that is, for the Duke of Orleans, Catherine's husband). All the councillors of parliament, both lay and clerical, were assembled. The haughty Coliman, the eloquent brother Stephen, and their accomplices were forced to stand at the bar, and sentence was solemnly delivered. They were to be taken to the Chatelet prison at Orleans; there they would be stripped of their frocks, be led into the cathedral, and then, set on a platform with tapers in their hands, they were to confess 'that, with certain fraud and deliberate malice, they had plotted such wickedness.' Thence they were to be taken to their convent, and afterwards to the place of public execution, where they would again confess their crime.