However, before commencing this trial, that of Pennet, less complicated than the other, was to be concluded. The case was clear, provided for by the law, and not pardonable. Claude Pennet stood forward boldly, like a man enduring persecution for the Christian religion. He was convicted of having murdered Nicholas Berger in his shop at the Perron, and Syndic du Crest, a catholic but a wise man, pronounced the sentence of death. This made no change in Pennet’s manner. He did not repent the deed he had done: fanaticism stifled the voice of conscience in him. It was the same with all his friends, zealots of the Roman party. In them passion took the place of reason, and they boasted of the murder as an honorable, holy, and heroic act. Pennet asked to see Furbity, the Dominican, who was detained in prison for having insulted the adversaries of Rome. The monk of the order of the Inquisition was conducted to the murderer’s cell, ‘and when they saw each other they could not forbear from weeping,’ says the nun of St. Claire.[472] Pennet wished to die piously: ‘therefore this good catholic made his confession.’ ... ‘I am condemned to the scaffold for the love of Jesus Christ,’ he said to the Dominican, ‘and I entreat your holy prayers.’ The reverend father, moved to tears by the piety and wretched fate of this precious son of the Church, kissed him, and said: ‘Sire Claude, go cheerfully and rejoice in your martyrdom, nothing doubting; for the kingdom of heaven is open and the angels are waiting for you.’[473] [Sidenote: Pennet’s Execution And Miracles.] The murder of which Pennet was guilty was, in the Dominican’s eyes, the work of a saint. Most of the episcopals thought the same; and it was feared that their party, which had the populace with them, would oppose the execution of the sentence. De la Maisonneuve, determining to support the law by force, collected a certain number of armed men in his house.[474] But their intervention was not necessary. Nothing disturbed the course of justice, and the executioner cut off the murderer’s head, and hung his body on a gibbet. Before long, the populace was in commotion. ‘Have you heard the news?’ people said. ‘Miracles are worked at the place where Pennet’s body hangs. His face is as ruddy and his lips as fresh as if he was alive, and a white dove is continually hovering over his head.’ The devout made pilgrimages to the place of execution. The other Pennet, the jailer who had wounded Porral, and who, says Sister Jeanne, ‘was not less ardent than his brother in upholding the holy catholic religion,’ was all this time lying hid in the house of a poor beggar-woman, where the nuns of St. Claire, who alone were in the secret, stealthily carried him food. The execution of his brother alarmed him; so one night, when it froze hard, he left his hiding-place barefoot, and arrived stealthily at the convent of St. Claire, where the nuns provided him with a disguise, in which he escaped to Savoy.