The investigation began on the 13th of April. Antonia was not of a character to conceal her crime: the _vénéfique_, as they called the poisoner, declared openly she was led into it by the 'round caps (the clergy).'[499] The priests, and even the canon who had ruined her, were arrested and taken to prison. A canon arrested by laymen! All the clergy were in commotion: Aimé de Gingins, the bishop's vicar-general, represented to the syndics that a canon ought not to be imprisoned by anybody, not being a subject of the State, but only of the chapter. The magistrates declared that the investigation of criminal matters belonged to them, and the priests were forced to submit to be tried according to the common law—a great innovation in the sixteenth century. [Sidenote: EXECUTION OF ANTONIA.] Antonia was condemned to have her head cut off, her body hung on the gibbet of Champel, and her head fixed on a nail. At first she remained firm. 'Take care, my lords,' she said, 'that your servants do not poison you, for there are many who practise it.' But when she had returned to prison, she became quite prostrated. Pale and speechless, she rolled her haggard eyes around her. It was still worse when she was led to the place of execution. Her mind wandered: she was like one of those personages spoken of in antiquity, who were said to be pursued by the Furies. Although surrounded by an immense crowd, she did not observe it: her eyes seemed fixed on some mysterious beings. She fancied she saw the priests of Geneva and the monks of Ambournay standing round her. 'Take them away, take them away!' she exclaimed, waving her hand; and as the guards showed by their looks of astonishment that they did not know what she meant, 'Take them away,' she resumed, pointing with her finger at what she believed she saw; 'in heaven's name take away those _round-caps_ who are before me; ... it is they who are the cause of my death!' Having mounted the scaffold, she cried out again in great anguish: 'Take them away!' and her head fell.[500] She paid dearly for her crime—a crime too frequent in those days, when fanatics thought it their duty to serve by violence the cause which they said was the cause of God. The adversaries of the Reformation, in the countries which it reached, have too frequently employed the arms of iniquity against it. The guilty project of getting rid of the three Reformers at once had the opposite consequences to what its authors had hoped. The atrocity of the attempt increased the love of the people for the Reform, and detracted greatly from the reputation of the priests. The most sinister reports were circulated about them. It was said that they had tried to poison the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper, in order to cut off all the reformed at a blow. People shrank from them in the streets as they passed, as if their simple approach could inflict death.[501]