There was, indeed, but one question at issue, to ascertain by what kind of reparation, of solemn atonement, of exemplary chastening, the plaintiff thus changed into the accused might satisfy Girard and the Company of Jesus. The Jesuits, with all their good-nature, affirmed the need of an example, in the interests of religion, by way of some slight warning both to the Jansenist Convulsionaries and the scribbling philosophers who were beginning to swarm. There were two points by which Cadière might be hooked, might receive the stroke of the harpoon. Firstly, she had borne false witness. But, then, by no law could slander be punished with death. To gain that end you must go a little further, and say, “The old Roman text, _De famosis libellis_, pronounces death on those who have uttered libels hurtful to the Emperor or to _the religion_ of the Empire. The Jesuits represent that religion. Therefore, a memorial against a Jesuit deserves the last penalty.” A still better handle, however, was their second. At the opening of the trial the episcopal judge, the prudent Larmedieu, had asked her if she had never _divined_ the secrets of many people, and she had answered yes. Therefore they might charge her with the practice named in the list of forms employed in trials for witchcraft, as _Divination and imposture_. This alone in ecclesiastic law deserved the stake. They might, indeed, without much effort, call her a _Witch_, after the confession made by the Ollioules ladies, that at one same hour of the night she used to be in several cells together. Their infatuation, the surprising tenderness that suddenly came over them, had all the air of an enchantment. What was there to prevent her being burnt? They were still burning everywhere in the eighteenth century. In one reign only, that of Philip V., sixteen hundred people were burnt in Spain: one Witch was burnt as late as 1782. In Germany one was burnt in 1751; in Switzerland one also in 1781. Rome was always burning her victims, on the sly indeed, in the dark holes and cells of the Inquisition.[116] [116] This fact comes to us from an adviser to the Holy Office, still living. “But France, at least, is surely more humane?” She is very inconsistent. In 1718, a Wizard is burnt at Bordeaux.[117] In 1724 and 1726, the faggots were lighted in Grève for offences which passed as schoolboy jokes at Versailles. The guardians of the Royal child, the Duke and Fleury, who are so indulgent to the Court, are terrible to the town. A donkey-driver and a noble, one M. des Chauffours, are burnt alive. The advent of the Cardinal Minister could not be celebrated more worthily than by a moral reformation, by making a severe example of those who corrupted the people. Nothing more timely than to pass some terrible and solemn sentence on this infernal girl, who made so heinous an assault on the innocent Girard!