A few confessed and were set free. The remainder were "examined." Starvation and torture of the most incredible ferocity did their work. Thirty-six died under torture in Paris, and many others in other places: most of the remainder confessed to anything the inquisitors required. The pope, warned by the growing feeling in Europe, now became alarmed, and the next act in the drama opens at Paris, where a papal commission sat at the Abbey of St. Genevieve, to hear what the Templars had to say in their defence. All were invited to give evidence and promised immunity in the name of the pope. Hundreds came to Paris to defend their order,[76] but having been made to understand by the bishops that they would be burned as heretics if they retracted their confessions, they held back for a time until solemnly assured by the papal commissioners that they had nothing to fear, and might freely speak. Ponzardus de Gysiaco, preceptor of Payens, then came forward and disclosed the atrocious means used to extort confessions, and said if he were so tortured again he would confess anything that were demanded of him. He would face death, however horrible, even by boiling and fire, in defence of his order, but long-protracted and agonising torture was beyond human endurance. He was sent back to confinement and the warders were bidden to see that he suffered naught for what he had said. The rugged old master, Jacques de Molay, scarred by honourable wounds, the marks of many a battle with the infidel, was brought before the court and his alleged confession was read to him. He was stupefied, and swore that if his enemies were not priests he would know how to deal with them. A second time he was examined and preposterous charges of unnatural crimes were preferred against the order by the king's chancellor, Guillaume de Nogaret. They were drawn from a chronicle at St. Denis, and based on certain statements alleged to have been made by Saladin, Sultan of Babylon (Egypt). Again he was stupefied, and declared he had never heard of such things. And now the Templars' courage rose. Two hundred and thirty-one came forward, emaciated, racked and torn; among them one poor wretch was carried in, whose feet had been burnt off by slow fires. Nearly all protested that the confessions had been wrung from them by torture, that their accusers were perjurers, and that they would maintain the purity of their order _usque ad mortem_ ("even unto death"). Many complained that they were poor, illiterate soldiers, neither able to pay for legal defence nor to comprehend the charges indicted in Latin against them. When the commissioners went to interrogate twenty Templars detained in the abbey of St. Genevieve, a written petition was handed to them by the prisoners, with a prayer to the papal notaries to correct the bad Latin. It was Philip's turn now to be alarmed, but the prelates were equal to the crisis. The archbishop of Sens, metropolitan of Paris and brother of the king's chief adviser,