In fact, the ordeal was practically looked upon as a torture by those whose enlightenment led them to regard as a superstition the faith popularly reposed in it. An epistle which is attributed both to Stephen V. and Sylvester II. condemns the whole system on the ground that the canons forbid the extortion of confessions by heated irons and boiling water; and that a credulous belief could not be allowed to sanction that which was not permitted by the fathers.[1255] When, therefore, at the Council of St. Baseul, a priest named Adalger, in confessing the assistance he had rendered to Arnoul of Reims during Charles of Lorraine’s resistance to the usurpation of Hugh Capet, offered to substantiate his testimony by undergoing the ordeal, he did it in terms which show that he expected it to be regarded as a torture giving additional weight to evidence—“If any of you doubt this and deem me unworthy of belief, let him believe the fire, the boiling water, the glowing iron. Let these tortures convince those who disbelieve my words.”[1256] It is observable that he omits the cold-water as not being a torture, just as in the ancient Indian law the limitation referred to above as applicable to the red-hot iron, the poison, and the balance, did not apply to the cold-water ordeal, or to that in which was administered the water in which an idol had been dipped.[1257] In the same way, some among the European ordeals, such as that of the Eucharist, of bread and cheese, and bier-right, do not come within the class of tortures, but they addressed themselves powerfully to the conscience and imagination of the accused, whose callous fortitude no doubt often gave way under the trial. In our own country, and almost within our own time, the latter ordeal was revived in one instance with this object, and the result did not disappoint the expectations of those who undertook it. In the case of People _vs._ Johnson, tried in New York in 1824, the suspected murderer was led from his cell to the hospital where lay the body of the victim, which he was required to touch. Dissimulation which had been before unshaken failed him at the awful moment; his overstrung nerves gave way, and a confession was faltered forth. The proceeding was sustained by court, and a subsequent attempt at retraction was overruled.[1258] The powerful influence of such feelings is shown in a custom which, as recently as 1815, was still employed at Mandeure, near Mont-belliard, and which is said to be even yet in use in some of the remoter districts of the Ardennes. When a theft has been committed, the inhabitants are summoned to assemble after vespers on Sunday at the place of judgment. There the mayor calls upon the guilty person to make restitution and live in isolation for six months. If this appeal prove fruitless, recourse is had to the trial of the staff, in which two magistrates hold aloft a piece of wood, under which every one is bound to pass. No instance, it