In the year 1598 a priest of Limousin, named Pierre Aupetit, was burned alive for ridiculous confessions extracted from him by torture.[277] In 1599 a woman named Antide Collas was burned at Dôle because there was something abnormal in her sexual conformation, and it was regarded as explicable only by a shameful intercourse with Satan. Repeatedly put to the torture, stripped, scrutinised by doctors and judges, overwhelmed with shame and suffering, the unfortunate being confessed everything that she might somehow end it all.[278] Henri Boguet, judge of Saint-Claude, relates how he caused a woman to be tortured as a sorceress because there was a piece missing from the cross of her rosary, and it was a certain sign of witchcraft in the view of this ferocious maniac. A child of twelve years, brought up by the inquisitors, accused his own father of taking him to the Sabbath. The father died in prison as the result of his sufferings, and it was proposed to burn the boy, which was opposed by Boguet—who made a virtue of the clemency. Rollande de Vernois, thirty-five years old, was imprisoned in such a freezing dungeon that she promised to admit herself guilty of Magic if she might be allowed to go near a fire. As soon as she felt its warmth she fell into frightful convulsions, accompanied by fever and delirium. In this condition she was put to the torture, made every required statement, and was dragged in a dying condition to the stake. A storm broke out, extinguished the fire, and thereupon Boguet gloated over the sentence which he had pronounced, since she who in appearance was thus protected by heaven must really and incontestably be aided by the devil. This same judge burnt Pierre Gaudillon and Pierre le Gros for travelling by night, the one in the form of a hare and the other in that of a wolf. But the prosecution which caused the greatest stir at the beginning of the seventeenth century was that of Messire Louis Gaufridi, curé of the parish of Accoules, at Marseilles. The scandal of this affair created a fatal precedent, which was only followed too faithfully. It was a case of priests accusing a priest, of a minister dragged before a tribunal of his associates in the ministry. Constantine had said that if he found a priest dishonouring his calling by some shameful sin he would cover him with his own purple, which was a beautiful and royal saying, for the priesthood ought to be stainless, even as justice is infallible in the presence of public morality.[279]