The counts of the indictment as repeated to the archbishops are interesting and inclusive. Besides the two main charges of having employed bandit-mercenaries and refusing to prosecute heretics, Count Raymond had refused to interrupt military operations during Lent and on feast days and holidays, he had made fortresses out of churches, he had persecuted abbeys, despoiled the Bishop of Carpentras, bestowed public offices upon Jews, refused to join the league of peace of Provence, increased tolls upon the roads and bridges, played host to heretics, and finally (although this was never proved and seems not to have been the fact) he had become a heretic himself. It is particularly interesting, and in line with the Church’s condemnation of usury and extortion generally, to see the strong line taken in the matter of tolls. Naturally, his vassals owed no duties of allegiance as long as their lord remained unabsolved. Should any man give him aid and comfort that man was, ipso facto, excommunicate himself, down to the blacksmith who might shoe him a horse. The Pope’s letter to Raymond himself was devastating. “Impious folly and tyranny” were among the gentler of its phrases. It spoke hopefully of the Count’s chances of fever, leprosy, paralysis, demoniacal insanity, metamorphosis into a beast after the fashion of Nebuchadnezzar. Contrasting his love of war with the angelic devotion to peace shown by the Provençal nobles and by “the illustrious” King Pedro of Aragon, it likened its addressee to a crow feeding on dead bodies. Altogether, its tone left very little to be desired. Specifically, Innocent accused the Count of retorting to de Castelnau that a heretic, perhaps a “Catharan bishop” could easily be found to prove the superiority of their religion over the Catholic. He speaks, therefore, of the serious grounds for suspicion of heresy in Raymond’s own case, but guards himself carefully against offering it as a fact. He is to give prompt and full satisfaction and seek to be absolved. Otherwise he will lose the county of Melgueil held by him as a vassal of the Roman Church, and if this is not enough then other princes will be stirred up against him and granted title to any of his lands they may conquer. Raymond collapsed. He signed the Provençal truce and again swore to do everything that was demanded of him. But it was the fatal weakness of his character that he was always willing to mortgage his future by yielding to present threats and then fail to keep his engagements. He could never understand that this sort of thing would be even worse for him in the end than out and out resistance. Again he did nothing.