five livres six sols, with an additional couple of livres if the victim was burned alive. The savage punishments of the age tended to brutalize the manners of the people, one evil thus fostering and reacting upon another. In the small town of Provins, now so famous for its roses, there lived one Crispin, who was accused of robbery and murder, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged. As he passed for a Huguenot, the priests, up to the last moment, urged him to recant; but he remained firm--“_si ne sçavoit pas bien lire ni écrire_.” In due course he was executed, and the dead body left hanging on the gallows. A crowd of a hundred boys or more, and none over twelve years old, gathered round the spot; some of the more daring mounted the ladder, cut the rope and let the corpse fall. A cord was now fastened round the neck, another round the ankles, and the boys began to pull in different directions for the mastery. As the sides were pretty evenly matched, a truce was agreed upon, during which they got up a mock trial on the question, in what manner a Huguenot ought to be dragged to the voirie or dunghill. The juvenile court decided that “the said heretic should be dragged by the heels like a dead beast,” and were actually pulling the body to the Changy gate, when another gang of boys met them and insisted that the body should be burned. A fire was kindled into which the corpse was thrown, while a crowd of spectators looked on encouraging the boys by words and gestures. After the body had lain some time in the flames, it was again dragged out and thrown into the river, where a bargeman cut off an ear and wore it as a trophy in his hat.[199] Comment upon such an incident would be superfluous. It is a picture painted by a contemporary of a state of society that had not existed in Europe since the fall of Rome. The men of Provins who looked on approvingly while the boys were making a plaything of Crispin’s lifeless body, were the fathers of those who committed the atrocities of the Reign of Terror.