of the men of this world; but let us rejoice, for the savor of our death will be acceptable to God and serviceable to the Church.” A German residing in Paris in the summer of 1542 wrote to a friend an account of the execution of two heretics which he had witnessed. In his letter we learn how sympathy for the victims tended to make converts. One of them was a smooth-cheeked youth under twenty years of age, the son of a shoe-maker; the other, a man with a long white beard, stooping under the burden of fourscore years. The young man had spoken contemptuously of images, comparing them to the gods of the heathen; the old man had protested against prayers to the saints, and had declared that all Christians were priests. Both were condemned to suffer at the same stake for their “Lutheranism,” as it was called. As the youth refused to retract, he was to have his tongue cut out. No change could be observed in his face when the hangman approached him to perform this first act of cruelty. He put the tongue out as far as he could, the torturer pulled it out still farther with pinchers, and cut it off, slapping the martyr with it on the cheek. He then threw the tongue among the crowd, who, “it is said,” adds the writer conscientiously, “picked it up and flung it back in the martyr’s face. As he got out of the cart, he looked as if he were going to a feast and not to punishment.” Unmoved by the howling and the savage cries of the mob, he took his place calmly at the post, where a chain was passed round him. He now and then spat the blood from his mouth, but kept his eyes fixed on heaven, as if looking there for help. When the executioner covered his head with sulphur and pointed to the fire, he still smiled and bowed, as if to show he died willingly. The old man, who was the father of a large family and much respected for his upright life, had retracted, and his punishment was consequently modified. He was strangled before being thrown into the flames; “yet some,” adds the eye-witness, “thought this punishment too mild, and would have had him burned alive.”[10]