Early in the morning of October 13, 1307, all the Templars in France were seized in their beds and thrown into ecclesiastical prisons. There were one hundred and forty arrests in Paris. The knights listened, astounded, to what purported to be a confession by the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, of the truth of the abominable charges brought against the Order. They were promised liberty if they confirmed the confession. To the lasting credit of the Order only a few bought their freedom by perjury. The rest were “put to the question” with a wealth of hideous ingenuity which has seldom been approached in the grisly history of the torture chamber. In Paris alone thirty-six died as a result of their rending on the rack, and the others said anything that would put an end to suffering worse than death. The methods employed by Philip became known to the pope, and although he had sworn to do the king’s behest in regard to some unknown deed, and this proved to be the deed, yet he had the courage to send a commission to Paris to search into the truth of the rumors that had reached him. It sat in the Abbey of Sainte Geneviève. Under shelter of the commission’s protection scores of witnesses from all over France told what they had endured, and denied their extorted confessions. Jacques de Molay himself was tortured physically and tormented mentally, but he persisted in a denial. His courage gave strength to over two hundred other knights who came before the commission to show the wounds by which they had been forced into saying what was not true. But Philip was not to be balked of his prey. The archbishop of Sens, who was also metropolitan of Paris held a special court in the Hôtel de Sens. This palace was replaced almost two centuries later by the Hôtel de Sens now to be [Illustration: HÔTEL DE CLUNY. See pages 197-198.] [Illustration: HÔTEL DE SENS.] seen on the rue du Figuier-Saint-Paul, a house well worth a visit from lovers of line and proportion as well as from antiquarians. To his court the archbishop summoned half a hundred of the knights who had denied their confessions, and the tribunal promptly convicted them of heresy and condemned them to be burned. The pope’s commissioners had no control over a local court and could not save the poor wretches. On a day in May, 1308, they were taken out of the city on the northeast and there suffered their cruel punishment, every one of them protesting to the assembled crowd the innocence of the Order. Six others were burned on the Grève. Five years later the pope ordered the dispersal of the Order and Philip was at last able to take possession of their treasure--to repay himself for the heavy expenses of the trial!