While the Grand Master lived, however, even though he was in prison for life, the king did not feel secure in his ill-gotten gain. A year after the general dispersal the Parisians thronged one day into the Parvis de Notre Dame--the raised open space before the cathedral--where a representative of the pope, the archbishop of Sens and other church dignitaries sat enthroned. There Jacques de Molay and three other officers of the late Order were confronted with their false or extorted confessions. If it was done to harry them into some betrayal of feeling which could be taken advantage of for their destruction it was successful. De Molay protested against this untruth being again attributed to him. The crowd, eager for excitement, pressed closer to hear the ringing words of the old soldiers. Then, in the dusk of evening, noble and burgess and cleric pushed to the western end of the Cité where they could look across to some small islands, to-day walled and made a part of the land on which the Pont Neuf rests between the two arms of the Seine. On one of these islets the fagots were piled. A witness says; “The Grand Master, seeing the fire, stripped himself briskly; I tell just as I saw; he bared himself to his shirt, light-heartedly and with a good grace, without a whit of trembling, though he was dragged and shaken mightily. They took hold of him to tie him to the stake, and they were binding his hands with a cord, but he said to them, ‘Sirs, suffer me to fold my hands a while and make my prayer to God, for verily it is time. I am presently to die, but wrongfully, God wot. Wherefore woe will come ere long, to those who condemn us without a cause. God will avenge our death.’” While the flames leaped scarlet against the river and the sky the Grand Master summoned pope and king to appear with him before the bar of the Almighty. They who heard must have shuddered, and shuddered yet again when in fact Pope Clement died within forty days and Philip the Fair within the year.