The Iron Pincers; or, Mylio and Karvel: A Tale of the Albigensian Crusades

Alyx of Montmorency (unmoved) – "If she does not abjure her heresy, she must perish!"

Abbot Reynier (in a thundering voice) – "Hardened heretics, the Church now delivers you to the secular arm! Enemies of God, may your death strike a salutary terror among your fellows!"

The Provost of the Army (to the executioner) – "Take your hot irons. – But leave one of his eyes to the old man who has just spoken. With it he shall guide the rest."

The executioner and his assistants seize at haphazard one of the prisoners. He is a young man. They bind him down upon a seat on the scaffold, while the executioner himself walks over to his furnace.

The Heretic (to the executioner's assistants) – "What are you going to do? Have mercy upon me!"

One of the Assistants – "We are going to put out both your eyes, heretic dog! Pagan!"

The Heretic (terrified) – "Oh, death rather – rather death than such a torture – mercy! (He vainly tries to snap his bonds and writhes convulsively, crying) Brothers! Help! They are going to put out our eyes. Oh, Lord, have mercy upon us!"

The Prisoners (to Montfort) – "Such a punishment is frightful. Have us rather burned – strangled! Mercy!"

Montfort (with a hollow voice) – "No mercy! Your blind souls are closed to the divine light. So shall your bodily eyes be forever closed to the light of day!"

A Heretic (whose teeth are chattering with terror) – "Seigneur, myself and several of our companions abjure. Mercy! Mercy!"

Abbot Reynier – "Too late! Too late!"

The young heretic, who is firmly tied to the seat on the scaffold, is furthermore held down by the assistants of the executioner. The latter approaches the victim, who emits heart-rending shrieks and mechanically closes his eyes. With two thrusts of his sharp and incandescent iron the executioner pierces both the eyelids and the globes of the two eyes. The blood and smoke ooze out of the now hollow orbits. The shrieks of the victim are fearful, but they are speedily drowned by the choir of the monks and priests who chant their litanies aloud.

The same punishment, inflicted upon the rest of the prisoners in succession, is accompanied throughout by the funeral psalmody. Florette is the last victim, reserved to close the ghastly performance. At the sight of the horrors thus enacted in her presence, the poor girl almost loses her reason. She imagines herself oppressed by a nightmare. Sustained by the executioner's assistants she marches mechanically to the seat on the scaffold. These hardened men themselves feel moved to pity. After she is fastened down to the seat and before proceeding with the operation, the executioner whispers to her; "Take my advice, little one, open your eyes – you will suffer less. If the eyelids are shut the pain is double, because the hot iron must pierce them before it reaches the eye-ball. Do you understand me? Come, little one, do as I tell you; are you ready?"

Florette (in a low voice to herself and only semi-conscious) – "Meseems I have been told to open my eyes in order that I may suffer less. Oh, no! I shall shut my eyes in order to suffer all the more, and die speedily, and rejoin Mylio. (Her haggard eyes wander; they alight upon Abbot Reynier; the girl shudders.) Oh, monk of Citeaux! Oh, infamous monk! There he stands, hovering before me in his white robe like a specter announcing death!"

The Executioner (holding in his hand the iron, the sharp point of which is at white heat) – "Quick now, my pretty girl! Open your eyes wide!"

Florette on the contrary closes her eyes firmly; her face becomes cadaverous; her bluish lips are convulsively pressed; she awaits death.

The Executioner (stamping on the ground) – "Open your eyes quickly – my iron is cooling. (The young woman does not obey) The devil take you! Fool! (The executioner darts his burning iron into the victim's right eye) The devil take the heretic's obstinacy! The right eye is now out!"

Florette (emits a piercing cry, and swoons murmuring) – "Mylio – help!"

The poor child swoons away so completely that she utters but a feeble moan at the burning out of her left eye.

Abbot Reynier (aside) – "What a pity! Such beautiful eyes! Why did the hussy prefer that miserable Mylio to me!"

Montfort (addressing the old man, only one of whose eyes was put out) – "You may now serve as the guide for these sinners. They may now be unpinioned. Let them consecrate the rest of their lives to repentance!"

Alyx of Montmorency (sadly to her husband) – "Alas! The punishments that the stiff-neckedness of these wretches compels us to inflict upon them are horrible – but the Church so orders it."

The Provost (stepping to the foot of the balcony and addressing Montfort) – "Seigneur, shall the pyre be lighted?"

Montfort – "Be quick about it! Let the pyre be lighted immediately to burn the other heretics alive."

Abbot Reynier (in a resonant voice) – "Bring the other heretics forth! The terrestrial hell shall be to them the vestibule of the eternal hell."

Again the gate that communicates with the esplanade is thrown open. Pricked in the back by the lances of the soldiers behind them, a crowd of men, women and children of all ages issues from the dungeon with pinioned hands. The soldiers rank themselves in a cordon along the edge of the esplanade, and with the points of their lowered lances drive the human mass of prisoners into a burning fosse.

Among the last victims to issue from the dungeon are Karvel the Perfect, his wife Morise, the Lady of Lavaur and her son. Accident threw the four together at this supreme moment. Giraude is clad in black, her arms are pinioned at her back; so are Aloys's, who has received a severe wound on his left shoulder, seeing that, despite his tender years, he insisted upon fighting at his uncle's side during the siege. Giraude does not take her eyes from her son. The distracted mother's angelic features betray the horror which, little recking her own fate, she feels at the atrocious death that awaits her son. The latter guesses his mother's preoccupation, and endeavors to calm her with a smile. Karvel and his wife march with a firm step and serene front. Nevertheless, at the sight of the shocking spectacle that presents itself to him the instant he steps upon the esplanade, the Perfect stops short and shudders with horror. On the left are twenty-four gibbets awaiting their victims with arms outstretched; on the right, the prostrate bodies of those, who, too weak to withstand the torture of "blinding," are now dead or dying: they lie strewn around the foot of the scaffold; finally, a little further away from the gibbets and corpses, lambent flames rise from the pit, a vast brazier whose fires are kept alive with the fuel furnished by the flesh, the bones and the entrails of the heretics. From the midst of that burning heap of human remains some tokens of life are still visible. Arms, limbs and chests quiver and writhe convulsively; here and there a head is seen with hair aflame and features singed. Oh! son of Joel, no human pen could depict to you the aspect of these beings in the throes of such a death.

Such is the spectacle that presents itself to Karvel and his wife. The Perfect stops, and turns to the balcony where Montfort, his wife, the mitred abbots, the noble dukes, counts and knights are ranked in state. He contemplates the assemblage for an instant, and, a prophetic inspiration lighting his face, cries out aloud:

"Oh, ye priests of Rome! Verily, verily I say unto you the evangelical faith has departed from your midst; to-day it dwells among those whom you style heretics, and there it will dwell imperishable as truth! You have the might – the might – ephemeral as that pyre that, this very evening, will be but a heap of ashes!"

Abbot Reynier (jumps up furious) – "Tear out that heretic's tongue!"

The executioner and his assistants seize Karvel. While the latter hold the Perfect the former quickly takes out of his bag a pair of small iron pincers with wooden handles; he heats the iron in the furnace; and armed with the incandescent instrument of torture, beats in the Perfect's teeth, and tears out his tongue together with shreds of his lips. Morise closes her eyes and plunges into the burning furnace, whither her husband is thrown immediately after her.

The only heretics now left of those that were condemned to the pyre are the Lady of Lavaur and her son. At the moment when the executioners drag them towards the fosse, Giraude throws herself upon her knees under the balcony where she just perceived Alyx of Montmorency. With convulsed hands and a voice that palpitates with horror the distracted mother cries:

"Madam! I do not ask you for my life. But I shudder for my son at the thought of the pyre. Oh! madam, for mercy's sake, obtain from your husband the commutation of our punishment. Let us be slain with the sword!"

Alyx of Montmorency (lowers her eyes and clasps her beads) – "It may not be!"

The Lady of Lavaur (with a heart-rending voice) – "I implore you! Listen to a last prayer! Order them to burn me, but let them kill my son with the sword. You are silent? Oh, God! Have you no children, yourself, that you can be so merciless?"

Aloys kneels down beside his mother. His hands being tied behind his back the boy's movements are constrained. He breaks into tears and approaches his face to the lips of his mother, who covers it with kisses and wets it with her tears. Alyx of Montmorency, whose eyes seem to moisten, timidly looks at Montfort and says to him in a low voice: "Monseigneur, I pity this heretic woman, could not her request be granted?"

Abbot Reynier (precipitately) – "Madam, in her quality of Mistress of Lavaur, this woman is guiltier than any other. She and her son must be burned alive!"

Montfort (impatiently) – "Oh! my reverend Father. Provided this heretic woman die, what does it matter whether it be by the rope, the sword or by fire? She will have been made an example of. After all, the Lady of Lavaur is of noble race; some concession must be made to the nobility. (The count casts his hollow eyes around him and proceeds with an expression of lassitude and disgust) And even that – to have the woman and her child slain there – before my very eyes. May the Lord pardon me a sinful weakness – my heart fails me! (He notices a cistern, and beckons to the provost) Come, be quick about it. Throw the woman and her son into that well and cover it up with large stones."

The Lady of Lavaur (with a look of gratitude) – "Oh, thanks! Thanks! (To her son) Come, my child, we shall be drowned together."

While Giraude and Aloys descend the stone steps within the well in which their lives are to be extinguished, the former turns to the executioner who accompanies them and is to thrust them into the water. "We are about to die," she says, "neither my son nor I can offer any resistance. For mercy's sake, free us from our bonds. My son and I could at least give each other a last embrace and die in each other's arms!"

The Lady of Lavaur and her son are untied, and while the two hold each other in a close embrace and exchange their last adieus amidst sobs, the executioner makes a sign to his assistants, who forthwith push mother and son down into the well. The sound is heard of the two bodies striking the water, the water closes over them, they rise again to the surface, their agonizing cries rise from the depth of the well; presently silence reigns within.

Perceiving that the sun is on the decline, also, perhaps, exhausted by the sight of the wholesale butcheries and wishing to hasten their end, Montfort orders the provost of the army to bring on the esplanade the heretics that are condemned to be hanged. They are brought out. At their head and hardly able to walk, seeing that he received many wounds during the siege, marches Aimery, the brother of the Lady of Lavaur. Close behind him come Mylio the Trouvere and Goose-Skin the juggler. They are followed by the consuls and other notabilities of the town. Soldiers with drawn swords lead the prisoners to the foot of the gibbets.

Abbot Reynier (rising) – "People of Lavaur, will you abjure your heresy?"

Aimery – "Between your Church and the gibbet, we choose the gibbet."

Abbot Reynier (in a thundering voice) – "Death to the heretics. Hang them all!"

Mylio (looking distractedly around him) – "Poor Florette! She must have perished. My last thought shall be for my brother and for you, sweet child! I have hung on my neck the little spindle that you gave me. It lies on my heart. We shall soon meet again in the new world, where a new life awaits us. (To Goose-Skin, who seems steeped in thought) Old friend, pardon me your death. It is your devotion to me that has led you to this pass."

Goose-Skin – "I was just asking myself whether there are hams and good wives in those starry worlds that your brother spoke to us about, where, according to him, we are to be born again in the flesh and the spirit. Oxhorns! If I am born again with my paunch, why, its weight and bulk will greatly incommode me in the ascent towards the empyrean!"

With the aid of a ladder the executioners have raised Aimery up to the noose that dangles from the first gibbet. The ladder is quickly removed and the victim remains hanging by the neck. For a few instants his limbs twitch convulsively, but they soon relax and remain motionless.

The Executioner (approaching Goose-Skin) – "Your turn now, my fat customer! Come, no grimaces! Take your place quickly!"

Goose-Skin (scratching his ear) – "Hem! Hem! The rope of your gibbet seems too thin for me, and your ladder too frail. I am very heavy, I fear that my weight may demolish your machine. You had better put off my hanging."

The Executioner – "You need not feel uneasy about that. I shall hang you high and short. Hurry up. Night is upon us!"

Goose-Skin (dragged to the gibbet) – "Adieu, Mylio! I have drunk my last bumper of wine here below. We shall clink glasses again in the stars. (Turning to the balcony where Abbot Reynier is seated). As to you, the devil is waiting for you with his big frying-pan in his hand!"

Mounted up to the middle of the ladder which leans against the gibbet, the executioner gives Goose-Skin a violent jerk by the collar in order to compel him to step up. The juggler is not to be hurried, and putting his inert weight to use, remains immovable. The executioner's assistants then push him up and putting their shoulders under him succeed in raising his bulky body to the middle of the ladder. What, however, with the juggler's enormous weight and the heavy shaking of the gibbet caused by his resistance, the instrument of death, which has been hastily raised and is but weakly planted in the ground, now sways and breaks down. It falling, together with the ladder, Goose-Skin and the executioner, all in a heap upon the third gibbet, the latter yields to the shock, tumbles and falls over upon the fourth, which, likewise breaking down, carries the next one to the ground. But poorly fixed over night in the earth, most of the gibbets are torn down through the initial momentum imparted by the fall of the one that was intended to end Goose-Skin's life.

Montfort (impatiently) – "Seeing that the gibbets leave us in the lurch, exterminate the heretics with the sword!"

Soon after, the count leaves the balcony, taking Alyx of Montmorency with him. The lady is hardly able to stand. The soldiers who brought out the twenty-four heretics to be hanged fall upon them with their lances and swords. When the soldiers finally report their work done, Abbot Reynier withdraws with the rest of the clergy from the balcony.

The moon, shining radiantly from the starry vault of heaven, inundates with its mellow light the esplanade of the Castle of Lavaur. Round about lie the bodies of the ill-starred beings who succumbed to the torture of blinding. Among these bodies is Florette. The young woman has not recovered from her swoon; her chest heaves painfully; her head rests upon a stone; the moonlight falls upon it. Not far from her lie the corpses of those who escaped the rope only to fall under the sword of the Soldiers of the Faith. Not a sound disturbs the silence of the night. One of the bodies that lies on the ground raises itself slowly. It is Mylio the Trouvere.

Mylio (listens, looks about with caution, and calls in a low voice) – "Goose-Skin, all the soldiers are gone – we have nothing more to fear – the danger is over. Goose-Skin! – Oh! poor fellow, he probably has died, smothered under the weight of the other corpses! Oh! I can never forget that the fellow's devotion to me was the cause of his death! – There he lies face down and half covered by two other corpses." (Mylio stoops in order to clasp one of the juggler's hands.)

Goose-Skin (raising his head) – "Oxhorns! Am I really alive? I thought I heard my funeral prayers!"

Mylio – "Oh, joy! You are not dead? You heard me, and yet you kept silent?"

Goose-Skin – "At first, out of prudence, and then out of curiosity to know what you would say of old Goose-Skin. I was happy to learn that you still love me. But, now, tell me, have you any plan?"

Mylio – "I shall leave Lavaur this very night after I have taken a casket of some value to me which my poor brother Karvel entrusted to a friend of his, Julien the Bookseller. As to you, my brave companion – (Mylio stops; his foot has struck the iron pincers that served to martyrize Karvel the Perfect). What is this? An instrument of torture left behind by the executioner? (Picks up the pincers and contemplates them in silence.) Oh, son of Joel! I shall pay my tribute to the legends and relics of our family." (Puts the pincers in his belt.)

The trouvere and the juggler are lying not far from the wall of the cistern, where one of the executioner's assistants, taking pity on the inert body of Florette, who was still evidently alive, had laid the young woman. The moon sheds its light full upon the spot. Suddenly Mylio is startled by the sight that he sees. He utters a cry of mingled joy and grief, and rushes to Florette, whose face, despite its mutilation, he immediately recognizes. He takes one of Florette's hands; it is wan. He feels her heart; it beats. The trouvere raises and carries the precious burden to the exit of the esplanade, and in a voice broken with sobs cries out to the juggler: "She is alive!"

Goose-Skin (rejoiced) – "She lives! Oh, oxhorns! If we succeed in escaping from the clutches of the Crusaders, it shall be my business to cheer the sweet child with my favorite song: 'Robin loves me – '"

Mylio stops at the door of the esplanade to wait for Goose-Skin, who comes up to him panting for breath at the moment when, regaining consciousness, Florette feels herself in a man's arms and murmurs feebly:

"Mylio – Mylio – my dearly beloved Mylio!"

EPILOGUE

About three years after the massacre of Lavaur, my great-grandfather Mylio, the Trouvere, wrote the preceding "play" at Paris, where he succeeded in arriving with his wife, my great-grandmother Florette, and Goose-Skin.

After he left the esplanade, carrying his blind and unconscious wife in his arms, he hid her in the ruins of a nearby house that was set on fire the day before by the Army of the Faith. Thanks to Mylio's care, his wife regained consciousness, but alas! was never more to see the light of day. When Florette sufficiently recovered, Mylio left her in the care of Goose-Skin and started to the city in search of a friend of his brother Karvel. The friend's name was Julien, the Bookseller. Karvel had entrusted him with the casket that contained the family relics. Julien having miraculously escaped the massacre of Lavaur, afforded Mylio, Florette and Goose-Skin a safe refuge in his house. Under that hospitable roof, the three quietly awaited the departure of the army of Montfort. His wife's condition determined Mylio to renounce the war and consecrate his life to her. Languedoc was soon entirely under the iron rule of Montfort and Mylio decided to leave the country.

Julien the Bookseller was in frequent commercial correspondence with one of the most celebrated members of his profession in Paris named John Belot. Knowing the excellence of Mylio's handwriting, Julien proposed to him to take employment at John Belot's as a copyist of ancient and modern books. Mylio accepted the offer and was furnished by Julien with a letter to the Parisian bookseller.

The journey to Paris was undertaken as soon as Florette was in condition to sustain its fatigue. It was accomplished in safety. Nine months after their arrival, my grandfather, whom Mylio named Karvelaik, in honor of his own brother Karvel the Perfect, was born. With the birth of Karvelaik, the old juggler remained a fixture in the house, insisting upon rocking my grandfather's cradle and singing him songs. Happy as Florette was with her child, she did not long survive. She waned steadily, and two years and a half after her arrival passed away in the embrace of her husband and her son. The disconsolate trouvere sought surcease of sorrow in the playfulness of his little son and the imperturbable good nature of Goose-Skin. It was in the effort to relieve his mind of the recollection of the great sorrow that fell upon him that he soon after wrote the preceding play, which he added to our family legends, and to which he joined the iron pincers that he took from the esplanade of the Castle of Lavaur and that were used in the martyrdom inflicted upon his brother Karvel. Goose-Skin died twelve years later. His last words were his favorite song:

"Robin loves me, Robin wants me."

Mylio lived to verify the truth of the prophetic words of our ancestor Fergan the Quarryman: – "Let us never weaken, let us never lose hope! The future belongs to freedom!" Eight years after the devastating flood of the Crusaders swept over Languedoc the people that were left in Agenois, Querci and Rouergue rose again. The signal for the uprising was the death of the Count of Montfort, who was killed before Toulouse. The revolt rapidly gained strength. The Crusaders were driven from the south; the old heresy raised its head anew and triumphed everywhere in Languedoc. The chains of Rome were once more sundered. But they were forged again, and again fastened on Languedoc by the Inquisition of 1229. To-day Languedoc remains fettered.

My grandfather Karvelaik handed down at his death the family relics to my father Julyan, and he handed them down to me, his son Mazurec le Brenn, who follow the booksellers' trade here in Paris. Heavy clouds are again gathering over the head of our unhappy country. May my son Jocelyn be spared!

THE END

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