he had sent persons to search the wood, and promised a hundred crowns for the discovery of any trace of the young Lemoine. Once only, during the protracted investigation, did the accused commit himself by incon sistent statements. He declared before the parliamentary commission that he could not possibly have carried the child upon his horse, the latter being already laden with barrels of oil and wine which he had pur chased at Metz; whereas before the lieutenant-criminel, on the 14th of October, he stated that he had placed the barrels on his son's horse and sent him forward, re marking that he himself, travelling more lightly, would easily overtake him. Upon the whole evidence, the Court de creed as follows : — "Annulled the former judgment. Declared the accused, Raphael Levi, Jew, guilty of having, on the 25th September, 1669, upon or near the highway, near Glatigny, stolen the body of the child of Gilles Lemoine, aged three, whose head and neck have since been found exposed in the adjacent wood. In reparation, condemned the said Raphael Levi to make the amende honorable before the great door of the cathedral church of Metz; and kneeling in his shirt, a rope about his neck, and a burning taper of three pounds' weight in his hand, to confess his crime, declare his repentance, and ask pardon of God, the king, and the law. This done, the said Raphael Levi should be conveyed to the field of Seille, and there burned alive, and his ashes scattered to the winds; himself having been first submitted to the question ordinary and extraordinary, in order to discover in whose hands he deposited the child, and the manner of its death; the goods of the condemned to be confiscated — one thousand livres paid to the king, and one thousand five hundred to Gilles Lemoine, to gether with the expenses of the process. "Ordered, further, that Gideon Levi be sub mitted to the question ordinary and extraordi nary, to discover by whom the remains of the child Lemoine were placed in the wood; that Marguerite Houster be summoned before the council, and severely reprimanded for conveying letters to the said Raphael Levi; lastly, that
Mayer Schaube, Jew, of Metz, be committed to prison, and his goods inventoried, with a view to more ample inquiry as to the place in which the child Lemoine was secreted. Done at Metz, in Parliament, in the chamber De la Tournelle, Jan. 16th, 1670." Gideon Levi was subjected at once to the torture, but without obtaining from him any revelation; and as it was by that time late in the day, the execution of the sentence on Raphael Levi was postponed to the following morning. At eight o'clock, accordingly, the unhappy criminal was conducted to the torture-chamber. Casting one hasty glance around upon the terrible apparatus, he drew from his pocket a small volume in the He brew character, and proceeded to read from it certain words; but the jealous suspicion of Messieurs the Commissioners instantly took the alarm. These words might contain a spell similar to that contained in the for mula he had been instructed to utter when submitted to the question. The book was taken away. The sentence was then read; the con demned man evincing no emotion. When it was finished, he calmly observed that he had no complaint to make of his judges; but as for the witnesses, they had spoken falsely and betrayed him to death. He warned the Commissioners that, should the agonies of torture force any confession from his lips, he would revoke it within an hour. This declaration he repeated thrice. The warning proved superfluous. So far from confessing anything, he never ceased, while consciousness lasted, to insist upon his innocence. It was remarked that during the severest moments of the torture — for example, while suspended in the air with heavy weights attached to his toes — the prisoner remained for a quarter of an hour in a kind of lethargy, apparently quite insen sible to pain. Some of those present at tributed this to the effect of the words they had imprudently permitted him to pronounce before the book was taken from him; " but,"
