The eloquent Bishop Bossuet was there, with Louvois, the minister of war, and the famous Jesuit, Father la Chaise, each piling argument upon argument to overcome the reluctance of the king.  Beside them stood another priest, so thin and so pale that he might have risen from his bed of death, but with a fierce light burning in his large dark eyes, and with a terrible resolution in his drawn brows and in the set of his grim, lanky jaw.  Madame bent over her tapestry and weaved her coloured silks in silence, while the king leaned upon his hand and listened with the face of a man who knows that he is driven, and yet can hardly turn against the goads.  On the low table lay a paper, with pen and ink beside it.  It was the order for the revocation, and it only needed the king’s signature to make it the law of the land.

“And so, father, you are of opinion that if I stamp out heresy in this fashion I shall assure my own salvation in the next world?” he asked.

“You will have merited a reward.”

“And you think so too, Monsieur Bishop?”

“Assuredly, sire.”

“And you.  Abbe du Chayla?”

The emaciated priest spoke for the first time, a tinge of colour creeping into his corpse-like cheeks, and a more lurid light in his deep-set eyes.

“I know not about assuring your salvation, sire.  I think it would take very much more to do that.  But there cannot be a doubt as to your damnation if you do not do it.”

The king started angrily, and frowned at the speaker.

“Your words are somewhat more curt than I am accustomed to,” he remarked.

“In such a matter it were cruel indeed to leave you in doubt.  I say again that your soul’s fate hangs upon the balance.  Heresy is a mortal sin.  Thousands of heretics would turn to the Church if you did but give the word.  Therefore these thousands of mortal sins are all upon your soul.  What hope for it then, if you do not amend?”

“My father and my grandfather tolerated them.”

“Then, without some special extension of the grace of God, your father and your grandfather are burning in hell.”

“Insolent!” The king sprang from his seat.

“Sire, I will say what I hold to be the truth were you fifty times a king.  What care I for any man when I know that I speak for the King of kings?  See; are these the limbs of one who would shrink from testifying to truth?” With a sudden movement he threw back the long sleeves of his gown and shot out his white fleshless arms.  The bones were all knotted and bent and screwed into the most fantastic shapes.  Even Louvois, the hardened man of the court, and his two brother priests, shuddered at the sight of those dreadful limbs.  He raised them above his head and turned his burning eyes upwards.

“Heaven has chosen me to testify for the faith before now,” said he.  “I heard that blood was wanted to nourish the young Church of Siam, and so to Siam I journeyed.  They tore me open; they crucified me; they wrenched and split my bones.  I was left as a dead man, yet God has breathed the breath of life back into me that I may help in this great work of the regeneration of France.”