He had however played his part so well that the imprisoned Pécolat was exasperated not against him but against his most intimate friend Berthelier. His black fit came over him. He said to himself that although a man of the most inoffensive character, he seemed destined to expiate the faults of all his party. With what had they to reproach him? Mere jokes and laughter.... Berthelier was the real conspirator, and he was at large.... On the 3rd of April Pécolat was removed from the dungeon into which he had been thrown, and conducted to the top of the castle, under the roof. The bishop had ordered him ‘to be examined and forced to speak the truth;’ and the torture-room was at the top of the castle. After the usual preliminaries the examination began. The plot of the _non videbit_ and the salt fish was too absurd; M. de Thoire, the examining judge, dwelt but little upon it, and endeavoured particularly (for that was the object of the arrest) to obtain such admissions as would ruin Geneva and her principal citizens. As Pécolat deposed to nothing that would inculpate them, he was tied by one hand to the rope, and, as he still refused to answer, was hoisted four feet from the floor. The poor fellow groaned deeply and speaking with difficulty[109] said: ‘Cursed be Berthelier for whom I am shut up!’ He made no confession, however.
The next day they resorted to another expedient. The bishop gave himself the pleasure of keeping the wretched man hanging to the cord while he was at dinner. The servants, as they passed backwards and forwards waiting on their master, said to Pécolat: ‘You are very stupid to let yourself be put to such torture: confess everything. What will your silence help you? Maule has told everything; he has named So-and-so ... the Abbot of Bonmont, for instance, whom you want to make your bishop after you have done for my lord.’ All these traps were useless--he made no confession. It was next determined to expose Pécolat to a more cruel torture: the executioners tied his hands behind his back, and then pulled the rope so as to raise his arms above his head; lastly they lifted him five or six feet from the floor, which was enough to dislocate his shoulders. Pécolat suffered horribly, and he was not a Regulus. ‘Let me down! let me down!’ he cried, ‘and I will tell all.’ ... The judges, delighted at having vanquished the obstinate rebel at last, ordered him to be lowered. Terror was in his heart, and his features betrayed the trouble of his mind. The man, usually so gay and so witty, was now pale, affrighted, his eyes wandered, and he fancied himself surrounded by hungry dogs. He said all that they wanted him to say. To the falsest imputations against the noblest of his friends he answered ‘Yes, yes!’ and the satisfied judges sent him back to his dungeon.[110]