A priest was needed to attend the criminal in his last moments.
They sent for the cure. It seems that he refused to come, saying, "That is no affair of mine.
I have nothing to do with that unpleasant task, and with that mountebank:
I, too, am ill; and besides, it is not my place." This reply was reported to the Bishop, who said, "Monsieur le Cure is right:
it is not his place; it is mine."
He went instantly to the prison, descended to the cell of the "mountebank," called him by name, took him by the hand, and spoke to him. He passed the entire day with him, forgetful of food and sleep, praying to God for the soul of the condemned man, and praying the condemned man for his own.
He told him the best truths, which are also the most simple.
He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop only to bless.
He taught him everything, encouraged and consoled him. The man was on the point of dying in despair.
Death was an abyss to him. As he stood trembling on its mournful brink, he recoiled with horror. He was not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent. His condemnation, which had been a profound shock, had, in a manner, broken through, here and there, that wall which separates us from the mystery of things, and which we call life.
He gazed incessantly beyond this world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness.
The Bishop made him see light.
On the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy wretch, the Bishop was still there.
He followed him, and exhibited himself to the eyes of the crowd in his purple camail and with his episcopal cross upon his neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords.
He mounted the tumbril with him, he mounted the scaffold with him. The sufferer, who had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day, was radiant.
He felt that his soul was reconciled, and he hoped in God.
The Bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the knife was about to fall, he said to him:
"God raises from the dead him whom man slays; he whom his brothers have rejected finds his Father once more.
Pray, believe, enter into life:
the Father is there." When he descended from the scaffold, there was something in his look which made the people draw aside to let him pass.