The Vermont transcript. [volume] (St. Albans, Vt.) 1864-1870, 1864-07-08

Btohcl, Ohe evidence against him WINS
considered so strong that he was sent
to prison, and in due time. was
brought to trial, on the accusation of
having outraged and then murdered
the woman who had slept in his house.
In those days the public feeling and
prejudice against priests were very
strong in France. Moreover then ms
now, every man put on his trial in that
country was considered guilty until he
could prove himself innocent The
priest was tried, cross-questioned, bad.
gered, and questioned again, until he
hardly knew what he said or what he
denied. The evidence against him was
purely circumstantial, but it was
strongly adverse Moreover, it came
out--or was brought to light bv the
Procureur Royal--that, long ago, ten
years before he became a priest, when
he was mere boy, he had been strong
iy suspected of an intrigue with mar
red woman. OF course, this fact
which, III England, would not for a
moment have been admitted in cvi-
dence-was made the most of To
make long story short, he was found
I guilty OF both charges and condemned
I to death, from which he was saved at
the last moment by court influence. as
the Bourbons, who were then in power,
disliked the idea of priest suffering
an ignOminious death on the scaffold
His sentence was COMMITTED to the
galleys for life, and he was sent off a
condemned felon, to work in chains for
the rest of his days in the Bagne at
Brest.
This unfortunate man was chained
to prisoner convicted Of most afro
cious crimes, and, day or night, night
or day, the chain that linked these two
together was never undone The bias
phemy which sounded all day and
every day in his ears, was augmented
tenfold by the miscreants who sur
rounded him when they discovered
/ that he had been, and, indeed, was yet
a minister of religion. BY day, in cold
or wet, or heat, he had to toll at the
dockyards at work, which he had
neither the strength Of body to endure,
nor the knowledge how to make the
best of it. Blows and oaths from the
prisoners warders were amongst the
least of the evils he had to submit to
in mute despair Ali prisoners con-
dcmued in France to the galleys were
treated not only worse than the brutes
that perish, bat rs if the chief end and
aim of their punishment were to
harden them in vice, and make them
reckless Of the laws of God and man
But this unfortunate priest was treated
far worse than the others, for he was
the everlasting butt and at him were
levied all the most horrible jokes, of
all his fellow-prisoners.
How he endured this existence, after
his peaceful life as a country parish
priest seems little short of miracle.
And vet he did endurd it, not only for
"a few, ,sus ser riorc Man four-nna-
twenty years. He had been all that
time condemned galley-slavc, when
a soldier in one of the French colonies,
being on his death-bed, confessed, first
in private to priest, and afterwards
=
was the real culprit who had commit
ted the crime for which poor Monsieur
Flammand had been judged guilty.
He gave full and particular details how
he had entered the room where the
girl slept, with the intention of stealing
whatever he could find How he had
found the woman sleeping there. Had
committed the double crime of which
the priest had been accused, and had
used the shoes, which he found in the
cupboard, for the purpose of throwing
suspicion on the priest, making it APP
pear as if the latter had walked from
his own window across the garden to
the door of the girls room. The hand
kerchief he declared he had found on
the bed, but did not know that it be
longed to the priest. The razor he de-
clared he had found IN the same cup
board as the shoes, and feeling sure
that it must belong to the priest, had,
after numbering the girl with it, pur-
posely left il in a conspicuous place, so
as to cause people to believe that the
foul deed had been committed by the
priest All he cared for at the time,
he said, was to divert the scent of JUS
tice from himself He was native of
the place where the murder took place,
and had few hours after committing
the crime, formed one of the crowd
that went to the priests house, where
he was one of the loudcst to declare
that it must have been the priest, and
no other, who murdered the unhappy
woman. He had shortly after left his
native place, taken service as a substi-
tute in the army, and, after some TWEEN
ty-four years service, did, on his death
bed make the confession which exon
Grated Monsieur Flammand
As matter of course, the poor
priest was in due time released from
the Bagne, and restored to all his civil
rights. His bishop offered several
times to reinstate him in parish, but
he invariably respectfully and firmly,
declined. The reason he gave was,
that the twenty-four years spent among
the convicts at Brest had rendered him
unfit and unworthy ever to offieiate
again at the altar. He continued a
most devoutly religious man, but said
that if God spared his life to the ut
most age given unto man, 1t would