The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-08-24
An Old.Time Torture.

The London Daily Telegraph, of July 80
says:
The Paris newspapers have-with what
foundation in fact we are unable to say and
reluctant to surmise-been actively engaged
lately in lionizing certain Father Remy,
who is said to have returned from Tibet, in
which regions he has made number of con-
versions under certainly extraordinary Cir
cumstances. The story goes that he fell, as 9
missionary, under the suspicion of the loca
authorities, and the odium theolOgic,nm reached
the unpleasant climax of the luckless eccle
siastical being condemned to be ecdrtele, OF
quartered.
An attempt was actually made to put the
sentence into effect-le Pere Repy's legs and
arms being tied to four horses, which were
straightway driven in different directions
But, it is added, the devoted missionary is 6
very powerful man, and the steeds, with al
their strength, did not succeed in tearing hin
asunder. His prosecutors, the story goes or
to say, were SO struck by his seemingly mi
raculous power of endurance that they en-
braced the quasi-martyr, and were forthwith
converted to Christianity. OF this tale it may
be said, FIRST, that it answers the Italian con-
dition of being ben trovdto. and, next, that il
it be an invention, it should have been writ
ten by medical man, for only skillful anato
mists know what herculean task it is to teal
a living body into quarters.
Muscularity has nothing whatever to dc
with the resistance the human frame viii
offer to inordinate tension. 1t is a matter Of
thews and sinewes- gristle, in fact. 1t il
very difficult to break a mans skull, unless
knowingly or unknowingly, the head be hi
in precisely the proper place; but it is much
more difficult to rend him asunder bodily. Ii
Ia ,s<,I>k ho~
day after day and their limbs dislocated ant
rent time after time, but the frame of the
tormented wretch still held good. As fol
quartering sufferer by means of horses
there are two celebrated instances on historic
record, showing how hard it is to perform
the diabolical operation.
Ravaillac, the assassin of Henri Quatre,
was not very powerful man. He had been
so racked, thumb-screwed, booted, torn with
red-hot pincers, and seethed with boiling oil
and molten lead, that when he was tied to the
quadruped he was q mere bag OF bones,
bruises and gaping wounds. Yet his body
resisted the tuggiog of the horses for forty.
five minutes. hundred and fifty years
later, Damiens, the mailman who just pricked
Louis XIV with a pen-knife, was tortured In
the same abominabie manner as Ravaillac
had been. Then he was put to the horse
ordeal; but nearly an hour elapsed and the
body of the miserable wretch held together.
Then they dashed the horses savagely to
make them plunge the more fercely; and the
fine court ladies in the gallery specially erect
ed for them to witness the show cried in their
pretty arcot, 80, les paor zevau1?" They pitied
the scourged steeds; they did not pity the
man who's. body was slow to dintegrate Al
length a humane surgeon standing by per.
suaded the hangman to make deep cuts with
a sharp knife of each of the culprit's joints,
and then the horrible purpose was achieved
easily enough. But, surely, they should be
aware OF the process of incision in Thibet