distance of one hundred paces from his own house, and two hundred paces from the place where the assemblies were said to have been held. At the confrontation, this witness admitted that he only thought he had seen him from a window, and that, too, in the dusk of the evening, at the distance of three or four hundred paces; and upon the strength of such testimony as this, the said Fontaine has been confined four months in the prisons of Saintes, which are extremely rude in their accommodations. The charge of praying to God rested upon the evidence of four witnesses, who contradicted themselves upon cross-examination; and it appeared that the said Fontaine merely knelt down in a corner of the prison, and spoke in so low a tone that the jailer's wife, after acknowledging that she passed within one pace of him when he was kneeling down, was not able to repeat a single word of what he had said. After the breviate of the case was completed, the Seneschal, in the most extraordinary manner, refused to judge, and the said Fontaine was obliged to take legal steps in consequence; and after four months' delay, the Attorney-General's deputy, recognizing the injustice of the proceeding, called for further inquiry, and the sentence resulting therefrom is the subject of the present appeal. The said Fontaine has been declared guilty of contravening the King's Edict, and has been condemned to pay a fine of a hundred livres, and declared for ever incapable of exercising the functions of candidate or minister. The said Fontaine appealed. He tendered the sum of one hundred livres, the fine imposed upon himself individually, and desired to be set at liberty. This was refused; but he has since obtained permission to go in and out upon condition of returning to the prison.
"This is a brief statement of facts, and the said Fontaine
