In 1546 a manufacturer of playing-cards, Pierre Ameaux, and his wife Benoite, not only openly declared themselves to be materialists, but carried out the principles they had adopted in their own licentious lives. The woman was summoned before the Consistory, and condemned to imprisonment. Her husband forsook her and obtained a divorce from her, but he continued to lead an immoral life and to declaim against Calvin. 'He is a bad man,' said he, 'a wicked Picard, who has been teaching false doctrines for seven years. It is we who hold the true doctrine, as I can prove. He wants to make himself a bishop, and the magistrates do nothing without consulting him. I could tell you things that would astonish you, and all in good time I will make them known.' Ameaux was summoned before the Consistory, and imprisoned; but the Two Hundred disapproved of the sentence, and elected him a member of the lower Council. There was a division between the two powers. Calvin and the pastors declared that if it was decided that Ameaux's fault was so trivial, and that they were suspected of having preached false doctrine for seven years, they would insist on being brought to trial. The Council hereupon revoked their resolution in favour of Ameaux, and condemned him to the punishment known as the _amende honorable_; that is, he was to walk through all the principal parts of the town in his shirt, bare-headed and with a lighted torch in his hand, and to end by making a public confession and expressing sorrow for his faults, upon his knees. {273}