On this platform the people of Neuchatel were in commotion, paying little attention to these noble scenes of nature. The governor, whose castle adjoined the church, was compelled to remain an idle spectator of the excesses that he could not prevent; he was content to leave us a description of them. "These daring fellows," says he, "seize mattocks, hatchets, and hammers, and thus march against the images of the saints." They advance--they strike the statues and the altars--they dash them to pieces. The figures carved in the fourteenth century by the "imagers" of Count Louis are not spared; and scarcely do the statues of the counts themselves, which were mistaken for idols, escape destruction. The townspeople collect all these fragments of an idolatrous worship; they carry them out of the church, and throw them from the top of the rock. The paintings meet with no better treatment. "It is the devil," thought they with the early Christians, "who taught the world this art of statues, images, and all sorts of likenesses."[1014] They tear out the eyes in the pictures of the saints, and cut off their noses. The crucifix itself is thrown down, for this wooden figure usurps the homage that Jesus Christ claims in the heart. One image, the most venerated of all, still remains: it is our Lady of Mercy, which Mary of Savoy had presented to the collegiate church; but Our Lady herself is not spared. A hand more daring than the rest strikes it, as, in the fourth century, the colossal statue of Serapis was struck.[1015] "They have even bored out the eyes of Our Lady of Mercy, which the departed lady your mother had caused to be made," wrote the governor to the Duchess of Longueville. [1014] Diabolum sæculo intulisse artifices statuarum et imaginum et omnis generis simulacrorum. (Tertullian, de idolatria, cap. 3.) [1015] Socrates v. 16. The Reformed went still further: they seized the patens in which lay the _corpus Domini_, and flung them from the top of the rock into the torrent; after which, being desirous of showing that the consecrated wafers are mere bread, and not God himself, they distributed them one to another and ate them......At this sight the canons and chaplains could no longer remain quiet. A cry of horror was heard; they ran up with their adherents, and opposed force to force. At length began the struggle that had been so much dreaded. [Sidenote: REFLECTIONS.]