The Parliament next proceeded to judicial executions. They first mutilated their own body, by excluding twenty-two councillors, who, without being Huguenots, had allowed their wives, or other members of their families, to frequent the sermons. Up to the month of March, 1563, the provost of the town and three hundred other heretics had been put to death, and four hundred persons were also condemned to the same penalty for contumacy. The clergy had published a monition enjoining, under pain of excommunication and eternal damnation, not only the denunciation of heretics, but even of those, who had given them counsel, help, or favour. Acts of atrocious fanaticism were committed. It is related that a boy of twelve or thirteen years, who had come from Montauban to Toulouse, was called upon to recite the _Ave Maria_. He answered that it had not been taught him, and for that reason alone he was taken to the gallows. In the midst of so many frightful crimes, Blaise de Montluc and the Baron des Adrets had still the frightful honour of distinguishing themselves by their cruelty. The first, a rude and ignorant soldier, was the most ferocious of all the (Roman) Catholic chiefs of the south. He seemed to enjoy a wild and insatiable delight in spectacles of blood, and he has himself related in his _Commentaries_, with the utmost coolness, all the executions he had ordered. He was constantly attended by two executioners armed with hatchets well sharpened, who were called his _laquais_. He ordered the Huguenots to be hanged or beheaded without interrogation; “_for they_,” he said, “_have a golden tongue_.” The roads, by which he passed, were known by the bodies hanging on the trees. Nor did he neglect to take care of his fortune; he knew how to pick up gold out of blood. “He who, heretofore, had but little mercy,” says Brantôme, “found himself at the end of the war possessed of a hundred thousand crowns.”[47] He was rewarded for his exploits by the bâton of a marshal of France. But pitiless as he was, he once encountered men who surpassed him. They were Spaniards, whom Philip II. had sent to the assistance of the (Roman) Catholic party. Having taken a little town in Agenois, Montluc put all those to the sword who had defended the castle, and sent back the women by a staircase hollowed out of the wall. The Spaniards, who were waiting for them in the court, butchered them all together, with the little children they carried in their arms. When Montluc reproached them for this, they answered with _sang-froid_, “We thought they were Lutherans in disguise (_todos Luteranos tapados_).”