Thus in the questions brought before the tribunals, they could only count upon the strict right, or rather upon what it was not possible to deny to them without flagrant injustice. Out of every severe decree, a hostile law immediately arose against them, and by one restriction and another, they successively lost what the Edict of Nantes had conceded to them. The universities and colleges, where clerical influence was dominant, invented difficulty upon difficulty, against conferring academic degrees upon the _religionists_, and at length these degrees were only granted upon certificates of attendance at mass. As for the relations between private individuals of the two religions, there is a distinction to be drawn. The men of letters, and the people of the middle class, the _respectable folks_—to use the language of the period—generally lived on good terms with each other. We know that the French Academy was founded by members of both communions. Such was also the origin of many learned societies, at Nismes and elsewhere. “Long before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,” says Segrais, “the (Roman) Catholics and Huguenots lived here [at Caen] on good terms; they ate, drank, played, and took their amusements together, and left each other freely, some for the mass, others for the sermon, without any scandal on one side or the other.” But in the body of the people, more subjected to the teaching of the priesthood, prejudices and hatreds were rife. Whence resulted vexatious interferences with the rights of freedom, local privileges, as the corporations of trades, and in the small appointments in the gift of the municipal councils. Whence also arose acts of violence on the least pretence, against the places of worship, against the property, against the persons; and when it was dared, attacks became more regular and more general, and were habitually headed by some ignorant parish vicar, or some abject monk. By what has been said, we may judge of the condition of the Reformed after the Edict of Grace. They had, at intervals, days of repose, which permitted them to apply themselves to theological learning, to develop their ordinary instruction, and to cultivate the industrial arts. But this rest was uncertain, this calm unquiet, so to speak, and persecution soon went on increasing, until the favourable moment appeared for the annihilation of the French Reformation. We shall only relate what is most important.[81] VIII.