Many persons were seized and maltreated. Those, who were able to fly, quitted the place, leaving furniture, money, provisions, all their goods, at the mercy of the bandits, who were intrusted with the office of serjeants; and houses were pillaged and sacked, according to the relation of Theodore de Bèze, as in a town taken by assault; the rabble gleaned and devastated what the first plunderers had omitted to take. “But what was most to be deplored,” adds this historian, “was to see the poor little children, who had no dwelling but the flagstones, crying, ahungered, in the most piteous manner, and begging about the streets, without any one daring to relieve or shelter them, for fear of falling into the like danger; so that they were less cared for than dogs.”[33] Abominable contrivances had been put to work to fan the fury of the people of Paris. There may be still seen, in old collections, engravings which represent the heretics slaying priests with the arquebuse, casting monks into the water, slaughtering children, strangling women and old men, and persons were posted about the public squares to comment upon these infamies. The people answered these dastard provocations by erecting images of the Virgin at the corners of the streets. They scrutinized the countenances of the passengers, and woe to him who did not lift his hat! woe to him who refused to put a piece of money into the trunks, or _épargne-mailles_, which were held out to him in order to provide for the payment of the tapers! The shout of “A heretic!” was raised; he was dragged to the Châtelet, and the prisons were so crowded that it was necessary to hurry the executions, that new victims might be accommodated. One trait will depict the state of feeling. Two miserable apprentices, who had been won over, declared that turpitudes were committed in the secret meetings of the Calvinists. The Cardinal de Lorraine went straight to relate this to the queen-mother, aggravating his recital with all the abominations with which in former times the Gnostics, the Mersalians, the Borborites, and the Manichæans, had been reproached, so that the Reformers might seem to have combined, as in a common sewer, the vices of every age. Among the persons mentioned, were the wife and two daughters of a celebrated advocate of Paris. They voluntarily gave themselves up to justice, preferring death to dishonour. They were confronted with the two apprentices, who coloured, stammered, and so contradicted themselves in their statements, that it became evident they had invented an execrable lie. Some indignant magistrates were for imprisoning them instead of the outraged women. Just the contrary happened: the calumniators were absolved, and the females were sent back to their dungeons. At the same time the Guises created other malcontents, who made an approach to the Calvinists, whence resulted the enterprise known by the name of the Conspiracy of Amboise.