At length they arrived at the church of Notre Dame; the sacrament was placed on the altar; mass was sung by the Bishop of Paris, and all imaginable homage was paid to the host in order to atone for the insults offered to it by the placards. From Notre Dame, the king and the princes returned to the bishop's palace. There are days of evil omen in history. There is one especially that it is sufficient to name to fill the mind with sorrow and mourning ... fatal date which solemnly inaugurated in France the epoch of persecution and martyrdom. On the _twenty-first of_ _January, 1535_, a king of France, surrounded by his court and ministers, his parliament and clergy, was about to devote to death with all due ceremony the humble disciples of the Gospel. What the Valois began, the Bourbons continued, and the most illustrious of them carried out on a vast scale the system of galleys and of burning piles. Alas! there are dates which coincide in a striking and pitiless manner. Four hundred and fifty-eight years later there was another _twenty-first of January_. The simplest, the meekest, the most generous of the Bourbons, condemned by misguided men to suffer death, ascended the scaffold erected in a public place in Paris; he received the death-blow on the _twenty-first of January_, 1793. We do not presume to explain history; we do not say that the innocent Louis XVI. paid the penalty of his predecessor's crimes, and that God ordained the expiation commanded by Francis I. to be followed by another. But the coincidence of these two dates startled us, and we could not avoid stopping to contemplate them with a holy fear. [237] _Journal d'un Bourgeois_, p. 414. [238] Crespin, _Martyrol._ fol. 43. [239] _Journal d'un Bourgeois_, p. 445. [240] Crespin, _Martyrol._ fol. 113 verso. [241] Crespin, _Martyrol._ fol. 113 verso. [242] _Chronique du Roi François I._ p. 130. This manuscript, published by M. Guiffrey in 1860, has described several new facts. [243] _Chronique du Roi François I._ pp. 130-132. [244] The breeches-preacher; comp. Italian _brache_. [245] The list of those who were noted by the officers of justice as having fled from Paris, of which the Bourgeois de Paris speaks in his _Journal_, p. 446, is given more completely in the _Chronique de François I._ pp. 130-132. [246] Gerardus Rufus ... decreto regio absolutus.'—Cop to Bucer, Strasburg MS. [247] _Chronique du Roi François I._ p. 113. [248] 'Quam avido novitatis ingenio essent Galli.'—Flor. Rémond, _Hist. Hérés._ ii. p. 229. [249] These are temporary altars set up in the streets, and at which the procession of the _Corpus Christi_ halts 'to repose the Holy Sacrament.' [250] _Chronique du Roi François I._ p. 114. [251] 1 Kings xviii. 27. [252] Calvin, _Opusc. franç._ pp. 750-751. [253] _Calvin, Opusc. franç._ p. 745. [254] Ibid. pp. 727 and 736. [255] Ibid. pp. 736, 742. [256] Ibid. p. 734. [257] Psalms ii. 12. [258] Gamier, _Hist. de France_, xxiv. p. 556.