'There were few of all the company,' says the chronicle, 'from whose eyes the king did not draw tears.' After a few minutes' silence, interrupted by the exclamations and sighs of the assembly, the king resumed: 'It is at least a consolation that you share my sorrow. What a disgrace it will be if we do not extirpate these wicked creatures!... For this reason I have summoned you to beg you to put out of your hearts all opinions that may mislead you; to instruct your children and your servants in the Christian doctrine of the Catholic faith; and if you know any person infected by this perverse sect, be he your parent, brother, cousin, or connection, give information against him. By concealing his misdeeds, you will be partakers of that pestilent faction.' The assembly gave numerous signs of assent; the king saw the devotion, zeal, and affection visible in their faces. 'I give thanks to God,' he resumed, 'that the greatest, the most learned, and undoubtedly the majority of my subjects, and especially in this good city of Paris, are full of zeal for the Catholic religion.' Then, says the chronicle, you might have seen the faces of the spectators change in appearance, and give signs of joy; acclamations prevented the sighs, and sighs choked the acclamations. 'I warn you,' continued the king, 'that I will have the said errors expelled and driven from my kingdom, and will excuse no one.' Then he exclaimed, says our historian, with extreme anger: 'As true, Messieurs, as I am your king, if I knew one of my own limbs spotted or infected with this detestable rottenness, I would give it you to cut off.... And further, if I saw one of my children defiled by it, I would not spare him.... I would deliver him up myself, and would sacrifice him to God.'[262] [Sidenote: EFFECTS OF THE ROYAL RHETORIC.] At these words the king stopped: he was agitated and wept. The spectators, affected by the sight of this new Abraham, burst into tears. After the interruption necessarily occasioned by this moving scene, Du Bellay, bishop of Paris, and John Tronson, Lord of Couldray on the Seine and prevost of the merchants, approached, and kneeling before the king, thanked him for his zeal—the first in the name of the clergy, the other on behalf of the citizens—and swore to make war against heresy. Thereupon all the spectators exclaimed, with voices broken by sobbing: 'We will live and die for the Catholic religion.' The author of the _Chronicle of Francis I._, who was probably present in the assembly, dwells upon the emotion caused by the monarch's address: 'We may clearly show by this,' he says, 'that the speech of an eloquent and powerful man may lead men's hearts at his will; for there was not a man in all the company, whether native or foreigner, who did not more than once change countenance, according to the different affections the words expressed.'[263]