It was the 2nd of April, Palm-Sunday. Mass had been celebrated, the various offices had been said, even to vespers. Farel, who had stayed quietly in doors, observing that the service was over, left his inn 'with presumptuous boldness.' His friends followed him, idlers flocked round him, the devout ran after, and a crowd of men, women, and children soon filled the church with a great noise. Then 'without asking leave of any one, Farel went into the pulpit to preach.' But he had scarcely opened his mouth, when everybody, 'men, women, and children, hissed, howled, and stamped with all sorts of exclamations to disconcert him. Dog, they cried; lubber, heretic, devil, and other insults: it was a glorious noise.' 'You really could not have heard God's thunder,' said Pierrefleur. Farel, who was accustomed to tumult, as a soldier to the whistling of the bullets, continued his address. Anger got the better of some of them. 'Seeing that he would not desist, they grew riotous, surrounded the pulpit, pulled him out of it, and would even have proceeded to blows.' The confusion was at its height, when the bailiff, 'fearing that worse would follow,' rushed into the midst of the crowd, took the reformer by the arm, and escorted him to his lodging. The mixed commission was empowered to restore peace to this agitated city; but as for Farel he had but one idea: _Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel_. If he cannot preach it in the church, he will do so in the open air. On the following day (Monday) he left the house of his entertainer at six in the morning, and proceeding towards the great square, began to preach. There was nobody present; it mattered not; he thought that his powerful voice would soon collect a good assembly. But satisfied with the victory of the evening before, the inhabitants of Orbe had said to themselves that they would leave the preacher alone: he had not a single hearer.[388] That was not, however, the only reason: a plot was concerting against Farel—a women's plot naturally; for the men in general were cold in comparison with the other sex.