He had been there only a few minutes, when about thirty women, with flashing eyes and sullen air, each holding her serge apron gathered up in front, made their appearance and endeavoured to get into the gallery. Some had filled their aprons with mould from their gardens, and others with ashes from their kitchens, and with these weapons they were marching to battle. Their plan was not, indeed, to engage in a regular fight, but to lie in ambush in the gallery near the pulpit; and then as soon as Farel appeared, to throw the ashes into his eyes and the earth into his mouth, and so silence the fearless preacher of the Gospel. This was their notion of controversy. The troop approached: the avoyer's serving-man, firm as became a servant of my lord of Berne, was still pacing to and fro, axe in hand. He perceived the feminine battalion, immediately saw what was their intention, and advanced brandishing the weapon he had taken from the monks. The devotees of Grandson, seeing a Bernese instead of a gray friar, were alarmed; they shrieked, let go their aprons, suffered the mould and ashes to fall upon the floor of the church, and ran off to their homes. [Sidenote: CONVERSION OF THE MONKS.] The conspiracies of the monks and of the women being thus baffled, the Bernese magistrate did not take advantage of it to make Farel preach alone. He wished the balance to be even. The gray friar therefore and the reformer quietly took their turns. Tissot and Gondoz, who had stopped De Watteville, were imprisoned for a fortnight. The two monks, recovering from their passion, began to consider what this _Lutheran doctrine_ could be which possessed such stanch adherents. The reformers visited them, and showed them much affection. The monks were touched, they saw that the heresy of which they had been so afraid was simply the all-merciful Gospel of Jesus Christ. They left the prison with new thoughts, and two years later, says the banneret, 'they received the Lutheran law, were made preachers, one at Fontaines, the other at Chavornay, married, and had a large family of children.' In the days of the Reformation, as in those of the apostles, it was often seen that those who 'kicked against the pricks' obtained mercy and became heralds of the faith.[443]