The agitation in the city was then at its height; the shouts of the priests were frightful,[666] They bawled lustily to those who lagged behind, exhorted those who appeared indifferent, and animated the whole body with voice and gesture, as hunters urge their hounds after the stag. The catholics responded to the tumultuous clamours of these ministers of disorder and strife. But the tempest was not confined to the streets: scenes still more harrowing were taking place in the houses. 'Alas!' said the wisest men, 'there is no humanity left, and they take no account of the ties of nature.' One of the most fiery catholics, hearing the tocsin, was hurriedly fitting on his armour, when his wife, a fervent Romanist like himself, and whose father was at the head of the Lutherans, was filled with terror at seeing her husband's animation, and looked at him with a dejected countenance. She was Micah, daughter of Baudichon de la Maisonneuve. Her catholic faith did not make the young wife forget the sweet and holy ties that bind a child to her father. She shuddered at each malediction uttered by her husband against the author of her days. At length her grief broke out in a flood of tears. Her fanatical husband, exasperated to the highest degree against Maisonneuve, who was regarded as the main support of the heresy, turned back and, without showing the least pity, said: 'Wife, cry as much as you please. If we come to blows and I meet your father, he shall be the first on whom I shall try my strength.... I will kill him, or he shall kill me.' And then, callous at the sight of Micah, whose tears flowed faster at these words which pierced her heart, the barbarous husband said as he left her: 'He is a bad Christian, a renegade, the worst of the worst—this wretched Baudichon!'[667] Micah was twice married: first to Bernard Combet, and secondly to Guyot Taillon. We have not been able to discover which of her two husbands was so cruel; probably it was the first. These distressing scenes became more heart-rending every moment. In the houses nothing was heard but the cries and groans of mothers and wives, of daughters and young children. The streets echoed with the oaths of the men who cursed _that law_ (the Reformation), and the first man who had brought it there. 'In truth, it is not possible,' says the chronicler, 'to describe the cries and tears which then filled the whole city.' But the mournful sounds of grief and sorrow which rose in the air could not drown the fanatical and sonorous voices of the priests.[668]