The canons and their friends, finding their oracle was dumb, ventured upon a controversy which was much more in their line. They drew their swords (priests often wore swords in those times), and approaching Froment, exclaimed: ‘Kill him—kill the Lutheran!... Ah! the wretch! he has dared take our good father to task.’ Nothing but death could expiate the crime of a layman who had ventured to contradict a priest. There was only one point on which these churchmen were not agreed: it was whether they should _burn_ or _drown_ the evangelist. Some shouted: ‘Burn him—burn him!’ and others: ‘To the Rhone with him!’—‘There was no small commotion,’ writes Froment. Just as the priests were about to carry him off, Baudichon de la Maisonneuve, Ami Perrin, Janin le Collonier, and others rallied round him like a body-guard, wishing to get him out of the church. This did not calm the tumult; the people ran after him, and the magistrates would have arrested him. ‘They crowded upon one another,’ says Froment, ‘either to see him, or to strike him, or to carry him off.’ The tumultuous crowd made a last effort to lay hold of the evangelist, just as they reached the great doors of the cathedral. Baudichon de la Maisonneuve observing this, halted, drew his sword, and, facing the rioters, cried in a loud voice: ‘I will kill the first man that touches him. Let the law prevail; and if any one has done wrong, let him be punished.’ The catholics, intimidated by Maisonneuve’s look, shrank back; and Froment’s friends, taking advantage of this favorable moment, dragged him away from his enemies. Then, ‘the women, as if they were mad, rushed after him with great fury, throwing many stones at him.’[426] The huguenot Perrin, more politic than evangelical, alarmed at the tumult, said to Froment: ‘We have spoilt the business; it was going on very well, and now all is lost.’ _The other_ (by which words Froment indicates himself), sure of his cause, answered simply: ‘All is won!’ The future showed that he was right. When Froment arrived at Baudichon’s house,—the usual asylum of the friends of the Gospel,—Le Collonier took him up to the hayloft and carefully hid him under the hay. De la Maisonneuve and Janin had afterwards to pay dearly for their kind offices. The latter had scarcely quitted the loft when Claude Baud arrived with his officers and his halberds. ‘They searched the house all over, and even thrust their spears into the hay, but finding nobody they withdrew.’[427]