Never had courage and firmness been more necessary. Great miseries were beginning. Since the disputation not a sack of wheat or a load of wood had entered the city, while previously they used to enter in great numbers twice a week. There were no eggs, or butter, or cheese, or cattle. One day, however, a cow was brought by a man from a neighboring village; what a supply for a whole city! But the man had scarcely got out of the city, when the enemy seized him roughly and made him pay three times the price he had received. If friends wanted to bring some trifling stores from the nearest farms, they dared not do it by daylight.[557] Finding themselves reduced to such extremities, a few citizens on one or two occasions went out of the city to procure bread: they were insulted and beaten. 'Alas!' said the poor creatures, 'we have only to move the tips of our fingers, or go a nail's breadth out of the city, to make our enemies cry out that we are upsetting heaven and earth.'[558] Seeing that no progress was made, the evangelicals determined to assert the free publication of the Word of God. It was not enough for them to have it printed, they wanted it preached,—not only in their own houses or in the great hall of Rive, but in the churches. They had within their walls one of the most powerful preachers of the age—Farel: they believed that their duty towards God and their fellow-citizens called upon them to make his eloquent voice heard by the multitude. [Sidenote: FAREL AT THE MADELEINE.]