Francis had spoken in the heat of passion, but, in the words of a contemporary, "if his fury was great, still greater was the constancy of the martyrs."[352] Of this, indeed, the king did not have to wait long for a proof. For, after having witnessed, in company with the queen, the _amende honorable_ of six condemned "Lutherans" or "Christaudins," which took place on the square in front of the cathedral, Francis, as he returned to the Louvre, passed the places where these unfortunates were undergoing their supreme torments--three near the _Croix du Tiroir_, in the Rue St. Honoré, and three at the Halles. The first were men of some note--Simon Fouhet, of Auvergne, one of the royal choristers, supposed to have been the person who posted the placard in the castle of Amboise, Audebert Valleton, of Nantes, and Nicholas L'Huillier, from the Châtelet of Paris. The others were of an inferior station in life--a fruitster, a maker of wire-baskets, and a joiner. All, however, with almost equal composure, submitted to their fate as to the will of Heaven, rather than the sentence of human judges; scarcely seeming, in their firm anticipation of an immortal crown, to notice the tumultuous outcries of an infuriated mob which nearly succeeded in snatching them from the officers of the law, in order to have the satisfaction of tearing their bodies to pieces.[353] [Sidenote: Ingenious contrivance for protracting torture.] It would seem, however, that the most relentless enemy could scarcely have complained that any womanish indulgence had been shown to the persons singled out to expiate the crime of posting the placard against the mass. To delay the advent of death, the sole term of their excruciating sufferings, an ingeniously contrived instrument of torture was put in play, which if not altogether novel, had at least been but seldom employed up to this time. Instead of being bound to the stake and simply roasted to death by means of the fagots heaped up around him, the victim was now suspended by chains over a blazing fire, and was alternately lowered into it and drawn out--a refinement of cruelty whose principal recommendation to favor lay in the fact that the diversion it afforded the spectators could be made to last until they were fully satisfied, and the executioner chose to allow the writhing sufferer to be suffocated in the flames.[354] So satisfactory were the results of the _Estrapade_, that it came to be universally employed as the instrument for executing "Lutherans," with the exception of a favored few, to whom the privilege was accorded of being hung or strangled before their bodies were thrown into the fire. Such was, soon after this time, the fate of a woman, a school-teacher by profession, found guilty of heresy. In any case, the judges took effectual measures to forestall the deplorable consequences that might ensue from permitting the "Lutherans" to address the by-standers, and so pervert them from the orthodox faith.