[Footnote 336: "Qui estes pire que bestes, en vos badinages lesquels vous faites à l'entour de vostre _dieu de paste, duquel vous vous jouez comme un chat d'une souris_: faisans des marmiteux, et frappans contre vostre poictrine, après l'avoir mis en trois quartiers, _comme estans bien marris_, l'appelans Agneau de Dieu, et lui demandans la paix."] [Footnote 337: This singular placard is given _in extenso_ by Gerdesius, Hist. Evang. Renov., iv. (Doc.) 60-67; Haag, France prot., x. pièces justif., 1-6; G. Guiffrey, Cronique du Roy Françoys I^er, Appendix, 464-472.] [Footnote 338: Journal d'un bourgeois, 442. Not _Blois_, as the Hist. ecclésiastique, i. 10, and, following it, Soldan, Merle d'Aubigné, etc., state. Francis had left Blois as early as in September for the castle of Amboise, see Herminjard, Corresp. des réformateurs, iii. 231, 226, 236.] [Footnote 339: "Ne me puis garder de vous dire qu'il vous souviengne de _l'opinion que j'avois que les vilains placars estoient fait par ceux guiles cherchent aux aultres_." Marg. de Navarre to Francis I., Nérac, Dec., 1541, Génin, ii. No. 114. Although Margaret's supposition proved to be unfounded, it was by no means so absurd as the reader might imagine. At least, we have the testimony of Pithou, Seigneur de Chamgobert, that a clergyman of Champagne confessed that he had committed, from pious motives, a somewhat similar act. The head of a stone image of the Virgin, known as "Our Lady of Pity," standing in one of the streets of Troyes, was found, on the morning of a great feast-day in September, 1555, to have been wantonly broken off. There was the usual indignation against the sacrilegious perpetrators of the deed. There were the customary procession and masses by way of atonement for the insult offered to high Heaven. But Friar Fiacre, of the _Hôtel-Dieu_, finding himself some time later at the point of death, and feeling disturbed in conscience, revealed the fact that from religious considerations he had himself decapitated the image, "_in order to have the Huguenots accused of it, and thus lead to their complete extermination_!" Recordon, Protestantisme en Champagne, ou récits extraits d'un MS. de N. Pithou (Paris, 1863), 28-30.] [Footnote 340: A. F. Didot, Essai sur la typographie, in Encyclop. moderne, xxvi. 760, _apud_ Herminjard, iii. 60.] [Footnote 341: That is, 1535 New Style. For it will remembered that, until 1566, the year in France began with Easter, instead of with the first day of January. Leber, Coll. de pièces rel. à l'hist. de France, viii. 505, etc.]