“Picardy in the north and Dauphiny in the south were the two provinces of France best prepared [at the opening of the Protestant Reformation] to receive the gospel. During the fifteenth century many Picardins, as the story ran, went to _Vaudery_. Seated round the fire during the long nights, simple Catholics used to tell one another how the _Vaudois_ (Waldenses) met in horrible assembly in solitary places, where they found tables spread with numerous and dainty viands. These poor Christians loved indeed to meet together from districts often very remote. They went to the rendezvous by night and along by-roads. The most learned of them used to recite some passages of Scripture, after which they conversed together and prayed. But such humble conventicles were ridiculously travestied. ‘Do you know what they do to get there,’ said the people, ‘so that the officers may not stop them? The devil has given them a certain ointment, and when they want to go to _Vaudery_, they smear a little stick with it. As soon as they get astride it, they are carried up through the air, and arrive at _their Sabbath_ without meeting anybody. In the midst of them sits a goat with a monkey’s tail: this is Satan, who receives their adoration.’... These stupid stories were not peculiar to the people: they were circulated particularly by the monks. It was thus that the inquisitor Jean de Broussart spoke in 1460 from a pulpit erected in the great square at Arras. An immense multitude surrounded him; a scaffold was erected in front of the pulpit, and a number of men and women, kneeling and wearing caps with the figure of the devil painted on them, awaited their punishment. Perhaps the faith of these poor people was mingled with error. But be that as it may, they were all burnt alive after the sermon.”[903] It seems that these Waldenses had a Sabbath peculiar to themselves. And D’Aubigné himself alludes to something peculiar in their faith which he cannot confess as the truth, and does not choose to denounce as error. He says, “Perhaps the faith of these poor people was mingled with error.” To speak of the observance of the seventh day as the Sabbath of the Lord by New-Testament Christians, subjects a conscientious first-day historian to this very dilemma. We have a further account of the Waldenses in France, just before the commencement of the Reformation of the sixteenth century:—