Meanwhile the Reformer came again into collision with the court. In the beginning of March, 1562, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal Lorraine made that assault on a peaceable and defenceless congregation of Huguenots, which is known in French history as the Massacre of Vassy; and when the report of that was received by Mary, she was so delighted that she gave in honour of the occasion a splendid ball in the palace to her foreign servants, by whom dancing was kept up to a very late hour. This act of hers was exceedingly painful to Knox, for he had many warm friends among the Protestants of France, and his heart was saddened by the tidings of the treatment to which they had been subjected. Accordingly he gave vent to his feelings in his pulpit on the following Sunday, when he preached from the text, "Be wise now, ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth." After discoursing on the dignity {164} of magistrates and the obedience which was due to them, he lamented and condemned the vices to which they were too commonly addicted, and made some severe strictures on their conduct, affirming, among other things, "that they were more exercised in fiddling and flinging, than in reading or hearing God's word," and that "fiddlers and flatterers" (John was evidently fond of alliteration) "were more precious in their eyes than men of wisdom and gravity." The report of his discourse was carried by some one to Mary; and though he had made no direct assault upon her, he was summoned on the next day to the palace. Introduced to a chamber in which she sat, surrounded by her maids of honour and principal courtiers, he was treated to a long "harangue," as he calls it (but it was no doubt a proper scolding), on the enormity of his conduct. Very wisely he heard that out without interruption; then, when his "innings" came, he complained that he had evidently been misreported to her, and craved leave to repeat to her precisely what he had said, thus adroitly contriving that for that time at least she should listen to a sermon. Beginning with the text, he went over the main points of his discourse, which, among other things, had in it this piece of sound sense: "And of dancing, madame, I said that albeit in Scripture I find no praise of it, and in profane writers that it is termed the gesture rather of those that are mad and in frenzy than of sober men; yet do I not utterly condemn it, providing that two vices be avoided: the former, that the principal {165} vocation of those that use that exercise be not neglected for the pleasure of dancing; and the second, that they dance not as the Philistines their fathers, for the pleasure they take in the displeasure of God's people." The accuracy of his rehearsal of his sermon having been confirmed by those who had heard it when it was originally given, the Queen said it was bad enough, but admitted that it had not been so reported to her; and then very naively asked, that