It was in the Louvre that the Reformation was first publicly preached at Paris. Queen Marguerite of Navarre, sister of Francis I. and the friend of Briçonnet, caused her chaplain and other disciples of Lefèvre to preach before her in that palace. Thereupon the Franciscan friar, Lemaud, declared from his pulpit that she ought to be thrown into the Seine in a sack. The priestly rage which had now been excited soon spread to the people, and the streets began to resound with cries of “Death to the Heretics.” “To be thrown into the river,” says Bèze, writing of this period, “it was only necessary to be called a Huguenot in public, no matter what one’s religion might be.” A series of religious murders were now perpetrated; and Francis I., a bigot like his people, headed one day in 1535 a procession in which he was followed by his three sons, the court, the parliaments, the trade corporations, and the brotherhoods, and of which the object was to burn at the stake six Protestants at six different halting-places. Henri II. took after his father. On one occasion he assisted, from a window of the Hôtel de la Rochepot, Rue Saint-Antoine, at the execution of a Protestant tailor who was burned alive. It is said, however, that the martyr’s eyes, fixed as they were upon him, inspired him with terror, and that this was the last heretic whose dying pangs he ever witnessed. As yet the Protestants of Paris had neither temple nor pastor. But already they had schools, “hedge schools,” as they were termed, because, prohibited within the city walls, the teachers took refuge in the country. The secret meetings of the Protestants of Paris were often surprised. In 1557 services were held and the Communion was administered in one of the houses of the Rue Saint-Jacques, beside the building where is now established the Lyceum of Louis the Great. Excited by the seminarists of the Collège Duplessis, the populace besieged the assembly for six hours, stoning many persons as they came out. Several were killed, and 135 prisoners were taken to the Châtelet. Among those who were executed may be mentioned the young and beautiful widow of a member of the Consistory, “who,” says a chronicler of the times, “seated on the tumbril, showed a face of rosy complexion and of excellent beauty.” The poor woman’s tongue had been cut out, which was often done at that time in order to prevent the martyrs from addressing the crowds. As a special mark of favour, the beautiful widow was only scorched in the face and on the feet; and she was then strangled before the body was finally consigned to the flames.