“That shame to manhood, and opprobrious more To France, than all her losses and defeats Old, or of later date; by sea or land; Her house of bondage, worse than that of old Which God avenged on Pharaoh—the Bastile.” Although in his lectures and in his book he had abstained from all allusion to the struggles of the times, he was well-known for a staunch Huguenot, a man whom nothing could induce to change or to conceal his religion. They were indeed “evil days” in which his lot was cast. It had been sorrow and trouble enough to live in Paris then, and behold the vice, frivolity, and riot which prevailed. True, most true it is, that “between the excesses of depravity, and those of bigotry, there exist remarkable and intimate affinities.” Nowhere was this more strikingly exemplified than in the French court and capital during the rule of the house of Valois. The religious ideas of a court in which fanatical intolerance reigned, give sufficient proof of this. The vilest and most sanguinary passions were excited by the ceremonies of religion. The sermons of “the League” preachers were like torches, which set the kingdom in a blaze. The most impious and revolting spectacles were presented to the eyes of the mob. Thus, at Chartres, after the day of barricades, a Capuchin monk in the presence of Henry III., represented the Saviour ascending Mount Calvary. This wretched priest had drops of blood apparently trickling from his crown of thorns, and seemed with difficulty to drag the cross of painted card-board which he bore; while, ever and anon, he uttered piercing cries and fell beneath the load. The king himself, utterly steeped in the vicious pleasures of the court, became a member of the brotherhood of Flagellants, and, in a solemn procession, king, queen, and cardinal, headed the white, black, and blue friars, as they traversed the city barefoot, with heads uncovered, chaplets of skulls around their waists, and flogging their backs with cords till the blood flowed. The atrocities committed within many of the churches by the soldiers of “the League,” it is impossible here to relate. Since the massacre of St. Bartholomew the mobs of Paris had become familiar with blood, and a spirit of increased ferocity prevailed. Assassinations, tortures, and executions were frequent, and the extreme Roman Catholic party, to which the city had, from that time, been heartily attached, was pledged to exterminate the Huguenots.