Public festivities were held with incredible magnificence. When the English envoys entered Paris in 1518, there was the finest triumph ever seen. The king, the royal princes, five cardinals and a train of lords and dukes and counts, with a gorgeous military pageant, met them and conducted them to Notre Dame, whose interior was almost hidden under decorations of tapestry and of cloth of silver and of gold. A pavilion of cloth of gold, embroidered with the royal salamander, _moult riche et fort triomphante_, supported by four columns of solid silver, was erected, and was so large that some of the masonry between the choir and the high altar had to be removed to give it place. The banquet by night at the Bastille was the most solemn and sumptuous ever seen; the whole courtyard was draped and the edifice lighted by ten thousand torches; words fail to describe the triumph of the meats and table decorations. The feast ended at midnight and was followed by dances of moriscos attired in cloth of silver and of gold, by jousts and princely gifts. The extravagance of Francis was prodigious; a Venetian ambassador estimated the annual ordinary expenses of the court at 1,500,000[105] crowns; another describes the people as "eaten to the bone by taxes." Cellini declares that the king on his travels was accompanied by a train of 12,000 horse. After the defeat at Pavia, the king became excessively pious. By trumpet cry at the crossways, games--quoits, tennis, contre-boulle--were prohibited on Sundays; children were forbidden to sing along the streets, going to and from school. Blasphemers[106] were to be severely punished. In 1527 a notary was burned alive in the Place de Grève for a great blasphemy of our Lord and His holy Mother. In June of the next year some Lutherans struck down and mutilated an image of the Virgin and Child at a street corner near St. Gervais; the king was so grieved and angry that he wept violently, and offered a reward of one hundred gold crowns, but the offenders could not be found. Daily processions came from the churches to the spot, and all the religious orders, clothed in their habits, followed, "singing with such great fervour and reverence, that it was fair to see." The rector and doctors, masters and bachelors, scholars of the university, and children with lighted tapers, went there in great reverence. On Corpus Christi day the street was draped and a fair canopy stretched over the statue. The king himself walked in procession, bearing a white taper, his head uncovered in _moult gran révérence_; hautboys, clarions and trumpets played melodiously. Cardinals, prelates, great seigneurs and nobles, each with his taper of white wax, followed, with the royal archers of the guard in their train. On the morrow a procession from all the parishes of Paris, with banners, relics and crucifixes, accompanied by the king and nobles, brought a new and fair image of silver, two feet in height, which the king had caused to be made.