blessing of heaven upon his people; and in this attitude remained until the agonies of the victim had terminated. “The procession ended where it began, at the church of St. Geneviéve. The holy sacrament was replaced in the tabernacle, and the mass was sung by the archbishop of Paris. After this there was a splendid dinner, at which the archbishop received the king, the peers, the ambassadors, the courts of parliament, &c., &c. At the conclusion of which entertainment, the king, addressing the numerous guests, after expressing his grief at the execrable opinions that were disseminated in his dominions, said ‘that he had determined and commanded that the most rigorous punishment should be inflicted upon the delinquents; and he required all his subjects to denounce every one whom they should know to be adherents unto, or accomplices in such blasphemies, without regard to alliance, lineage, or friendship. As for himself, _if his very arm were thus corrupted, he would tear it from his body; and if his own children were found guilty of falling into such enormities, he would at once yield them up as a first sacrifice to God_!’ To give force to his words, the king ordered the executions of the _sacramentaries_ to continue; and from that time the numbers who perished by the _balançoire_ (or swing) is appalling.” Europe was filled with the reports of these cruelties on the French reformers, and the Protestant princes remonstrated with the king. But Francis had become the slave of superstition and priestly intolerance, and governed by the inquisitors of Rome. He continued his cruel and impolitic course, under the counsel of the inquisitors; and issued a terrible edict, in 1540, against the Vaudois, requiring “that the villages of Mirandol, Cabrieres, Les Aignes, and other places shall all be destroyed, the houses razed to the ground; their caverns and other subterranean retreats demolished; their forests cut down; their fruit trees torn up by the roots; the principal chiefs executed; and the women and children exiled for perpetuity.” These people were reported as exemplary in their industry; that “they never say mass for the dead; they have prayer in the vulgar tongue; they have no bishops, nor priests, but men whom they elect as simple ministers.” The Papists, therefore, hated their religion, and envied their prosperity, resulting from industry; so that they prevailed on the king to abandon his deserving subjects to the exterminating sword and fire of the inquisitors. Men, women, and children were massacred with fiendish cruelty. Towns, villages, and hamlets were devoted to the flames. Death was threatened to all who should offer food or shelter to the fugitives, so that those who escaped the sword of the persecutors, perished in the mountains.