On the following morning, which was Sunday, M. de Montaigne went to see several churches. He went to some which were Catholic, and everywhere he found the service very well done. Six of the churches are Lutheran and are served by sixteen ministers, two of these churches being taken from the Catholics, and four built by the Lutherans themselves. One of the last-named he visited in the morning, and found it like the great hall of a college, with neither images nor organs nor cross, but with the walls covered with inscriptions in German taken from the Bible. There were two chairs, one for the minister or for whomsoever might preach, and another one placed lower for the leader in singing the psalms. At every verse the people wait for the leader aforesaid, who gives the note. They sing in haphazard fashion, each one according to his humour, and with head bare or covered. After the singing, a minister who had been in the assembly went to the altar, and read from a book several prayers, at certain of which the people stood up and clasped their hands, and made deep reverence at the name of Jesus Christ. After he had finished his reading to the assembly, he put before him on the altar a napkin, a basin, and a saucer, in which was water. A woman, followed by a dozen others, brought to him a child, swaddled and with face bare, whereupon the minister thrice took the water in the saucer and sprinkled it on the child’s face and said certain words. This being finished, two men approached and each one of them placed two fingers of the right hand upon the child; the minister then addressed them, and this was all. M. de Montaigne held a conversation with this minister after he left the church, and was informed that the ministers receive no stipend from the church, their salary being paid by the Senate as a public charge; that there was a greater crowd of worshippers in this one church than in two or three of the Catholic churches together. We did not see a single handsome woman. The women wear a vast variety of attire, and in the case of the men it is a hard matter to say who is noble and who is not, forasmuch as all sorts of men wear bonnets of velvet and carry swords by the side. We had our lodging at the sign of the “Linde,” called after a tree of the country, which stands adjoining the palace of the Foulcres.[72] A certain member of this family, who died some years ago, left a sum of two millions of French crowns to his heirs, and these heirs made over to the Jesuits of the city thirty thousand florins for prayers for the soul of the deceased, with which sum the Jesuits are very handsomely equipped and provided. This house of the Foulcres is roofed with copper: as a rule the houses are much finer, larger, and higher than in any French town, and the streets much wider. M. de Montaigne estimated the population of Augsburg to equal that of Orléans.