It was impossible that such “lynch-law” violence could have any permanent repressive effect upon men who felt that “persecution was the ladder by which they were to reach heaven.”[261] The Huguenot was not likely to be less fervent than the Mahometan, who looks upon the sword of his enemy as the key to Paradise. There were perhaps few cities where the magistrates showed so much good sense as at Amiens in adopting vigorous measures to preserve peace between both religious parties. About four years before this time the heretics in that city were estimated at 500, a body too numerous to be openly molested. The monks, therefore, organized processions of children between the ages of eight and twelve, and these to the number of 200 paraded the streets at night with toy crosses and banners, halting from time to time and singing the _Ave Maria_ at certain doors, according as their leader, a man bearing a sword, directed them: “Sing, children, sing, in spite of the Huguenots.” The Jacobin preachers used their pulpits as instruments of sedition, employing language that could hardly fail to lead to rioting. Indeed (to anticipate our narrative), on the 7th and 8th of December, 1561, the tocsin was rung, the Catholics fell upon the Huguenots as they were returning from divine worship, wounded many, and maltreated some of the civic officers and others who had come to help the weaker party. It was in consequence of these and similar outbreaks that the magistrates, in order to prevent the mere possibility of rioting, interfered so far with individual liberty as to forbid the inhabitants to assemble in the streets to the number of more than four, or to leave their houses after curfew, to carry arms, to discuss the sermons, or to call each other names, such as “Huguenots, Lutherans, papists, hypocrites, and caffards,” under pain of death. Still the magistrates were not in the least inclined to tolerate heterodoxy, for they went on to prohibit assemblies either in the city or without, for the purpose of preaching, reading, or psalm-singing, contrary to the practice of the Church.[262] Although the Catholic party appears to have become stronger in the municipal body, still their measures inclined to tolerance. On the 22d May, 1562, the ministers were ordered to leave the city within three days, and school-masters were forbidden to teach the new doctrine to their pupils. Five days later we find the Notables assembled to devise means for compelling some eighteen or twenty Huguenots to decorate their houses for the procession of the Holy Sacrament, with a view “to avoid any demonstration of feeling on the part of the people, who would be scandalized by any want of reverence.” The men were summoned before them, and consented under protest to adorn their windows. “They pleaded their conscience,” says the register; “and when they were asked how that could be wounded by such an act, they refused to give any