“too lenient” by the pope--drove the Reformed to emigrate in such numbers in spite of all attempts to stop them, that a president of the Parliament of Bordeaux wrote to Montmorency expressing his alarm at seeing on the one hand the emigration increasing every day, and on the other the great progress made by Calvinism. But the king was not to be moved from his purpose. “In God’s cause,” he said, “every one should be ready to put his shoulder to the wheel.” A very proper sentiment, only we must be sure that the cause is of God. When the Parliament of Paris registered the edict of Chateaubriant, they compared Henry to Numa, “quod Numa primus condidit templum fidei.” The decree was carried out with extreme severity all over the kingdom, but particularly in Saumur, Lyons, Nîmes, Toulouse, Paris, Guyenne, Bresse, and Champagne. In Poitou and Anjou the fires of persecution blazed fiercely. Of three pastors at Angers two were burned alive, and of the flock six were put to death, and thirty-four who fled were burned as they were caught. The Reformed meditated taking up arms in self-defense, but were strongly advised by Calvin not to do so, and they obeyed. But the trial of their endurance must have been severe; for so great was the terrorism toward the end of 1556 that the Reformed ceased from writing to one another, or if they wrote, directed their letters, “To the brethren whom we _dare not name_ lest they should suffer harm.” In other parts of France, especially in the south and centre, the Reformers suffered less. At Le Puy the discontent first showed itself in the destruction of a venerated crucifix during the Holy Week. The sacrilege was atoned for by a solemn procession. The shops were closed, all work ceased, the bells rang out noisily from the great belfry, and the priests in a long line climbed the steep and narrow streets of that gloomy-looking town, up that giant flight of one hundred and eighteen steps to the grand portal of the cathedral. On this lofty platform the procession halted--not to admire the wide prospect that now charms every traveler--but to chant the penitential psalms before entering that old grey temple. The bells, which had ceased their monotonous din during this solemn moment, now pealed out joyously. The priests took off the emblems of mourning which they had worn until this moment, and entered the cathedral, the citizens following, each man in his own guild. The very next night a similar outrage occurred, and as the real culprits could not be found, two men were burned for heresy, their tongues having been first torn out (July, 1552). But “justice” was not overprecise in its nomenclature in those days, for we find two thieves who stole a chalice put to death as heretics, and two coiners of base money suffered a like fate. In 1555 two “most rascally heretics” were burned to death in the midst of a pile of “pestilent books from Geneva.” Oh, those books! how tyranny and falsehood hate them!