The summer of 1558 witnessed a singular protest against the persecuting and obstructive policy of the Church. It assumed a form, and was carried out with a pertinacity and a _malice_ peculiarly French. Clement Marot, the earliest of French poets and a favorite of the late king, had translated some of the Psalms of David into verse, which immediately became popular. They sold faster than they could be printed. Francis I. quoted them on his dying-bed,[61] and by his order the translator had presented a copy of his first series of thirty to Charles V., who rewarded him for it and pressed him to continue it.[62] The ladies and gentlemen of the French court took a strange delight in singing them, but not always to the most appropriate tunes. The martyrs of Meaux had sung them at the stake. Henry II., when dauphin, was fond of singing them; and on one occasion, when recovering from an illness, he had them chanted to him by his choristers, with the accompaniment of “lutes, viols, spinnets, and flutes.” His favorite was the 128th Psalm: _Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord_, which he is reported to have set to music. Catherine had her favorite: _O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger_; that of Diana of Poitiers was the solemn _De Profundis_ (Ps. 120). The King of Navarre selected the 43d: _Judge me, O Lord_; and even Charles IX., at a much later period, used to repeat, _As pants the hart_; probably because of its allusion to the chase. The Protestants of France sang them at all times, and as neither the music nor the words could be condemned as heretical,[63] they were sung when no other mode of divine worship was practicable. Thus when the citizens took their evening walk in the Pré aux Clercs,[64] the Hyde Park of those days, some student or Reformer would strike up one of Marot’s Psalms, in which they would all join. Many may have done this out of pure bravado, but others out of love for the truths they contained. The King and Queen of Navarre were fond of that pleasant promenade by the river-side, and took delight in listening to this multitudinous singing. These things cease to move us now, not because we are less religious, but because we are less demonstrative, and there is no opposition to force us into an external display of our faith. There have always been occasions when large bodies of men have tried to conceal or perhaps to alleviate their excitement by singing. Cromwell’s troopers thundered out a Psalm as they marched up the breach at Dunkirk, and the Girondins sang the Marseillaise as they stood at the foot of the guillotine.