From the same anonymous writer we learn something of Parisian life in the reign of Francis I. One day a certain Monsieur Cruche, a popular poet and playwright, was performing moralities and novelties on a platform in the Place Maubert, and among them a farce "funny enough to make half a score men die of laughter, in which the said Cruche, holding a lantern, feigned to perceive the doings of a hen and a salamander."[107] The amours of the king with the daughter of a councillor of the Parlement, named Lecoq, were only too plainly satirised. But it is ill jesting with kings. A few nights later, Monsieur Cruche was visited by eight disguised courtiers, who treated him to a supper in a tavern at the sign of the Castle in the Rue de la Juiverie, and induced him to play the farce before them. When the unhappy player came to the first scene, he was set upon by the king's friends, stripped and beaten almost to death with thongs. They were about to put him in a sack and throw him into the Seine, when poor Cruche, crying piteously, discovered his priestly tonsure, and thus escaped. [Footnote 107: The salamander was figured on the royal arms of Francis.] After the defeat at Pavia, the king became morbidly pious. By trumpet cry at the crossways of Paris, we learn from the _Journal_, games--quoits, tennis, contreboulle--were prohibited on Sundays; children were forbidden to sing along the streets, going to and from school; blasphemers[108] were to be severely punished. In 1527 a notary was burned alive in the Place de Greve for a great blasphemy of our Lord and His holy Mother. In June of the next year some Lutherans struck down and mutilated an image of the Virgin and Child at a street corner near St. Gervais; the king was so grieved and angry that he wept violently, and offered a reward of one hundred gold crowns, but the offenders could not be found. Daily processions came from the churches to the spot, and all the religious orders, clothed in their habits, followed "singing with such great fervour and reverence that it was fair to see." The rector, doctors, masters, bachelors and scholars of the university, and children with lighted tapers, went there in great reverence. On Corpus Christi day the street was draped and a fair canopy stretched over the statue. The king himself walked in procession, bearing a white taper, his head uncovered in _moult gran reverence_; hautboys, clarions and trumpets played melodiously; cardinals, prelates, great seigneurs and nobles, each with his taper of white wax, followed, with the royal archers of the guard in their train. On the morrow a procession from all the parishes of Paris, with banners, relics and crucifixes, accompanied by the king and nobles, brought a new and fair image of silver, two feet in height, which the king had caused to be made. Francis himself ascended a ladder and placed it where the other image had stood, then kissed it and descended with tears in his eyes. Thrice he kneeled and prayed, the