by those who leaned toward the see of Rome, would be present. But moderation was exacted of both sects. On one occasion a famous preacher of the Minims, who had won some credit with the Catholics for his railings, was in the night secretly taken from his lodgings and carried to the court to answer for his rabid utterances.[437] But it was increasingly manifest that events, both within and without France, were passing beyond the grasp of the government. The Huguenots, sometimes from fear no doubt, but not infrequently for effrontery, went to their services with pistols and matchlocks, in spite of the laws against the bearing of arms; and they even were bold enough to march through the streets singing their psalms, to the anger and scandal of Catholic Christians.[438] An outbreak was imminent at any time. In Paris, on October 12, the Protestants assembled together to the number of 7,000 or 8,000 to hear one of their ministers preach, half a mile from the town. The Catholics thereupon shut the gates to prevent their re-entry. Finding the gates closed, the Protestants forced them, and many were wounded and some slain on both sides.[439] From the provinces word had come in July that the duke of Montpensier, going to his house in Touraine for the burial of his mother, and finding numbers in many towns who made open profession of Calvinism, by virtue of his governorship of that country, imprisoned about one hundred and forty in Chinon. Whereupon the people, not forgetting his conduct toward them in the previous reign, when he razed the houses of several who were reported to him to be Huguenots, assembled in great numbers—about 12,000 or 15,000, we are told—surely a great exaggeration, and marched so fast upon him that he was besieged in his house and forced to release all the prisoners in order to appease the multitude.[440] The organized nature of the Huguenot agitations in various localities, especially in southern France, did not escape the keen observation of Philip’s ambassador.[441] At Montpellier in Languedoc the Protestant organizations, by September, had taken the form of a definite league, with the sweeping motto: “No mass, no more than at Geneva,” whose operations were so thorough that many Catholics were on the point of emigrating to Catalonia.[442]