La chambre ardente (Littérature Française) (French Edition)

Biographie Julien Duvivier

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Max Gallo was a French writer, historian and politician. The son of Italian immigrants, Max Gallo's early career was in journalism. The infatuation of the monarch knew no bounds. He loaded her with gifts; he entrusted her with the crown jewels; De l'Aubespine Cimber et Danjou , iii. In her apartments he spent hours daily, in company with his most intimate courtiers.

Through love for her he adopted her favorite colors, and took for his device the crescent, with the words, "Totum donec compleat orbem. It is not surprising that, being of an avaricious character, she soon accumulated great wealth.

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Anne de Montmorency, one of the four marshals of France, grand-master of the palace, and constable, was among the most notable personages of the sixteenth century. Sprung from a family claiming descent from the first Frank that followed the example of Clovis in renouncing paganism, and bearing on its escutcheon the motto, "God defend the first Christian," he likewise arrogated the foremost rank in the nobility as the first baron of the kingdom.

From his youth he was accustomed to association with royalty. Margaret of Navarre was his early friend, and at a later period had occasion to complain of his ingratitude. He was at this time fifty-five years of age, severe, stern, fond of arms, complaisant to royalty, but harsh and overbearing in his relations with inferiors. Of his personal valor there can be no doubt, and he was generally regarded as the ablest general in France—an opinion, it is true, which his subsequent ill-success contributed much to shake. Martene et Durand, Ampliss. But his martial glory was dimmed by his well-known avarice, his ignorance, The devoted "connestabliste" Begnier de la Planche does not conceal the aversion the head of the family which he delights in exalting entertained for letters: Of this last trait a signal instance was afforded when Montmorency was sent, in the year after Henry's accession, to suppress a formidable revolt which had broken out in Guyenne, in consequence of a consider able increase of the already burdensome impost upon salt.

He haughtily refused to accept the keys of the city of Bordeaux tendered to him by the citizens on his approach. His artillery, he said, would serve him as well in gaining admission. The severity of the retribution meted out under his superintendence to those who had ventured to resist the royal authority was unparalleled in French history. The bells that had sounded out the tocsin, at the outbreak of the insurrection, were for the most part broken in pieces and melted.

One miserable man was hung to the clapper of the same bell that he had rung to call the people to arms. Others for the like crime were broken on the wheel or burned alive.

Tristan de Moneins, lieutenant of the King of Navarre, had been basely murdered by the citizens: If the constable's ferocity did not diminish with age, it acquired a tinge of the ludicrous from his growing superstition. Never would he omit his devotions at the appointed hour, whether at home or in the field—"so conscientious was he. Hang that one to a tree!

Run that fellow through at once with your pikes, or shoot him down before my eyes! Cut the knaves to pieces that have undertaken to hold that belfry against the king! Fire everything to the distance of a quarter of a league! In fact, Anne de Montmorency was ill-fitted to win popularity. A despatch of Sir John Mason, three years later, gives a glimpse of his relations with his fellow-courtiers. A great many of the court wisheth the increase thereof. He is very ill-beloved , for that he is a hinderer of all men saving his own kinsfolks, whom he doth so advance as no man may have anything by his will but they, and for that also he feedeth every man with fair words, and performeth nothing.

For six years before the death of Francis the First the constable had been living in retirement upon his estates. The occasion of his banishment from court is stated, by one who enjoyed the best opportunities for learning the truth, to have been the advice which he had given the monarch to permit the Emperor Charles the Fifth to pass through his dominions when going to Netherlands to suppress the revolt of the burghers of Ghent. Cimber et Danjou , iii. Francis, indeed, is said on his deathbed to have warned his son against the dangers with which the ambition of the constable and of the family of Guise threatened his kingdom.

But, as we have seen, Henry had no sooner received tidings of his father's death, than he at once summoned Montmorency to court, and resigned to him undisputed control of the affairs of state. The Venetian Dandolo, sent to congratulate the monarch upon his advent to the throne, felicitated the favorite on his merited resumption of his former rank and the honor of the " universal charge " which he held.

It is somewhat painful to find from a letter of Margaret of Navarre, written after Henry's accession, that this amiable princess was compelled to depend, for the continuance of her paltry pension of 25, livres as sister of Francis, upon the kind offices of the constable.

The king's affection for Montmorency was so demonstrative that he ordered that, after their death, the constable's heart and his own should be buried together in a single monument, as an indication to posterity of his partiality. He was now all-powerful. Admiral Annebaut and the Cardinal of Tournon were removed from the head of the administration.

The former, of whose sterling worth Francis entertained so high an appreciation that he had bequeathed to him the sum of , livres, was compelled to resign his place as Marshal of France in favor of a new favorite—Jacques d'Albon de St. Francis is reported to have included the family of Guise with Constable Montmorency in the warning addressed to his son, and the story, received by the people as an undoubted truth, circulated in a poetical form for many years.

The current quatrain was the following: The Guises were of foreign extraction, and had but recently become residents of France. Claude, the fifth son of the Duke of Lorraine, at that time an independent state, came to the French court, in the early part of the sixteenth century, in quest of opportunities to advance his fortunes greater than were open to a younger member of the reigning family in his father's contracted dominions.

Partly through the influence of Montmorency, partly in consequence of his marriage with Antoinette of Bourbon, a princess of royal blood, in some degree also by his own abilities, the young foreigner was rapidly advanced, from the comparatively insignificant position at first assigned him, to more important trusts. At length he became royal lieutenant of the provinces of Champagne and Burgundy, and his small domain of Guise was erected into a duchy.

Guise on the north, not far from the boundary of the Netherlands; Aumale and Elbeuf in Normandy; Mayenne in Maine, on the borders of Brittany; and Joinville, in Champagne, on the northeastern frontier of the kingdom; besides others of minor importance. His younger brother John, who had entered the church as offering the most promising road to the attainment of his ambitious designs, had also come westward; and, proving to be a jovial companion whose presence imposed no restraint upon the license of a profligate court, he fared even better in securing ecclesiastical preferment than his brother in obtaining secular advantages.

In his favor Francis made use, in a manner lavish beyond precedent, of the right of nomination to benefices secured to the crown by the concordat. A still longer list is given by Dom Calmet, Hist. To gratify the French monarch, Pope Leo the Tenth added to the dignity of the young ecclesiastic, by conferring upon him the Cardinal's hat a year or two before he had attained his majority.

Shrewd and plausible, the Cardinal of Lorraine, as he was henceforth called, contributed not a little to his brother's rapid advancement; and, as it was well understood that the rich benefices he held and the accumulation of his wealth would go, at his death, to enrich his nephews, he was treated with great deference by all the members of his brother's family.

An important era in the history of the Guises is marked by the marriage effected, in , between James the Fifth of Scotland and Mary of Lorraine, the eldest daughter of Claude. This royal alliance secured for the Guises a predominant influence in North British affairs after the death of James. It brought them into close connection with the crown of France, when Mary, Queen of Scots, the fruit of this union, was affianced to the son of Henry the Second, the dauphin, afterward Francis the Second.

It encouraged the adherents of this house to attribute to it an almost regal dignity, and to intimate more and more plainly its claim upon the throne of France, as descended through the Dukes of Lorraine from Charlemagne—a title superior to that of the Valois, who could trace their origin to no higher source than the usurper Hugh Capet. But the second generation of the Guises was destined to exert, during the reign of Henry the Second, an influence more controlling than the brothers Claude and John had exerted during his father's reign. The six sons of Claude—all displaying the grasping disposition of the house from which they sprang, all aiming at the acquisition of position and wealth, each of them insatiable, yet never exhibiting a rivalry that might prove detrimental to their common expectations—throw into obscurity the surprising success of their father and uncle, by their own marvellous prosperity.

Scarcely had a third part of Henry's reign gone by, before foreign ambassadors wrote home glowing accounts of the influence of the younger favorites. For albeit the constable hath the outward administration of all things, being for that service such a man as hard it were to find the like, yet have they so much credit as he with whom he is constrained to sail , and many times to take that course that he liketh never a whit.

Francis, the eldest son, known until his father's death as the Count of Aumale, and afterward succeeding him as Duke of Guise, entered the inviting profession of arms. The second son, Charles, chose the life of an ecclesiastic, and soon assumed with respect to his brothers a commanding position similar to that which John had occupied. At an early age he had been elevated to the Archbishopric of Rheims, voluntarily ceded to him by his uncle. Henry, soon after his accession, obtained from the pontiff a place in the consistory for the young ecclesiastic, who then became known as the Cardinal of Guise, and, after his uncle's death, in , as Cardinal of Lorraine.

Francis of Guise, although but twenty-eight years of age, was already regarded as a brilliant general and an accomplished courtier. Vain and ostentatious, yet possessed of more real military ability than his unfortunate Italian campaign of would seem to indicate, he won laurels at Metz, at Calais, and at Thionville. Outside of the pursuits of war he was grossly ignorant, and in all civil and religious matters he allowed himself to be governed by the advice of his brother Charles. Even the Protestants, whom he so deeply injured, would for the most part have acquiesced in the opinion of the cabinet minister, De l'Aubespine, that the Duke of Guise was a captain capable of rendering good service to his native land, had he not been hindered and infected by his brother's ambition.

It is the same trustworthy authority who states that the duke was more than once induced to exclaim of his brother Charles: Aussi a-il dict plusieurs fois de luy: Cest homme enfin nous perdra. The portraits of men who, for weal or woe, have exercised a powerful influence upon their times, are frequently painted so differently by their advocates and by their opponents, that for him who would obtain an impartial view of their merits or defects it will prove a difficult task to discover any means of removing the discrepancies in the representations and attaining the truth.

Fortunate must he esteem himself if he chance to find some contemporary, less directly interested in the events and persons described, to furnish him with the results of unbiassed observation. In the conflict of the Protestant and Roman Catholic writers of France respecting Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, the "relations" of the Venetian ambassadors, devoted adherents of the Holy See, made to the doge and senate of their native state, and given under the seal of secrecy, must be esteemed a rich historical legacy. The cardinal's intellect, these envoys tell us, was wonderfully acute.

He understood the point at which those who conversed with him were aiming when they had scarcely opened their mouth.

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His memory was more than usually retentive. He was well educated, and learned not only in Greek, Latin, and Italian, but in the sciences, and especially in theology. He had a rare gift of talking. In the fulfilment of his promises he was less famous. According to one ambassador, he had the reputation of rarely speaking the truth.

Another styles him little truthful, and of a deceitful and avaricious disposition. Both agree in representing him as covetous "beyond the avarice natural to the French, even employing dishonorable means to increase his wealth. Charles now had , livres of income; but he never thought of paying off his uncle's enormous debts: The papal envoy, Cardinal Prospero di Santa Croce, combines the traits of ambition, avarice, and hypocrisy in his portrait of his colleague in the sacred consistory, and makes little of his learning: Both unite in extolling his administra tive abilities.

In observance of the precepts of the church he was exemplary. Yearly did he retire from court to spend the season of Lent on some one of his numerous possessions. In life, "so far as the outside is concerned," he observed the decorum appropriate to his rank, thus presenting a striking contrast to the other cardinals and prelates of the kingdom, who were "of a most licentious character. I have united the accounts of two ambassadors, Soranzo and Michiel, the first belonging to , the other to Both are contained in Tommaseo's edit. If he was a "holy" man, he was "not too conscientious.

Such, according to writers of his own religion, was the churchman of whom, with Diana of Poitiers, the cabinet minister who knew both well wrote: The reader will, after this, make little account of the extravagant panegyric by the Father Alby inserted by Migne in his Dict. Lorraine ; yet he may be amused at the precise contradiction between the estimate of the cardinal's political services made by this ecclesiastic and that of the practical statesman given above.

He seems to the priest born for the good of others: Pasquin well reflected the sentiments of the people when he altered the motto that accompanied the device of the cardinal—an ivy-clad pyramid—from "Te stante, virebo" to "Te virente, peribo. With a weak-minded prince, averse to anything except the gratification of his passions, and under the influence of such counsellors, France became almost of necessity a scene of rapacity beyond all precedent. The princes of the blood continued in their exclusion from official positions.

Each of the new favorites was not only eager to obtain wealth for himself, but had a number of relations for whom provision must also be made.

CHAPTER VIII.

Herself securing not only the rank of Duchess of Valentinois, with the authority of a queen, La Planche, A contemporary writer likens the brood of courtiers she gathered about her to swallows in pursuit of flies on a summer's evening. Nothing escaped them—rank, dignity, bishopric, abbey, office, or other dainty morsel—all alike were eagerly devoured. Spies and salaried agents were posted in all parts of the kingdom to convey the earliest intelligence of the death of those who possessed any valuable benefices.

Physicians in their employ at Paris sent in frequent bulletins of the health of sick men who enjoyed offices in church or state; nor were instances wanting in which, for the present of a thousand crowns, they were said to have hastened a wealthy patient's death.

Even the king was unable to give as he wished, and sought to escape the importunity of his favorites by falsely assuring them that he had already made promises to others. Thus only could they be kept at bay. The Guises and Montmorency, to render their power more secure, courted the favor of the king's mistress.

The Cardinal of Lorraine, in particular, distinguished himself by the servility which he displayed. For two years he put himself to infinite trouble to be at the table of Diana. After her elevation to the peerage, he addressed to her a letter, still extant, in which he assured her that henceforth his interest and hers were inseparable.

Letter of the Card. To give yet greater firmness to the bond uniting them, the Guises brought about a marriage between their third brother, the Duke of Aumale, and one of the daughters of the Duchess of Valentinois; while the Constable of Montmorency, at a later time, undertook to gain a similar advantage for his own family by causing his son to wed Diana, a natural daughter of the king.

It may at first sight appear somewhat incongruous that a king and court thus given up, the former to flagrant immorality, the latter to the unbridled pursuit of riches and honors, should early have exhibited a disposition to carry forward in an aggravated form the system of persecution initiated in the previous reign. The secret of the apparent inconsistency may be found in the fact that the courtiers were not slow in perceiving, on the one hand, the almost incalculable gains which the confiscation of the goods of condemned heretics might be made to yield, and, on the other, the facility with which a monarch of a disposition naturally gentle and humane De Thou, i.

Henry was a religious prince also, according to Dandolo. The ambassador's standard, however, was not a very severe one: The observance of the strict precepts of the moral law, they argued, was of less importance than the purity of the faith. The title of "Very Christian" had been borne by some of his predecessors whose private lives had been full of gallantries. His claim to it would be forfeited by the adoption of the stern principles of the reformers; while the Pontiff who conferred it would never venture to remove the honorable distinction, or refuse to unlock the gates of paradise to him who should prove himself an obedient son of the church and a persecutor of its enemies.

To fulfil these conditions was the easier, as the persons upon whom were to be exercised the severities dictated by heaven, plotted revolutions and aspired to convert France into a republic, on the pattern of the cantons of Switzerland. Lending a willing ear to these suggestions, Henry the Second no sooner began to reign than he began to persecute. Toward the close of the reign of Francis, the prisons of Normandy had become so full of persons incarcerated for religion's sake, that a separate and special chamber had been instituted in the Parliament of Rouen, to give exclusive attention to the trial of such cases.

One of Henry's first acts was to establish a similar chamber in the Parliament of Paris. Judges selected with such a commission were not likely to incline to the side of mercy; and the chamber speedily earned for itself, by the numbers of victims it sent to the flames, the significant popular name of " la Chambre ardente.

The rapid propagation of the reformed doctrines by the press gave occasion to the publication of a new edict. The printing of any book containing matters pertaining to the Holy Scriptures was strictly forbidden. Equally prohibited was the sale of books brought from Geneva, Germany, or other foreign parts, without the approval of the Theological Faculty of Paris. All annotated copies of the Bible must contain the name of the author, and the publisher's name and address. Persons of all ranks were warned against retaining in their possession any condemned work. But these restrictions had little effect in repressing the spread of the Reformation.

If a severe blow was struck at the publishing trade in France, the dissemination of books printed abroad, and, frequently, with spurious title-pages, A singular illustration of this device is given in a letter recently discovered.

In a printer, to secure for his edition of the Protestant liturgy and psalter a more ready entrance into Roman Catholic cities, added the whimsical imprint: The ultimate fate of the books is unknown. A single copy of this Roman edition has recently come to light. It proves to be the earliest edition thus far discovered of Calvin's Strasbourg Liturgy, the prototype of his Geneva Liturgy. Douen, Clement Marot et le Psautier huguenot Paris, , i.

It now assumed, however, a more stealthy and cautious character. Blood flowed in every part of the kingdom. Not only the capital, but also the provinces furnished their constant witnesses to the truth of the "Lutheran" doctrines. The awkward old French practice of making the year begin with Easter, instead of January 1st, has in this, as in many other instances, led to great confusion, even in the minds of those who were perfectly familiar with the custom.

État civil

So does White, Massacre of St. At Paris, one Florence Venot was confined seven weeks in a cell upon the construction of which so much perverted ingenuity had been expended that the prisoner could neither lie down nor stand erect, and the hour of release from weary torture was waited for with ardent longing, even if it led to the stake. But the death of a nameless tailor has, by the singularity of its incidents, acquired a celebrity surpassing that of any other martyrdom in the early part of this reign.

In the midst of the tourneys and other festivities provided to signalize the occasion of the queen's coronation and his own solemn entry into Paris, the desire seized Henry to see with his own eyes and to interrogate one of the members of the sect to whose account such serious charges were laid. A poor tailor, arrested in his shop in the Rue St. Antoine, a few paces from the royal palace, for the crime of working on a day which the church had declared holy, was brought before him.

So contemptible a dialectician could do little, it was presumed, to shake the faith of the Very Christian King. But the result disappointed the expectations of the cour tiers and ecclesiastics that were present. Hereupon Diana of Poitiers, an interested opponent, whose coffers were being filled with the goods of condemned heretics, undertook to silence him with the tongue of a witty woman. The tailor, who had patiently borne the ridicule and scorn with which he had hitherto been treated, turned upon the mistress of the king a look of solemn warning as he said: He even desired with his own eyes to see him undergo the extreme penalty of the law.

A solemn procession had been ordered to proceed from St. Paul's to Notre Dame. The prayers there offered for the destruction of heresy were followed by an "exemplary demonstration" of the king's pious disposition, in the execution of four "Lutherans" in as many different squares of the city. Antoine, Henry posted himself at a window that commanded the entire spectacle.

Les prix littéraires – La récap – Ballade au fil de l'eau …

But it was no coward's death that he beheld. Soon perceiving and recognizing the monarch before whom he had witnessed so good a profession, the tailor fixed his gaze upon him, nor would he avert his face, however much the king ordered that his position should be changed. Even in the midst of the flames he still continued to direct his dying glance toward the king, until the latter, abashed, was compelled to withdraw from the window. For days Henry declared that the spectre haunted his waking hours and drove sleep from his eyes at night; and he affirmed with an oath that never again would he witness so horrible a scene.

Catherine du Val des Escolliers. Happy would it have been for his memory had he adhered, in the case of Anne du Bourg, to so wise a resolution! The ashes of one martyr were scarcely cold before new fires were kindled—now before the cathedral, now before some parish church, again in the crowded market or in the distant provincial town. At one time it was a widow that welcomed the rope that bound her, as the zone given her by a heavenly bridegroom in token of her approaching nuptials.

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A few years later, it was a nobleman who, when in view of his rank the sentence of the judges would have spared him the indignity of the halter which was placed around the neck of his companions, begged the executioner to make no exception in his case, saying: The failure, however, of these fearful exhibitions to strike terror into the minds of the persecuted, or accomplish the end for which they were undertaken, is proved by their frequent recurrence, and not less by the new series of sanguinary laws running through the reign of Henry.

An edict from Paris, on the nineteenth of November, , endeavored to remove all excuse for remissness on the part of the prelates, by conferring on the ecclesiastical judges the unheard-of privilege of arresting for the crime of heresy, the exclusive right of passing judgment upon simple heresy, and conjoint jurisdiction with the civil courts in cases in which public scandal, riot, or sedition might be involved.

Less than two years later, when Henry, uniting with Maurice of Saxony and Albert of Brandenburg, received the title of Defender of the Empire against Charles the Fifth, and was on the point of making war on Pope Julius the Third, he issued an edict forbidding his subjects, under severe penalties, from carrying gold or silver to Rome. This notable law reiterated the old complaint of the ill-success of previous efforts, and the statement of the impossibility of attaining the desired end save by diligent care and rigorous procedure.

Its most striking peculiarity was that it committed the trial of heretics to the newly appointed "presidial" judges, whose sentence, when ten counsellors had been associated with them, was to be final. All are commanded, with more than usual earnestness, to adore the breaden god on bended knee. All parish priests are commanded to read the Sorbonne Articles every Sabbath for the benefit of the people, that a solemn abnegation of Christ may thus resound throughout the land Geneva is alluded to more than ten times in the edict, and always with a striking mark of reproach.

I cannot agree with Soldan Geschichte des Prot. For the edict does not, as he asserts, permit "the civil judges—presidial judges as well as parliaments—equally with the spiritual, to commence every process. De Thou, himself a president of parliament ii. But the large number of additional articles exhibit in a singular manner the extent to which the doctrines of the Reformation had spread, the means of their diffusion, and the method by which it was hoped that they might be eradicated.

Prominent among the provisions appear those that relate to the products of the press. Evidently the Cardinal of Lorraine and the other advisers of the king were of the same mind with the great advocate of unlicensed printing, when he said: I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. This was the view somewhat bitterly expressed in one of the poems of the "Satyres Chrestiennes de la cuisine Papale " Geneva, ; reprinted , addressed "aux Rostisseurs," p.

The edict utterly prohibited the introduction of any books from Geneva and other places notoriously rebellious to the Holy See, the retention of condemned books by booksellers, and all clandestine printing. It instituted a semi-annual visitation of every typographical establishment, a clerical examination of all packages from abroad, a special inspection thrice a year at the great fairs of Lyons, through which many suspected books found their way into the kingdom. The "porte-panier," or pedler, was forbidden to sell books at all, because many pedlers brought in books from Geneva under pretext of selling other merchandise.

The bearers of letters from Geneva were to be arrested and punished. The goods and chattels of those who had fled to Geneva were to be confiscated. Informers were promised one-third of the property of the condemned. And lest the tongue should contaminate those whom the printed volume might not reach, all unlettered persons were warned not even to discuss matters of faith, the sacraments, and the polity of the church, whether at the table, in the field, or in secret conventicle. It is clear that the "dragon's teeth" were beginning to spring up warriors full armed; but the sowing still went on.

Often they penetrated far into the country. To such as were detected the penalty of the law was inexorably meted out. A pedler, after every bone of his body had been dislocated in the vain attempt to compel him to betray the names of those to whom he had sold his books, was burned at Paris in the midst of the applauding shouts of a great crowd of persons, who would have torn him to pieces had they been allowed.

The printers of French Switzerland willingly entrusted their publications to these faithful men, not without danger of the loss of their goods; and it was almost incredible how many men offered themselves to the extreme perils which threatened them. Every day, says the historian De Thou, persons were burned at Paris on account of religion. Cardinal Tournon and Diana of Poitiers, he tells us, shared in the opprobrium of being the instigators of these atrocities.

With the latter it was less fanaticism than a desire to augment the proceeds of the confiscation of the property of condemned heretics which she had lately secured for herself, and was employing to make up the ransom of her two sons-in-law, now prisoners of war. Very few of the courtiers of Henry's court had a spark of the magnanimity that fired the breast of the Marshal de Vieilleville. The name of this nobleman had, unknown to him, been inserted in a royal patent giving to him and others, who desired to shield themselves behind his honorable name, the confiscated goods of all condemned usurers and Lutherans in Guyenne and five other provinces of Southern France.

When the document was placed in his hands, and he was assured that it would yield to each of the six patentees twenty thousand crowns within four months, the marshal exclaimed: Besides that, for twenty thousand crowns to incur individually the curses of a countless number of women and children that will die in the poor-house in consequence of the forfeiture of the lives and property of their husbands and fathers, by fair means or foul—this would be to plunge ourselves into perdition at too cheap a rate! This incident belongs to the year Natives of different points in France, these young men, with others, had enjoyed in the distinguished school instituted in the chief city of the Pays de Vaud, under the protection of the Bernese, the instructions of Theodore Beza and other prominent reformed theologians.

A short time before Easter, , these young men, who had reached different stages in their course of study, Soldan is scarcely correct Gesch. Their plan was cordially endorsed by Beza, before whom it was first laid by one of their number who had been an inmate of his home, and then by the Church of Lausanne; for it evidenced the purity and sincerity of their zeal. Provided with cordial letters from Lausanne, as well as from Geneva, through which they passed, they started each for his native city, intending to labor first of all for the conversion of their own kindred and neighbors.

But a different field, and a shorter term of service than they had anticipated, were in store for them. At Lyons, having accepted the invitation of a fellow-traveller to visit him at his country-seat, they were surprised on the first of May, , by the provost and his guards, and, although they had committed no violation of the king's edicts by proclaiming the doctrines they believed, were hurried to the archiepiscopal prison, and confined in separate dungeons.

From their prayers for divine assistance they were soon summoned to appear singly before the "official"—the ecclesiastical judge to whom the archbishop deputed his judicial functions. The answers to the interrogatories, of which they transmitted to their friends a record, it has been truly said, put to shame the lukewarmness of our days by their courage, and amaze us by the presence of mind and the wonderful acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures they display.

He who will peruse them in the worm-eaten pages of the "Actiones Martyrum," in which their letters were collected by the pious zeal of a contemporary, cannot doubt the proficiency these youthful prisoners had attained, both in sacred and in human letters, at the feet of the renowned Beza. Their unanswerable defence, however, only secured their more speedy condemnation as heretics. On the thirteenth of May they were sentenced to the flames; but an appeal which they made from the sentence of the ecclesiastical judge, on the plea that it contravened the laws of France, secured delay until their case could be laid before parliament.

Tidings of the danger that overhung the young students of Lausanne reached Beza and Calvin, and called forth their warm sympathy. The best efforts of Beza and Viret were put forth in their behalf. A long succession of attempts to secure their release on the part of the canton of Berne individually, and of the four Protestant cantons of Switzerland collectively, was the result.

One letter to Henry received a highly encouraging reply. An embassy from Zurich, sent when the king's word had not been kept, was haughtily informed that Henry expected the cantons to trouble him no further with the matter, and to avoid interfering with the domestic affairs of his country, as he himself abstained from intermeddling with theirs.

The Greene Murder Case. The Innocence of Father Brown. The Egyptian Cross Mystery. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. L'Espion qui venait du froid. Murder on the Orient Express. Le Crime de l'Orient-Express. The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Charlie Muffin Charlie M. The Daughter of Time. The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Poisoned Chocolates Case. The Greek Coffin Mystery. The Postman Always Rings Twice. The Most Dangerous Game.

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