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CHAPTER IX · A second and more urgent address.

But the promises of Catharine were given only to be broken. Finding the atrocious persecution still in operation, and seeing themselves hunted in their houses, the Protestants again approached her. They denounced the anger of God who would not leave Du Bourg unavenged. They warned her of the danger that over-much oppression would breed revolt—not on the part of those who had embraced the reformed doctrines as taught in the Gospel, from whom she might expect all obedience—but from others, a hundred-fold more numerous, whose eyes were open to the abuses of the papacy, but who, not having submitted themselves to the discipline of the church, would not brook persecution. The embankment, it was to be feared, might give way to the violence of the pressure, and the pent-up waters pour themselves abroad, carrying devastation and ruin to all the neighboring lands. The implied menace aroused the affected indignation of Catharine; but, loth to lose her hold upon the Protestants, she again professed her pity for a sect whose adherents went to the most cruel torments as cheerfully as to a wedding feast, and she expressed a desire to have an interview with one of their ministers. The Protestants did their part, but Catharine failed to keep the appointment; and all that the minister could effect was to convey to her a copy of the yet unpublished Confession of Faith of the French Churches, which, it is more than likely, she never read.