Henry M. Baird · 250 of 379

CHAPTER X · The children learn religion in the Geneva catechism.

These were but the beginnings of evil. Three days passed, and the Lieutenant-Governor of Languedoc sent a special messenger to the king, to inform him of the rapid progress of the contagion. Fifteen of the most considerable cities of the province had openly received ministers. Ten thousand foot and five hundred horse would be needed to reduce them, and, when taken, they must be held by garrisons, and punished by loss of their municipal privileges. A fortnight more elapsed. Three or four thousand inhabitants of Nismes had retired in arms to the neighboring Cevennes. When they descended into the plain, a larger number, who had submitted on the approach of the soldiery, would unite with them and form a considerable army. "Heresy, alas, gains ground daily," despondingly writes Villars; "the children learn religion only in the catechism brought from Geneva; all know it by heart." The cause of the evil he seemed to find in the circumstance—undoubtedly favorable to the Huguenots—that, of twenty-two bishops whose dioceses lay in Languedoc, all but five or six were non-residents.

To all which lamentations the answer came back after the accustomed fashion: "Slay, hang without respect to the forms of law; send lesser culprits, if preferable, to the galleys."

In Normandy, too, it began to be impossible for the Huguenots to conceal themselves. At Rouen, in spite of the severe penalties threatened, seven thousand persons gathered in the new market-place, on the twenty-sixth of August, "singing psalms, and with their preacher in the midst on a chair preaching to them," while five hundred men with arquebuses stood around the crowd "to guard them from the Papists." A few days before, at the opening of the great fair of Jumièges, a friar, according to custom, undertook to deliver a sermon; but the people, not liking his doctrine, "pulled him out of the pulpit and placed another in his place."