Henry M. Baird · 277 of 379

CHAPTER XI · The clergy alone makes no progress.

Thus spoke the chosen delegates of the three orders when summoned into the royal presence for the first time after the lapse of seventy-seven years. The nobility and clergy vied with each other in extolling their own order; the people made little pretension, but had a large budget of grievances demanding redress. Nearly forty years had the Reformation been gaining ground surely and steadily. It had found, at last, recognition more or less explicit in the noblesse and the "tiers état." But the clergy had made no progress, had learned nothing. The speech of Quintin, their chosen representative, on this critical occasion, was long and tiresome; but, instead of convincing, it only excited shame and disgust.

Indeed, an allusion of his to the favorers of heresy daring to present petitions in behalf of the Huguenots, who demanded places in which to worship God, was taken by Admiral Coligny as a personal insult to himself, for which Quintin was compelled to make a public apology.