Henry M. Baird · 290 of 379

CHAPTER XI · The affair at Beauvais.

The disturbance that attracted more attention than any other took place in the episcopal city of Beauvais—about forty miles north of Paris—on Easter Monday, the very next day after Montmorency, Guise, and St. André had been confirming their inauspicious compact at the sacred feast in honor of a risen Redeemer. The Bishop of Beauvais was the celebrated Cardinal Odet de Châtillon, long suspected of being at heart a convert to the reformed doctrines. More bold than he had formerly been, he now openly fostered their spread in his diocese. But even the personal popularity of the brother of Coligny and D'Andelot could not, in the present instance, secure immunity for the preachers who proclaimed the Gospel under his auspices. Incited by the priesthood, the people overleaped all the bounds within which they had hitherto contained themselves. The occasion was a rumor spread abroad that the Cardinal, instead of attending the public celebration of the mass in his cathedral church, had, with his domestics, participated in a private communion in his own palace, and that every communicant had, at the hands of the Abbé Bouteiller, received both elements, "after the fashion of Geneva." Hereupon the mob, gathering in great force, assailed a private house in which there lived a priest accused of teaching the children the doctrines of religion from the reformed catechisms. The unhappy Adrien Fourré—such was the schoolmaster's name—was killed; and the rabble, rendered more savage through their first taste of blood, dragged his corpse to the public square, where it was burned by the hands of the city hangman. Odet himself incurred no little risk of meeting a similar fate. But the strength of the episcopal palace, and the sight of their bishop clothed in his cardinal's costume, appeased the mob for the time; and before the morrow came, a goodly number of the neighboring nobles had rallied for his defence.