provincial city, and under
the guidance of several pastors. In the name of these churches a
petition was presented to the king, asking for places of worship, and
loyally tendering life and property in his defence.[1221]

[Sidenote: Beza secures a favorable royal order.]

To restrain the impatience of so numerous a body as the Protestants,
while waiting for the assembly of the notables which was to confer the
full measure of liberty they desired, was the task imposed upon Beza. He
was to serve as a _hostage_ for the obedience of the reformed
churches.[1222] But the sagacious theologian recognized the difficulty
of the position he was called to fill. He warned the government
accordingly against disappointing the hopes it aroused in the breasts of
his fellow Protestants, and he urged that if they must be temporarily
denied the use of the places of worship which they had occupied wherever
they constituted the bulk of the population, the present rigor must be
somewhat abated during the interval before their formal emancipation.
After much importunity a mandate was obtained, addressed to the royal
officers, in which they were instructed to interpret the previous edicts
with leniency, permitting different degrees of liberty, according to the
various circumstances in which they were placed. In Normandy and Gascony
the religious meetings might be open and unrestricted. In Paris they
must be held secretly in private houses, and not more than two hundred
persons could be gathered together.[1223] Everywhere, however, the
Protestants were to be protected, and this was a great step gained. For
those very officers, whose task it had not unfrequently been to drag the
Huguenots to prison, were now constituted the guardians of their lives
and property.[1224]

[Sidenote: How to restrain Huguenot impetuosity.]

[Sidenote: Foix.]

[Sidenote: Chalons-sur-Marne.]

Yet, how to restrain the impetuosity, how to check the demands of the
multitudes recently converted to the reformed faith, how to induce them
to give up the churches where whole generations of their ancestors had
worshipped before them, and in which they believed that they had the
clearest right of property, and hand them over to a mere handful of
ignorant or interested persons who would not listen to reason or
Scripture--this was the problem that seemed even beyond the power of
Beza's wit to solve. The young vine, in whose branches the full sap of
spring was rapidly circula