ting, must have room for healthy growth. From
all parts of France the constant cry was for the Word of God and for
liberty. Although the number of daily attendants on Calvin's lectures
was roughly estimated at a thousand,[1225] it was impossible for Geneva
to supply the drafts made upon her, when there were three hundred
parishes, apparently in a single province, which had thrown off the
mass, but had as yet been unsuccessful in their quest of pastors;[1226]
when the history of hundreds of towns and villages was the counterpart
of the history of Foix, where, in two months, an infant church of
thirty or forty members had grown to have five or six hundred, and the
Protestant population was almost in the majority in the town, although
as yet, notwithstanding incessant efforts to obtain a pastor, the only
public service consisted of the repetition by a layman of the prayers
contained in the liturgy of Calvin[1227]--when many a minister met with
success similar to that which attended Pierre Fornelet, who could point
to fifteen villages in the vicinity of Chalons-sur-Marne, begging for
Huguenot pastors, and all this the fruit of seven weeks of apostolic
labours; and could record the fact that poor men and women flocked to
the city from a distance of seven or eight leagues, when they simply
heard that the Gospel was preached there[1228]--when it was estimated by
competent witnesses that from four to six thousand ministers could be
profitably employed within the bounds of the kingdom.[1229]

[Sidenote: Troyes.]

[Sidenote: Paris.]

In some places, by strenuous exertion, the ministers were successful in
persuading their flocks to refrain from overt acts tending to provoke
outbursts of hostility. At Troyes, in Champagne, a thousand persons
convened by day or by night, not summoned by the sound of bells, but
quietly notified by an "_advertisseur_" of the daily changing place of
meeting. Yet even there, on Sunday and on public holidays, the Huguenots
took pains to hold their "assemblee" in the open day, before the eyes of
their enemies.[1230] At Paris, the Protestants, compelled to go some
distance into the country for worship, on their return (Sunday, the
twelfth of October), found the gates closed against them, and were
attacked by a mob composed of the dregs of the populace. Many of their
number were killed or wounded. The assailants retreated when the
Huguenot gentry, with swords drawn, rallied for the defence of their
unarm