e once more put in possession of two of the old
ecclesiastical edifices. Yet the edict did not arrest the rapid progress
of the new faith. The mass was not reinstated, and the small Roman
Catholic minority remained at home on the feast-days. Even the lowest
class of the population--elsewhere, from ignorance and prejudice, the
stronghold of the papal religion--here seemed to share in the universal
tendency, and, unfortunately, as a local chronicler, to whom we are
indebted for these particulars, informs us, took no better way of
testifying its devotion than by "mutilating sepulchral monuments,
unearthing the dead, and committing a thousand acts of folly." Carrying
their hatred of everything that reminded them of the period of judicial
abuse to the length of detesting even the insignia of office, the people
compelled the ministers of the law to doff their traditional square cap
and assume a hat such as was worn by the rest of the population.[1233]
Thus the strength of the reformatory current could be gauged by the mud
and rubbish which it tore from the banks on either side--an addition to
its bulk that contributed nothing to its power, while marring its purity
and sullying its fair antecedents. A class of persons attached
themselves to the Huguenot community that could not be brought into
subjection to the discipline instituted with such difficulty at Geneva.
It would seem invidious to lay their excesses to the account of the
Huguenot leaders, whether religious or political, since those excesses
met with the severe reprobation of the latter.[1234]

[Sidenote: The rein, and not the spur, needed.]

[Sidenote: Marriages and baptisms at court, "after the fashion of
Geneva."]

"Would that our friends might restrain themselves at least for two
months!" was the ejaculation of Beza, in view of the natural impatience
exhibited on all sides. "I fear our own party more than I do our
adversaries."[1235] The rein was needed, not the spur. When, instead of
two hundred persons, the Parisian assemblies of Huguenots often
consisted of six thousand, a fanatical populace, accustomed for a whole
generation to see the very suspicion of Lutheranism expiated in the
flames of the Place de Greve or of the Halles, could ill brook the sight
of such open gatherings for the reformed worship. How much greater the
popular indignation when it became known that Chancellor L'Hospital had
authorized _two_ places for public worship according to the rites