mpted to its commission by the promise of a paltry
recompense of one hundred _sous_ for every image destroyed. But, since
no one seems ever to have been punished, it is probable that this report
was a fabrication; and the question whether the mutilation of the Virgin
of the _Rue des Rosiers_ was the deliberate act of a religious
enthusiast, or a freak of drunken revellers, or, as some imagined, a
cunning device of good Catholics to inflame the popular passions
against the "Lutherans," must, for the present, at least, remain a
subject of profound doubt.

[Sidenote: Expiatory processions.]

But, whoever may have been the author, pains were taken to expiate the
sacrilege. Successive processions visited the spot. In one of these,
five hundred students of the university, chosen from different colleges
and belonging to the first families, bore lighted tapers, which they
placed on the temporary altar erected in front of the image. The clergy,
both secular and regular, came repeatedly with all that was most
precious in attire and relics. To add still more to the pomp of the
propitiatory pilgrimages, Francis himself took part in a magnificent
display, made on the _Fete-Dieu_, or Corpus Christi (the eleventh of
June). He was preceded by heralds and by the Dukes of Cleves and Ferrara
and other noblemen of high rank, while behind him walked the King of
Navarre, the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Ambassadors of England, Venice,
Florence, and other foreign states, the officers of parliament, and a
crowd of gentlemen of the king's house, archers and persons of all
conditions bringing up the rear. On reaching the spot where the
mutilated statue still occupied its niche, Francis, after appropriate
religious exercises, ascended the richly carpeted steps, and reverently
substituted an effigy in solid silver, of similar size, in place of the
image which had been the object of insult.[288]

[Sidenote: Other icoconoclastic excesses.]

From this time forward, iconoclastic demonstrations became more common.
Paintings, also, when exposed to the public view, shared the perils to
which unprotected statues were subjected. The Virgin, and such reputable
saints as St. Roch and St. Fiacre, depicted on the walls of the Rue St.
Martin, were wantonly disfigured, some two years later; so that at last,
the Parliament of Paris, in despair of preventing the repetition of the
act, or of discovering its authors, adopted the prudent course of
forbidding that an