e make him who is
incorruptible at the right hand of God to be the prey of worms and
corruption? Were there no other error than this in your infernal
theology, well would ye deserve the fagot! Light then your fires to burn
_yourselves_, not us who refuse to believe in your idols, your new gods,
and new Christs that suffer themselves to be eaten indifferently by
animals and by you who are no better than animals!"[336] Closing with a
vivid contrast between the fruits of the mass and those of the true
Supper of our Lord, the writer finally exclaims of his opponents, "Truth
fails them, Truth threatens and pursues them, Truth terrifies them; by
which their reign shall shortly be destroyed forever."[337]

[Sidenote: The popular excitement in Paris.]

It would be difficult to exaggerate the effect produced upon the
populace of Paris by this intemperate handbill. If any part of the
ceremonial of the church was deeply rooted in the devotion of the common
people, it was the service of the mass. And in attacking the doctrine of
the Real Presence, the authors of this libel, distributed under cover of
the darkness, had, in the estimation of the rabble, proved themselves
more impious and deserving a more signal punishment than that
sacrilegious Jew whose knife had drawn drops of miraculous blood from
the transubstantiated wafer. Not the parish priests, nor the doctors of
the Sorbonne, could surpass the infuriated populace in loud execrations
of the wretch for whom burning alive seemed too mild a punishment.

[Sidenote: Anger of the king.]

But a second act of ill-timed rashness accomplished a result even more
disastrous for Protestantism than the kindling of the fanatical zeal of
the people; for it inflamed the anger of the king, and made him, what
all the persuasions of the Roman court had hitherto failed to make him,
a determined enemy and persecutor of the "new doctrines." A copy of the
placard was secretly affixed by night to the very door of the royal
bedchamber in the castle of Amboise,[338] where Francis and his court
were at the time sojourning. If the contents of the tract offended the
religious principles carefully inculcated upon the king by his spiritual
instructors, the audacity of the person who, disregarding bars, bolts
and guards, had presumed to invade the privacy of the royal abode and
obtrude his unwelcome message, could not but be regarded in the light of
a direct personal insult. Francis had not been in the ha