citizens on his approach.
His artillery, he said, would serve him as well in gaining admission.
The severity of the retribution meted out under his superintendence to
those who had ventured to resist the royal authority was unparalleled in
French history.[529] If the constable's ferocity did not diminish with
age, it acquired a tinge of the ludicrous from his growing superstition.
Never would he omit his devotions at the appointed hour, whether at home
or in the field--"so conscientious was he." But he would interrupt the
recital of his _pater-nosters_ with such orders as the emergency might
demand, or his inclination prompt: "Seize such a man! Hang that one to a
tree! Run that fellow through at once with your pikes, or shoot him down
before my eyes! Cut the knaves to pieces that have undertaken to hold
that belfry against the king! Burn that village! Fire everything to the
distance of a quarter of a league!" So terrible a reputation did his
devotions consequently acquire, that it was a current saying: "Beware of
the constable's pater-nosters!"[530]

[Sidenote: His unpopularity.]

In fact, Anne de Montmorency was ill-fitted to win popularity. A
despatch of Sir John Mason, three years later, gives a glimpse of his
relations with his fellow-courtiers. "There is a little _square_," he
writes, "between the Duchess of Valentinois, who ruleth the roast, and
the constable. A great many of the court _wisheth the increase thereof.
He is very ill-beloved_, for that he is a hinderer of all men saving his
own kinsfolks, whom he doth so advance as no man may have anything by
his will but they, and for that also he feedeth every man with fair
words, and performeth nothing."[531]

[Sidenote: Recalled from disgrace by Henry II.]

For six years before the death of Francis the First the constable had
been living in retirement upon his estates. The occasion of his
banishment from court is stated, by one who enjoyed the best
opportunities for learning the truth, to have been the advice which he
had given the monarch to permit the Emperor Charles the Fifth to pass
through his dominions when going to Netherlands to suppress the revolt
of the burghers of Ghent.[532] Francis, indeed, is said on his deathbed
to have warned his son against the dangers with which the ambition of
the constable and of the family of Guise threatened his kingdom. But, as
we have seen, Henry had no sooner received tidings of his father's
death, than he at once su