ce to spring up armed men."[573] The edict utterly
prohibited the introduction of any books from Geneva and other places
notoriously rebellious to the Holy See, the retention of condemned books
by booksellers, and all clandestine printing. It instituted a
semi-annual visitation of every typographical establishment, a clerical
examination of all packages from abroad, a special inspection thrice a
year at the great fairs of Lyons, through which many suspected books
found their way into the kingdom. The "porte-panier," or pedler, was
forbidden to sell books at all, because many pedlers brought in books
from Geneva under pretext of selling other merchandise. The bearers of
letters from Geneva were to be arrested and punished. The goods and
chattels of those who had fled to Geneva were to be confiscated.
Informers were promised one-third of the property of the condemned. And
lest the tongue should contaminate those whom the printed volume might
not reach, all unlettered persons were warned not even to _discuss_
matters of faith, the sacraments, and the polity of the church, whether
at the table, in the field, or in secret conventicle.[574]

[Sidenote: The book-pedlers of Switzerland, etc.]

It is clear that the "dragon's teeth" were beginning to spring up
warriors full armed; but the sowing still went on. From Geneva, from
Neufchatel, from Strasbourg, and from other points, devoted men of
ardent piety, and often of no little cultivation, entered France and
cautiously sold or distributed the contents of the packs they carried.
Often they penetrated far into the country. To such as were detected the
penalty of the law was inexorably meted out. A pedler, after every bone
of his body had been dislocated in the vain attempt to compel him to
betray the names of those to whom he had sold his books, was burned at
Paris in the midst of the applauding shouts of a great crowd of persons,
who would have torn him to pieces had they been allowed.[575] The
printers of French Switzerland willingly entrusted their publications to
these faithful men, not without danger of the loss of their goods; and
it was almost incredible how many men offered themselves to the extreme
perils which threatened them.[576] The Edict of Chateaubriand, intended
to destroy the rising intellectual and moral influence of Geneva, it
must be noticed, had the opposite effect; for nothing had up to this
time so tended to collect the scattered Protestants of France in a