semination of copies of the
confession of their Christian faith, were easily traced in the
conversion of many within and without the prison; while the memory of
their joyful constancy on their way to the place of execution--which
rather resembled a triumphal than an ignominious procession--and in the
flames, was embalmed in the heart of many a spectator.[588]

[Sidenote: Activity of the canton of Berne.]

The Bernese were not discouraged by the ill-success of their
intercessions. Three times in the early part of the succeeding year
(1554) they begged, but with no better results, for the release of Paris
Panier, a man learned in the civil law.[589] With equal earnestness they
took the part of the persecuted reformers against the violence of their
enemies on many successive occasions. It was all in vain. The libertine
king, who saw no merit in the purity of life of the professors of the
"new doctrines," and no mark of Antichrist in the profligacy of Paul the
Third or of Julius the Third, but viewed with horror the permission
granted by the latter to the faithful of Paris to eat eggs, butter and
cheese during Lent,[590] maintained his more than papal orthodoxy, and
stifled the promptings of a heart by nature not averse to pity.

[Sidenote: Progress in Normandy.]

More than three years had passed away since the publication of the
Edict of Chateaubriand, but none of the fruits which its authors had
predicted were visible. The number of the reformed brought to trial, and
especially of those condemned to the flames, gradually diminished,
whilst it was notorious that the opponents of the dominant church were
rapidly multiplying. In some provinces--in Normandy, for example--their
placards were mysteriously posted on the walls, and their songs deriding
the Franciscan monks were sung in the dark lanes of the cities. Once
they had ventured to interrupt the discourse of a preacher on the topic
of purgatory, by loud expressions of dissent; but when on the next day
the subject was resumed, numbers of hearers left the church with cries
of "_au fol, au fol_," and forced those who would have arrested them in
the name of the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, to seek refuge from a
shower of stones in an adjoining monastery.[591]

[Sidenote: Proposal to establish the Spanish Inquisition.]

The zealous friends of the church, as well as those who were enriched by
confiscations, represented to the king that this state of things arose
from th