s.]

Again Du Bourg appealed from the Archbishop of Sens to the Archbishop of
Lyons, "Primate of _all_ the Gauls," and from his unfavorable decision
to the parliament. Meanwhile he wrote to the Protestants of Paris, who
watched his course with the deepest interest, recognizing the important
influence which his firmness or his apostasy must exert on the interests
of truth, and begged them not to be scandalized by a course that might
appear to proceed from craven fear of death. If he thus had recourse to
the judgments of the Pope's tools, he said, it was not through undue
solicitude for life, nor because he in any wise approved their doctrine;
but that he might have the better opportunity to make known his faith in
as many places as possible, and prove that he had not precipitated his
own destruction, by failing to make use of all legitimate means of
acquittal. As for himself, he felt that he had been so strengthened by
God's grace, that the day of his death was an object of desire, which he
very joyfully awaited.[791]

[Sidenote: Du Bourg in the Bastile.]

At length the last appeal was rejected, and Du Bourg, under sentence of
death, was remanded to the Bastile, to await the pleasure of the king.
Many months had elapsed since his arrest, but his courage had risen with
the trials he was called to face. To prevent any attempt to rescue him
he had at one time been shut up in an iron cage, and the very passers-by
had been forbidden to tarry and look up at the grim walls of the prison.
But the captive was less solicitous to escape than his captors were to
detain him. He resolutely declined to avail himself of a bull obtained
for him from Rome by friends, through liberal payment of money, and
opening the way for an appeal from the Primate of France to the Pope
himself. The prison walls, it is said, resounded with the joyful psalms
and hymns which he sang, to the accompaniment of the lute.[792]

[Sidenote: Intercession of the Elector Palatine.]

[Sidenote: His pathetic speech.]

A few days before Christmas the order was given for his execution. Two
events determined the Cardinal of Lorraine: the assassination of
President Minard, one of Du Bourg's judges, whose death was caused,
doubtless, by the hand of one of the many whom he had wronged, although
by some ascribed to the Protestants;[793] and the intercession of the
Elector Palatine,[794] who by a special embassy had expressed the
desire to make Du Bourg a professor of