ling did not diminish at once after the more intrepid of
the Huguenots had, under military compulsion, been readmitted into Rouen.
There were daily complaints of ill-usage. But the insolence of the
dominant party rose to a still higher pitch when there appeared a royal
edict--whether genuine or forged has not as yet been settled--by which the
cardinal demands of the Huguenots were granted. The alleged concessions
may not strike us as very extraordinary. They consisted chiefly in
disarming the Roman Catholics equally with the adherents of the opposite
creed, and in erecting a new chamber in parliament to try impartially
cases in dispute between the adherents of the two communions.[272] This
was certainly decreeing but a small measure of the equality in the eye of
the law which the Protestants might claim as a natural and indefeasible
right. The citizens of the Norman capital, however, regarded the enactment
as a monstrous outrage upon society. Charles the Ninth, happened at this
time to be passing through Gaillon, a place some ten leagues distant from
Rouen, on his way to the siege of Havre; and Damours, the
advocate-general, was deputed to bear to him a protest drawn up by
parliament. The tone of the paper was scarcely respectful to the monarch;
it was positively insulting to the members of the royal council who
professed the Protestant faith. It predicted the possible loss of
Normandy, or of his entire kingdom, in case the king pursued a system of
toleration. The Normans, it said, would not submit to Protestant
governors, nor to the return of the exiles in arms, nor to their
resumption of their former dignities. If the "for-issites" continued their
excesses, they would be set upon and killed. The Roman Catholic burgesses
of Rouen even proclaimed a conditional loyalty. Should the king not see
fit to accede to their demands, they declared themselves ready to place
the keys of their city in his hands to dispose of at his pleasure, at the
same time craving permission to go where they pleased and to take away
their property with them.

[Sidenote: A rude rebuff.]

Truly the spirit of the "Holy League" was already born, though the times
were not yet ripe for the promulgation of such tenets. The
advocate-general was a fluent speaker, and he had been attended many a
weary mile by an enthusiastic escort. Parliamentary counsellors, municipal
officers, clergy, an immense concourse of the lower stratum of the
population--all were