s psalms and
the frequenting of French conventicles, but he had sent his spies to the
conventicles to discover cases of disobedience. The Huguenots of Cateau
multiplied in spite of these precautions. "The eyes of the aforesaid
spies," writes a witness of the events, "were so holden that they did not
even recognize those with whom they conversed." Yet, although the
Huguenots met at home to read the Bible and to "sing the psalms which were
most appropriate to the persecution and dispersion of the children of
God," the town was as quiet as it had ever been. A slight incident,
however, revealed the intensity of the fire secretly burning below the
surface. A Huguenot minister was discovered on Whitsunday, in an adjoining
village, and brought to Cateau. His captors facetiously told the suspected
Protestants whom they met, that they had brought them a preacher, and that
they would have no further occasion for leaving the town in quest of one.
But the joke was not so well appreciated as it might have been by the
adherents of the reformed faith, who seem by this time to have become
extremely numerous. The excitement was intense. When the bailiff of
Cambresis was detected, not long after, stealing into the place by night,
accompanied by some sixty men, with the intention of carrying the preacher
off to Cambray, he met with unexpected resistance. A citizen, on his way
to his garden outside the walls, was the first to notice the guard of
strange arquebusiers at the gate, and ran back to give the alarm. The
tocsin was rung, and the inhabitants assembled in arms. It was now the
turn of the bailiff to be astonished, and to listen humbly to the
remonstrances of the people, indignant that he should have presumed to
seize their gates and usurp the functions of the local magistrates.
However, the intruders, after being politely informed that, according to
strict justice, the whole party might have been summarily put to death,
were suffered to beat a hasty retreat; not that so perfect a control could
be put upon the ardor of some, but that they "administered sundry blows
with the flat of their swords upon the back of the bailiff and a few of
his soldiers."

[Sidenote: Interference of the Archbishop of Cambray.]

The incident itself was of trifling importance, for the Huguenot minister
was promptly given up to the baron of the village where he had been
captured, and was taken by his orders to Cambray. But it led to serious
consequences. Th