ere was no lack
of food for the gallows. To have been present at the "preachings," to have
partaken of the communion, to have maintained that the Protestant was
better than the Roman Catholic religion, to have uttered a jest or drawn a
caricature reflecting upon the Papal Church and its ceremonies--any of
these was sufficient reason for sending a man to be hung or beheaded. The
duchess's "moderation" had effected thus much, that no one seems to have
been burned at the stake. And so, at last, by assiduous but bloody work,
the Reformation was completely extirpated from Cateau Cambresis. It was,
at least, a source of mournful satisfaction that scarce one of the
sufferers failed to exhibit great constancy and pious resignation in view
of death.[413]

[Sidenote: The idea of toleration is not understood.]

Let us return from the Flemish borders to France proper, where,
notwithstanding attempts at external reconciliation, the breach between
the Protestants and their Roman Catholic neighbors was daily widening,
where, in fact, the elements of a new war were gathering shape and
consistency. It was becoming more and more difficult--especially for a
government of temporary shifts and expedients--to control the antagonistic
forces incessantly manifesting themselves. The idea of toleration was
understood by neither party. The Roman Catholics of Provins were so slow
to comprehend the liberty of conscience and religious profession of which
the Huguenots had wrung a concession in the last edict by force of arms,
that they undertook to prosecute the Protestants for eating roast lamb and
capons during Lent. With little more appreciation of the altered posture
of affairs, the Archbishop of Sens (Cardinal Guise) initiated a trial
against a heretical curate of Courtenay, according to the rules of canon
law, and the latter might have stood but a poor chance to recover his
freedom had not the Huguenot lord of Courtenay seized upon the
archbishop's "official" as he was passing his castle, and held him as a
hostage to secure the curate's release.[414]

[Sidenote: Huguenot pleasantries.]

It would be asserting too much to say that the Protestants were innocent
of any infraction upon the letter or spirit of the Edict of Amboise. They
would have been angels, not men, had they been proof against the
contagious spirit of raillery that infected the men of the sixteenth
century. Where they dared, they not unfrequently held up their opponents
to ri