dicule in the coarse style so popular with all classes.[415] Thus a
contemporary Roman Catholic recounts with indignation how Prince Porcien
held a celebration in Normandy, and among the games was one in which a
"paper castle" was assaulted, and the defenders, dressed as _monks_, were
taken prisoners, and were afterward paraded through the streets on asses'
backs.[416] But these buffooneries were harmless sallies contrasted with
the insults with which the Protestants were treated in every town where
they were not numerically preponderating; nor were they anything more than
rare occurrences in comparison with the latter. This page of history is
compelled to record no violent commotion on the part of the reformed
population, save in cases where, as at Pamiers (a town not far south of
Toulouse, near the foot of the Pyrenees), they had been goaded to madness
by the government deliberately trampling upon their rights of worship, at
the instigation of the ecclesiastical authorities.[417] A trifling
accident might then, however, be sufficient to cause their inflamed
passions to burst out; and in the disturbances that were likely to ensue,
little respect was usually paid to the churches or the monasteries. Such
are wont to be the unhappy effects of the denial of justice according to
the forms of established law. They would have been a hundred-fold more
frequent had it not been for the persistent opposition interposed by the
Huguenot ministers--many of them with Calvin carrying the doctrine of
passive submission to constituted authority almost to the very verge of
apparent pusillanimity.

[Sidenote: Alarm of the Protestants.]

[Sidenote: Attempts to murder the admiral and Prince Porcien.]

From month to month the conviction grew upon the Protestants that their
destruction was agreed upon. There was no doubt with regard to the desire
of Philip the Second; for his course respecting his subjects in the
Netherlands showed plainly enough that the extermination of heretics was
the only policy of which his narrow mind could conceive as pleasing in the
sight of heaven. The character of Catharine--stealthy, deceitful,
regardless of principle--was equally well understood. Between such a queen
and the trusted minister of such a prince, a secret conference like that
of Bayonne could not be otherwise than highly suspicious. It is not
strange that the Huguenots received it as an indubitable fact that the
court from this time forward was only