shing altars." In the great number of similar executions
with which the sanguinary records of Paris abound, the fate of Nicholas
Croquet and the two De Gastines--father and son--would have been
forgotten, but for the extraordinary measures taken in respect to the
house where the impiety had been committed of celebrating the Lord's
Supper according to the simple scheme of its first institution. The
Parisian parliament ordered that "the house of the Five White Crosses,
belonging to the De Gastines, situated in the Rue Saint Denis," should be
razed to the ground, and that upon the site a stone cross should be
placed, with an inscription explanatory of the occasion of its erection.
That spot was to serve as a public square for all time, and a fine of
6,000 livres, with corporal punishment, was imposed upon any one who
should ever undertake to build upon it.[716] It was not foreseen that
military exigencies might presently render imperative a reconciliation
with the Huguenots, and that the "perpetual" decree of parliament, like
the "irrevocable" edicts of the king, might be somewhat abridged by stern
necessity.

[Sidenote: Ferocity of parliament against Coligny and others.]

[Sidenote: A price set on the head of the admiral.]

The work of blood continued. In July two noblemen were decapitated--the
Baron de Laschene and the Baron de Courtene--and denunciation of reputed
heretics was vigorously prosecuted, by command of parliament and of the
city curates.[717] Two months later a cowardly but impotent blow was
struck at a more distinguished personage. Parliament undertook to try
Gaspard de Coligny, and, having found him guilty of treason (on the
thirteenth of September), pronounced him infamous, and offered a reward of
fifty thousand gold crowns for his apprehension, with full pardon for any
offences the captor might have committed. Lest the exploit, however,
should be deemed too difficult for execution, a few days later (on the
twenty-eighth of September) the same liberal terms were held out to any
one who should murder him. As it was not so easy to capture or
assassinate a general who was at that moment in command of an army not
greatly inferior to that of the Duke of Anjou, the court gave the Parisian
populace the cheaper spectacle of a hanging of the admiral in effigy. It
was the eve of the festival of "the Exaltation of the Cross"--Tuesday, the
thirteenth of September--and the time was deemed appropriate for the
executio