n effigy. Montmorency attempted to secure
the Protestants against further aggression by disarming the entire
population, with the exception of four hundred chosen men, and by
compelling the parliament, on the fifteenth of May, to swear to
observe the Edict of Pacification--precautions whose efficacy we shall
be able to estimate more accurately by the events of the following
year.[806]

[Sidenote: The "Croix de Gastines" again.]

The strength of the popular hatred of the Huguenots was often too great
for even the government to cope with. The rabble of the cities would hear
of no upright execution of the provisions respecting the oblivion of past
injuries, and resisted with pertinacity the attempt to remove the traces
of the old conflict. The Parisians gave the most striking evidence of
their unextinguished rancor in the matter of the "Croix de Gastines," a
monument of religious bigotry, the reasons for whose erection in 1569 have
been sufficiently explained in a previous chapter.[807]

More than a year had passed since the promulgation of the royal edict of
pacification annulling all judgments rendered against Protestants since
the death of Henry the Second; and yet the Croix de Gastines still stood
aloft on its pyramidal base, upon the site of the Huguenot place of
meeting. Several times, at the solicitation of the Protestants, the
government ordered its demolition. The municipal officers of Paris
declined to obey, because it had not been erected by them; the parliament,
because, as they alleged, the sentence was just and they could not
retract; the Provost of Paris, because he was not above parliament, which
had placed it there.[808] Charles himself wrote with his own hand to the
provost: "You deliberate whether to obey me, and whether you will have
that fine pyramid overturned. I forbid you to appear in my presence until
it be cast down."[809] The end was not yet. The monks preached against the
sacrilege of lowering the cross. Maitre Vigor, on the first Sunday of
Advent, praised the people of Paris for having opposed the demolition,
maintaining that they had acted "only from zeal for God, who upon the
cross suffered for us." "The people," he declared, "had never murmured
when they had taken down Gaspard de Coligny, who had been hung in effigy,
and _would soon, God willing, be hung in very deed!_"[810] Meantime, the
mob of Paris exhibited its zeal for the honor of the cross by assailing
the soldiers sent to tear down