ies were
about to follow their example.

[Sidenote: Fifteen cities in one province receive ministers.]

[Sidenote: The children learn religion in the Geneva catechism.]

These were but the beginnings of evil. Three days passed, and the
Lieutenant-Governor of Languedoc sent a special messenger to the king,
to inform him of the rapid progress of the contagion. Fifteen of the
most considerable cities of the province had openly received
ministers.[915] Ten thousand foot and five hundred horse would be needed
to reduce them, and, when taken, they must be held by garrisons, and
punished by loss of their municipal privileges.[916] A fortnight more
elapsed. Three or four thousand inhabitants of Nismes had retired in
arms to the neighboring Cevennes.[917] When they descended into the
plain, a larger number, who had submitted on the approach of the
soldiery, would unite with them and form a considerable army. "Heresy,
alas, gains ground daily," despondingly writes Villars; "_the children
learn religion only in the catechism brought from Geneva; all know it by
heart_." The cause of the evil he seemed to find in the
circumstance--undoubtedly favorable to the Huguenots--that, of
twenty-two bishops whose dioceses lay in Languedoc, all but five or six
were non-residents.[918]

To all which lamentations the answer came back after the accustomed
fashion: "Slay, hang without respect to the forms of law; send lesser
culprits, if preferable, to the galleys."[919]

In Normandy, too, it began to be impossible for the Huguenots to conceal
themselves. At Rouen, in spite of the severe penalties threatened, seven
thousand persons gathered in the new market-place, on the twenty-sixth
of August, "singing psalms, and with their preacher in the midst on a
chair preaching to them," while five hundred men with arquebuses stood
around the crowd "to guard them from the Papists." A few days before, at
the opening of the great fair of Jumieges, a friar, according to custom,
undertook to deliver a sermon; but the people, not liking his doctrine,
"pulled him out of the pulpit and placed another in his place."[920]

[Sidenote: Elections for the States General.]

Nor was the courage of the Huguenots less clearly manifested a little
later in the elections preparatory to the holding of the States General.
In spite of strict injunctions issued by the Cardinal of Lorraine to the
officers in each bailiwick and senechaussee, to prevent the debate of
grievan