urier came in to shake his constancy. This latter, a doctor
of theology, had at one time been so carried away with the desire of
innovation as to hurl down a statue of their patron saint standing at
the door of the monastery of the Franciscans. He had now, as we have
already seen, become the favorite instrument in effecting abjurations
similar to his own. His suggestions prevailed over Pauvan's
convictions.[191] The young scholar consented to obey the Sorbonne's
demand. The faculty's judgment had been pronounced on the ninth of
December, 1525; a fortnight later, on the morrow of Christmas day--a
favorite time for striking displays of this kind--Pauvan publicly
retracted his "errors," and made the usual "amende honorable," clad only
in a shirt, and holding a lighted taper in his hand.[192]

[Sidenote: He is burned on the Place de Greve.]

If Pauvan's submission secured him any peace, it was a short-lived
peace. Tortured by conscience, he soon betrayed his mental anguish by
sighs and groans. Again he was drawn from the prison, where he had been
confined since his abjuration,[193] and subjected to new
interrogatories. With the opportunity to vindicate his convictions, his
courage and cheerfulness returned. As a relapsed heretic, no fate could
be in store for him but death at the stake, and this he courageously met
on the _Place de Greve_.[194] But the holocaust was inauspicious for
those who with this victim hoped to annihilate the "new doctrines."
Before mounting the huge pyre heaped up to receive him, Pauvan was
thoughtlessly permitted to speak; and so persuasive were his words that
it was an enemy's exclamation that "it had been better to have cost the
church a million of gold, than that Pauvan had been suffered to speak to
the people."[195]

[Sidenote: The hermit of Livry.]

Scarcely more encouraging to the advocates of persecution was the scene
in the area in front of Notre-Dame de Paris, when, at the sound of the
great cathedral bell, an immense crowd was gathered to witness the
execution of an obscure person, known to us only as "the hermit of
Livry"--a hamlet on the road to Meaux. With such unshaken fortitude did
he encounter the flames, that the astonished spectators were confidently
assured by their spiritual advisers that he was one of the damned who
was being led to the fires of hell.[196]

[Sidenote: Bishop Briconnet becomes the jailer of the "Lutherans."]

Where less rigor was deemed necessary, the pena