y have been glad himself, a few
months later, to be able to forget, and of which his panegyrists have
fruitlessly striven to obliterate the memory. On the thirteenth of
January, 1535, after the lapse of nearly three months from the date of
the publication of the placards--an interval that might surely be
regarded as sufficiently long to permit his overheated passions to cool
down--the king sent to the Parliament of Paris _an Edict absolutely
prohibiting any exercise of the Art of Printing in France, on pain of
the halter_! It was no secret from whom the ignoble suggestion had come.
A year and a half earlier (on the seventh of June, 1533), the
theologians of the Sorbonne had presented Francis an urgent petition, in
view of the multiplication of heretical books, wherein they set forth
the absolute necessity of suppressing forever by a severe law the
pestilent art which had been the parent of so dangerous a progeny.[340]
The king was now acting upon the advice of his ghostly counsellors!

[Sidenote: He suspends the disgraceful edict.]

Happily for Francis, however, whose ambition it had hitherto been to
figure as a modern Maecenas, even a subservient parliament declined the
customary registration. The king, too, coming to his senses after the
lapse of six weeks, so far yielded to the remonstrances of his more
sensible courtiers as to recall his rash edict, or, rather, suspend its
operation until he could give the matter more careful consideration.
Meanwhile he undertook to institute a censorship. The king was to select
twelve persons of quality and pecuniary responsibility, from a list of
twice that number of names submitted by parliament; and this commission
was to receive the exclusive right to print--and that, in the city of
Paris alone--such books as might be approved by the proper authorities
and be found necessary to the public weal. Until the appointment of the
twelve censors the press was to remain idle! Nor was the suspension of
the prohibitory ordinance to continue a day longer than the term
required by the monarch to decide whether he preferred to modify its
provisions or leave them unchanged. "Albeit on the thirteenth day of
January, 1534,"[341] wrote this much lauded patron of letters, "by other
letters-patent of ours, and for the causes and reasons therein
contained, _we prohibited and forbade any one from thenceforth printing,
or causing to be printed, any books in our kingdom, on pain of the
halter_: never