60] This spot was the favorite promenade
of the higher classes of the Parisians. It happened that, on a certain
afternoon in May,[661] a few voices in the crowd began to sing one of
the psalms which Clement Marot and Theodore de Beze had translated into
French. At the sound the walks and games were forsaken. The tune was
quickly caught up, and soon the vast concourse joining in the words,
either through sympathy or through love of novelty, the curious were
attracted from all quarters to listen to so strange an entertainment.
For many successive evenings the same performance was repeated. The
numbers increased, it was said, to five or six thousand. Many of the
chief personages of the kingdom were to be seen among those who took
part. The King and Queen of Navarre were particularly noticed because
of the pleasure they manifested. By the inmates of the neighboring
College of the Sorbonne the demonstration was interpreted as an open
avowal of heresy. The use of the French language in devotional singing
was calculated to throw contempt upon the time-honored usage of
performing divine service in the Latin tongue.[662] To the king, at this
time absent from the city, the psalm-singing was represented as a
beginning of sedition, which must be suppressed lest it should lead to
the destruction at once of his faith and of his authority. Henry, too
ready a listener to such suggestions, ordered the irregularity to cease;
and the Protestant ministers and elders of Paris, desirous of giving an
example of obedience to the civil power in things indifferent, enjoined
on their members to desist from singing the psalms elsewhere than in
their own homes.[663]

[Sidenote: Conference of Cardinals Lorraine and Granvelle.]

The visit of the Dowager Duchess of Lorraine, who was permitted to meet
her son upon the borders of France, afforded a good opportunity for an
informal discussion of the terms of the peace that was to put an end to
a war of which both parties were equally tired. There, in the fortress
of Peronne, the Cardinal of Lorraine held a conference with Antoine
Perrenot, Cardinal of Granvelle; and a friendship was cemented between
the former and the Spanish court boding no good for the quiet of France
or the stability of the throne.

[Sidenote: D'Andelot, Coligny's younger brother, denounced.]

Little was effected in the direction of peace. But Cardinal Lorraine
received valuable hints touching the best method for humbling the
enem