arers; and the king walked behind, with a taper in his hand,
between the Cardinals of Bourbon and Lorraine. At each halting-place he
handed his taper to the Cardinal of Lorraine, folded his hands, and
humbly prostrating himself, implored divine mercy for his people. After
the procession was over, the king, who had remained to dine with John du
Bellay, assembled in the great hall of the palace the heads of all the
companies, and taking his place on a sort of throne which had been
prepared for him, said, "Whatever progress may have already been made by
the pest, the remedy is still easy if each of you, devoured by the same
zeal as I, will forget the claims of flesh and blood to remember only
that he is a Christian, and will denounce without pity all those whom he
knows to be partisans or favorers of heresy. As for me, if my arm were
gangrened, I would have it cut off though it were my right arm, and if my
sons who hear me were such wretches as to fall into such execrable and
accursed opinions, I would be willing to give them up to make a sacrifice
of them to God." On the 29th of January there was published an edict
which sentenced concealers of heretics, "Lutheran or other," to the same
penalties as the said heretics, unless they denounced their guests to
justice; and a quarter of the property to be confiscated was secured to
the denouncers. Fifteen days previously Francis I. had signed a decree
still stranger for a king who was a protector of letters; he ordered the
abolition of printing, that means of propagating heresies, and "forbade
the printing of any book on pain of the halter." Six weeks later,
however, on the 26th of February, he became ashamed of such an act, and
suspended its execution indefinitely. Punishments in abundance preceded
and accompanied the edicts; from the 10th of November, 1534, to the 3d of
May, 1535, twenty-four heretics were burned alive in Paris, without
counting many who were sentenced to less cruel penalties. The procedure
had been made more rapid; the police commissioner of the Chatelet dealt
with cases summarily, and the Parliament confirmed. The victims had at
first been strangled before they were burned; they were now burned alive,
after the fashion of the Spanish Inquisition. The convicts were
suspended by iron chains to beams which alternately "hoisted" and
"lowered" them over the flames until the executioner cut the cord to let
the sufferer fall. The evidence was burned togethe