aid incontinently, 'This is a very
wicked book, and proscribed.' Then the said host went to the
commissioner of police to reveal that he had such and such a book of such
an one, the which sent forth with to the house of the said host to take
and carry off the said two fellows to the Chatelet. Being questioned,
they confessed the state of the case. Whereupon, by sentence of the said
commissioner, confirmed by decree, "they made honorable amends in front of
the church of Notre-Dame de Paris, had their tongues cut out, and were
burned all alive and with unshaken obstinacy." Proceedings and
executions, then, did not cease, even in the case of the most humble
class of Reformers, and at the very moment when Francis I. was exerting
himself to win over the Protestants of Germany with the cry of
conciliation and re-establishment of harmony in the church. Melancthon,
Bucer, and Luther himself had allowed themselves to be tempted by the
prospect; but the German politicians, princes, and counsellors were more
clear-sighted. "We at Augsburg," wrote Sailer, deputy from that city,
"know the King of France well; he cares very little for religion, or even
for morality. He plays the hypocrite with the pope, and gives the
Germans the smooth side of his tongue, thinking of nothing but how to
cheat them of the hopes he gives them. His only aim is to crush the
emperor." The attempt of Francis I. thus failed, first in Germany, and
then at Paris also, where the Sorbonne was not disposed, any more than
the German politicians were, to listen to any talk about a specious
conciliation; and the persecution resumed its course in France, paving
the way for civil war.

The last and most atrocious act of persecution in the reign of Francis I.
was directed not against isolated individuals, but against a whole
population, harried, despoiled, and banished or exterminated on account
of heresy. About the year 1525 small churches of Reformers began to
assume organization between the Alps and the Jura. Something was there
said about Christians who belonged to the Reformation without having ever
been reformed. It was said that, in certain valleys of the Piedmontese
Alps and Dauphiny and in certain quarters of Provence, there were to be
found believers who for several centuries had recognized no authority
save that of the Holy Scriptures. Some called them Vaudians
(Waldensians), others poor of Lyons, others Lutherans. The rumor of the
Reformation