sistance appears certain; and as for the bishop, John le Hennuyer,
M. de Formeville seems to us to have demonstrated in his _Histoire de
l'ancien Eveche-comte de Lisieux_ (t. ii. pp. 299-314), "that there was
no occasion to save the Protestants of Lisieux, in 1572, because they did
not find themselves in any danger of being massacred, and that the merit
of it cannot be attributed to anybody, to the bishop, Le Hennuyer, any
more than to Captain Fumichon, governor of the town. It was only the
general course of events and the discretion of the municipal officers of
Lisieux that did it all." One thing which is quite true, and which it is
good to call to mind in the midst of so great a general criminality, is
that, at many spots in France, it met with a refusal to be associated in
it; President Jeannin at Dijon, the Count de Tende in Provence, Philibert
de la Guiche at Macon, Tanneguy le Veneur de Carrouge at Rouen, the Count
de Gordes in Dauphiny, and many other chiefs, military or civil, openly
repudiated the example set by the murderers of Paris; and the municipal
body of Nantes, a very Catholic town, took upon this subject, as has been
proved from authentic documents by M. Vaurigaud, pastor of the Reformed
Church at Nantes [in his _Essai sur l'Histoire des Eglises reformees de
Bretagne,_ t. i. pp. 190-194], a resolution which does honor to its
patriotic firmness as well as to its Christian loyalty.

[Illustration: Chancellor Michael de l'Hospital----376]

A great, good man, a great functionary, and a great scholar, in disgrace
for six years past, the Chancellor Michael de l'Hospital, received about
this time, in his retreat at Vignay, a visit from a great philosopher,
Michael de Montaigne, "anxious," said the visitor, "to come and testify
to you the honor and reverence with which I regard your competence and
the special qualities which are in you; for, as to the extraneous and the
fortuitous, it is not to my taste to put them down in the account."
Montaigne chose a happy moment for disregarding all but the personal, and
special qualities of the chancellor; shortly after his departure,
L'Hospital was warned that some sinister-looking horsemen were coming,
and that he would do well to take care of himself. "No matter, no
matter," he answered; "it will be as God pleases when my hour has come."
Next day he was told that those men were approaching his house, and he
was asked whether he would not have the gates shut aga