Volume I Part 50 (1/2)

Or read the lines in which the writer sums up a portion of the Cardinal's villainy: ”Quand je te diray que les fautes des finances de France ne viennent que de tes larcins? Quand je te diray qu'un mari est plus continent avec sa femme que tu n'es avec tes propres parentes? Si je te dis encore que tu t'es empare du gouvernement de la France, et as derobe cet honneur aux Princes du sang, pour mettre la couronne de France en ta maison--que pourras-tu repondre?

Si tu le confesses, il te faut pendre et estrangler; si tu le nies, je te convaincrai.”

A pa.s.sage of unsurpa.s.sed bitterness paints the portrait of the hypocritical churchman: ”Tu fais mourir ceux qui conspirent contre toy: et tu vis encore, qui as conspire contre la couronne de France, contre les biens des veuves et des orphelins, contre le sang des tristes et des innocens! Tu fais profession de prescher de saintete, toy qui ne connois Dieu que de parole; qui ne tiens la religion chretienne que comme un masque pour te deguiser; qui fais ordinaire trafic, banque et marchandise d'evesches et de benefices: qui ne vois rien de saint que tu ne souilles, rien de chaste que tu ne violes, rien de bon que tu ne gates!... Tu dis que ceux qui reprennent tes vices medisent du Roy, tu veux donc qu'on t'estime Roy? Si Caesar fut occis pour avoir pretendu le sceptre injustement, doit-on permettre que tu vives, toy qui le demandes injustement?”

With which terribly severe denunciation the reader may compare the statements of a pasquinade, unsurpa.s.sed for pungent wit by any composition of the times, written apparently about a year later.

Addressing the cardinal, Pasquin expresses his perplexity respecting the place where his Eminence will find an abode. The _French_ dislike him so much, that they will have him neither as master nor as servant; the _Italians_ know his tricks; the _Spaniards_ cannot endure his rage; the _Germans_ abhor incest; the _English_ and _Scotch_ hold him to be a traitor; the _Turk_ and the _Sophy_ are Mohammedans, while the cardinal believes in _nothing_!

_Heaven_ is closed against the unbeliever, the devils would be afraid to have him in _h.e.l.l_, and in the ensuing council the Protestants are going to do away with _purgatory_! ”Et tu miser, ubi peribis?” Copy in State Paper Office (1561).

The peroration of ”Le Tigre” is worthy of the great Roman orator himself. The circ.u.mstance that, on account of the limited number of copies of M. Read's edition, the ”Tigre” must necessarily be accessible to very few readers, will be sufficient excuse for here inserting this extended pa.s.sage, in which, for the sake of clearness, I have followed M. Read's modernized spelling:

”Mais pourquoi dis-je ceci? Afin que tu te corriges? Je connais ta jeunesse si envieillie en son obstination, et tes murs si depravees, que le recit de tes vices ne te scauroit emouvoir. Tu n'es point de ceux-la que la honte de leur vilainie, ni le remords de leurs d.a.m.nables intentions puisse attirer a aucune resipiscence et amendement. Mais si tu me veux croyre, tu t'en iras cacher en quelque tanniere, ou bien en quelque desert, si lointain que l'on n'oye ni vent ni nouvelles de toy! Et par ce moyen tu pourras eviter la pointe de cent mille espees qui t'attendent tous les jours!

”Donc va-t'-en! Descharge-nous de ta tyrannie! Evite la main du bourreau! Qu'attends-tu encore? Ne vois-tu pas la patience des princes du sang royal qui te le permet? Attends-tu le commandement de leur parolle, puisque leur silence t'a declare leur volonte? En le souffrant, ils te le commandent; en se taisant, ils te cond.a.m.nent. Va donc, malheureux, et tu eviteras la punition digne de tes merites!”

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 847: Reaching Paris early in May, 1560, Hubert Languet wrote that suspicion was everywhere rife; men of any standing scarcely dared to converse with each other; some great calamity seemed on the point of breaking forth. The king's ministers evidently feared the great cities; so the court proceeded from one provincial town to another. Disturbances in Rouen and Dieppe had frightened the Guises away from Normandy, whither they had intended leading their royal nephew. Letter from Paris, May 15th, Epistolae secr., ii. 50.]

[Footnote 848: ”En ce temps (Mars, 1560) furent appelles Huguenots.”

Journal d'un cure ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 36.]

[Footnote 849: Soldan, Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, who, in an appendix, has very fully discussed the whole matter (i. 608-625). There is some force in the objection that has been urged against this view, that, were it correct, Beza, himself a resident of Geneva, could not have been ignorant of the derivation, and would not, in the Histoire ecclesiastique, prepared under his supervision, if not by him, have given his sanction to another explanation.]

[Footnote 850: La Planche, 262; Hist. eccles., i. 169, 170; De Thou, ii.

(liv. xxiv.) 766. This is also etienne Pasquier's view, who is positive that he heard the Protestants called Huguenots by some friends of his from Tours full _eight or nine years_ before the tumult of Amboise; that is, about 1551 or 1552: ”Car je vous puis dire que huict ou neuf ans auparavant l'entreprise d'Amboise je les avois ainsi ouy appeller par quelques miens amis Tourengeaux.” Recherches de France, 770. This is certainly pretty strong proof.]

[Footnote 851: La Place, 34; Davila, i. 20; Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 96.

See also Pasquier, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 852: Mem. de Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 7. A somewhat similar reason had, in Poitou, caused them, for a time, to be called _Fribours_, the designation casually given to a _counterfeit_ coin of debased metal.

Pasquier, 770.]

[Footnote 853: Advertiss.e.m.e.nt au Peuple de France, _apud_ Recueil des choses memorables (1565), 7. Also in the Complainte au Peuple Francois, ibid., p. 10. Both of these papers were published immediately after the Tumulte d'Amboise. The eminent Pierre Jurieu--”le Goliath des Protestants”--tells us that, having at one time accepted the derivation from ”eidgenossen” as the most plausible, he subsequently returned to that which connects the word Huguenot with Hugues or Hugh Capet. The nickname confessedly arose, so far as France was concerned, first in Touraine, and became general at the time of the tumult of Amboise, nearly thirty years after the reformation of Geneva. ”Qui est-ce qui auroit transporte en Touraine ce nom trente ans apres sa naissance, de Geneve ou il n'avoit jamais este cognu?” Histoire du calvinisme et celle du papisme, etc. Rotterdam, 1683, i. 424, 425.]

[Footnote 854: J. de Serres, i. 67; Pasquier, 771: ”Mot qui en peu de temps s'espandit par toute la France.”]

[Footnote 855: La Planche, 270. At Amboise, too, so soon as the court had departed, the prisons were broken open, and the prisoners--both those confined for religion and for insurrection--released. The gallows in various parts of the place were torn down, and the ghastly decorations of the castle, in the way of heads and mutilated members, disappeared. Languet, letter of May 15th, Epist. secr., ii. 51.]

[Footnote 856: M. Archinard, conservator of the archives of the Venerable Company of Pastors of Geneva, has compiled from the records a list of 121 pastors sent by the Church of Geneva to the Reformed Churches of France within eleven years--1555 to 1566. Many others have, doubtless, escaped notice. Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., viii. (1859) 72-76. Cf. also Ib., ix. 294 seq., for an incomplete list of Protestant pastors in France, probably in 1567, from an old MS. in the Genevan library.]

[Footnote 857: The high moral and intellectual qualifications of the Protestant ministers were eulogized by the Bishop of Valence, Montluc, in his speech before the king at Fontainebleau, to which I shall soon have occasion to refer again. ”The doctrine, sire,” he said, ”which interests your subjects, was sown for thirty years; not in one, or two, or three days. It was introduced by three or four hundred ministers, diligent and practised in letters; men of great modesty, gravity, and appearance of sanct.i.ty; professing to detest every vice, and, particularly, avarice; fearless of losing their lives in confirmation of their preaching; who always had Jesus Christ upon their lips--a name so sweet that it gives an entrance into ears the most carefully closed, and easily glides into the heart of the most hardened.” ”Harangue de l'Evesque de Vallence,” _apud_ Recueil des choses memorables (1565), i.

290; Mem. de Conde, i. 558; La Place, 55. The eloquent Bishop of Valence must be regarded as a better authority than those persons who, according to Castelnau, accused the Calvinist ministers of Geneva of ”having more zeal and ignorance than religion.” Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iii., c. 3.]

[Footnote 858: Calvin, in a letter sent by Francois de Saint Paul, a minister whom he induced to accept the urgent call of the church of Montelimart, dissuaded that church from this step which was already contemplated. Better is it, said he, to increase the flock, and to gather in the scattered sheep, meanwhile keeping quiet yourselves. ”At least, while you hold your a.s.semblies peaceably from house to house, the rage of the wicked will not so soon be enkindled against you, and you will render to G.o.d what He requires, namely, the glorifying of His name in a pure manner, and the keeping of yourselves unpolluted by all superst.i.tious observances, until it please Him to open a wider door.”

Lettres francaises (Bonnet), ii. 335, 336. The author of the Histoire eccles. des eglises ref., i. 138, expresses a belief that had such wise counsels been followed, incomparably the greater part of the district would have embraced the Reformation.]

[Footnote 859: La Planche, 284-286.]

[Footnote 860: Letter of Francis II. to Gaspard de Saulx, Seign. de Tavannes, April 12, 1560, _apud_ Negotiations relatives au regne de Francois II., etc. (Collection de doc.u.ments inedits), 341-343.]