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"Can we count with you?"
"Absolutely and in all things, madam."
"There is no longer any doubt!" cried Master Estienne after he read the letter. "Our house will be searched, this very night perhaps; they are on my friend's tracks."
"I shall run for him," said Madam Estienne; "Christian and he will go out by the side street. I think the house is watched on the St. John of Beauvais Street side."
"Master Estienne," said the artisan to his employer, "in order to make assurance doubly sure I shall go down to the end of the side alley and reconnoiter whether the passage is clear; I shall explore it thoroughly."
"Go, my friend, you will find us in the small yard with the proscribed man."
Christian left the shop, crossed the small yard, drew the bolt of a door that opened into the side alley and stepped out. He found the lane completely deserted, from end to end not a soul was in sight. Although it was night there was light enough to see a long distance ahead. Having convinced himself that the issue was safe, Christian returned to the door of the yard where he found Master Estienne pressing in his own the hand of a man of middle size and clad in plain black.
"Master Estienne," said Christian to his employer, "the alley is deserted; we can go out without being seen by anyone."
"Adieu, my friend," said Master Estienne in a trembling voice to the proscribed man. "You may rely upon your guide as upon me. Follow him and observe all that he may recommend to you for your safety. May heaven protect your precious life!"
"Adieu! Adieu!" answered the unknown who seemed to be no less moved than the printer; saying which he followed Christian. After issuing from the alley and walking for a while in the direction of the Exchange Bridge, the two men arrived at a gate which they had to pass in order to cross the Cour-Dieu. At that place their progress was delayed by a compact mass of people who were gathered near the gate, in the center of which was a turnstile intended to keep horses and wagons from entering the square. Many patrolmen were seen among the crowd.
"What is the meaning of this gathering?" inquired Christian from a man of athletic carriage, with the sleeves of his shirt turned up, a blood-bespattered apron and a long knife by his side.
"St. James!" exclaimed the butcher in a tone of pious satisfaction; "the reverend Franciscan fathers of the Cour-Dieu have been struck by a good idea."
"In what way?" again Christian asked. "What is their idea? Inform us of what is going on."
"The good monks have placed upon the square in front of the door of their convent a lighted chapel at the foot of a beautiful station of the Holy Virgin, and a mendicant monk stands on either side of the statue, with a club in one hand and a purse in the other – "
"And what is the purpose of the chapel and the mendicant monks and their clubs?"
"St. James!" and the butcher crossed himself; "thanks to that chapel the Lutheran dogs can be discovered as they pass by."
"How can they be recognized?"
"If they pass before the chapel without kneeling down at the feet of the Holy Virgin, and without dropping a piece of money into the purse of the mendicant monks, it is a proof that the painim are heretics – they are immediately set upon, they are slain, they are torn to shreds. Listen! Do you hear that?"
Indeed, at that moment, piercing shrieks half drowned by an angry roar of many voices went up from the interior of the Cour-Dieu. As the turnstile allowed a passage to only one person at a time, the approaches of the square were blocked by a crowd that swelled from moment to moment and that was swayed with the ardent desire to witness the Test of the Lutherans, as the process was called. Every time that the cries of a victim ceased, the clamor subsided, and the mob awaited the next execution. The butcher resumed:
"That painim has ceased to scream – his account is settled. May the fire of St. Anthony consume those laggards who are getting so slowly through the gate! I shall not be able to witness the killing of a single one of those accursed fellows!"
"My friend," said the mysterious companion of Christian to the butcher, "those Lutherans must be very great criminals, are they not? I ask you because I am a stranger here – "
A score of voices charitably hastened to answer the unknown man, who, together with Christian was so completely hemmed in by the crowd that they had no choice but patiently to wait for their turn at the turnstile.
"Poor man, where do you come from?" said some, addressing the unknown. "What! You ask whether the Lutherans are criminals? Why, they are infamous brigands!"
And thereupon they vied with one another in citing the felonies that the reformers were guilty of:
"They read the Bible in French!"
"They do not confess!"
"They do not sing mass!"
"They believe neither in the Pope, nor the saints, nor in the virginity of Mary, nor in holy relics!"
"Nor in the blood of our Savior! – nor in the drop of milk of his holy mother! – nor in the miraculous tooth of St. Loup!"
"And what do those demons substitute for the holy mass? Abominable incantations and orgies!"
"Yes, yes – it is so!"
"I, who now speak to you, knew the son of a tailor who was once caught in the net of those ministers of the devil. I'll tell you what he saw – he told me all about it the next day. The Lutherans assembled at night – at midnight – in a large cave, men, young girls and women to celebrate their Luthery. A rich bourgeois woman, who lived on the same street with the tailor attended the incantation with her two daughters. When all the canting hypocrites were assembled, their priest donned a robe of goatskin with a headgear of spreading oxhorns; he then took a little child, spread the poor little fellow upon a table lighted by two tall wax candles, and, while the other heretics sang their psalms in French, interspersed with magical invocations, their priest cut the child's throat!"
"The assassins! The monsters! The demons!"
"The priest of Lucifer thereupon gathered the child's blood in a vase and sprinkled the assembly with the warm gore! He then tore out the child's heart and ate it up! That closed the celebration of the Luthery."
"Holy St. James, and shall we not bleed these sons of Satan to the last man?" cried the butcher, carrying his hand to his knife, while the proscribed man exchanged significant glances with Christian and remarked to those standing near him:
"Can such monstrosities be possible? Could such things have happened?"
"Whether they are possible! Why, Brother St. Lawrence-on-the-gridiron, a reverend Carmelite who is my confessor, told me, Marotte, there never was an assembly of those heretics held without at least one or two little children being sacrificed."
"Jesus, God! Everybody knows that," pursued the first narrator; "the tailor's son that I am talking about witnessed the heretical orgy; he saw everything with his own eyes; then, after the Lutherans had been sprinkled with the child's blood as a sort of baptism, their priest spoke up and said: 'Now, take off your clothes, and pray to God in our fashion. Long live hell and the Luthery!' As soon as he said this, he put out the two wax candles, whereupon all the he and she canting hypocrites, with as much clothing on as Adam and Eve, men, women and young girls, all thrown helter-skelter in the dark – well, you understand – it is an abomination!"9
"What a horror! Malediction upon them!"
"Mercy! May God protect us from such heretics!"
"Confession! Such infamies portend the end of the world!"
"Brother St. Lawrence-on-the-gridiron, the reverend Carmelite friar, my confessor, told me, Marotte, that all the Lutheries closed in the same fashion. The good father felt so indignant that he gave me accurate details upon the devilish heretics; they were details that made my cheeks burn red and hot like a piece of coal."
These snatches of reports, that summed up the stupid and atrocious calumnies spread about by the monks against the reformers, were interrupted by new shrieks and vociferations that went up from
For these horrible calumnies spread by the clergy against the Reformation, see De Thou, vol. I, book II, p. 97.