'Here comes the true cross!' Again there was a rushing and shouting, citizens and strangers crushing one another,—'It is not the only one,' said the reformer, 'there is no petty town or paltry church where they do not show you pieces; and if all were collected together, there would be a load for a great barge, and three hundred men could not carry it.'[256]
Next appeared a silver-gilt shrine, which attracted universal attention: it contained the relics of St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris; it was the last anchor in the midst of the tempest, and was never brought out except when France was in great peril. The butchers of Paris had offered to carry this precious amulet, and had prepared themselves for it by a fast of several days: they moved along barefoot and dressed in long shirts. Around this somewhat ferocious group there was a continual movement. 'There she is, the holy virgin of Nanterre,' was the cry. 'She saved our forefathers from the fury of Attila, may she save us from Luther's!' The people threw themselves upon the relic: one wished to touch it with his cap, another with his handkerchief, a third with the tip of his finger, some even more daring tried to kiss it. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.[257]
After the relics came a great number of cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, with coped and mitred abbots. Then, under a magnificent canopy, the four pillars of which were borne by the king's three sons and the Duke of Vendome, first prince of the blood, came the host carried by the bishop of Paris, and adorned as if it had been the Lord in person.
=PENITENCE OF THE KING.=
Then appeared Francis I., without parade, bareheaded and on foot, holding a lighted taper in his hand,[258] like a penitent commissioned to expiate the sacrilege of his people. At each reposoir he gave his taper to the Cardinal of Lorraine, joined his hands and knelt down, humbling himself, not for his adulteries, his lies, or his false oaths—of these he did not think-but for the audacity of those who did not like the mass. He was followed by the queen, the princes and princesses, the foreign ambassadors and all the court, the chancellor of France, the council, the parliament in their scarlet robes, the university, the other corporations, and the guard. All walked two and two, 'exhibiting every mark of extraordinary piety.' Each man carried a lighted torch in profound silence. Spiritual songs and funereal airs alone interrupted from time to time the quiet of this gloomy and slow procession.
In this way it traversed the different quarters of the capital, followed by an immense crowd of people, and the inhabitants of each street, standing in front of their houses, fell on their knees as the host went by. The crowd was so great that bodies of archers, with white staves in their hands, posted in every street, could scarcely keep open a passage for the procession.[259]
At length they arrived at the church of Notre Dame; the sacrament was placed on the altar; mass was sung by the Bishop of Paris, and all imaginable homage was paid to the host in order to atone for the insults offered to it by the placards. From Notre Dame, the king and the princes returned to the bishop's palace.
There are days of evil omen in history. There is one especially that it is sufficient to name to fill the mind with sorrow and mourning ... fatal date which solemnly inaugurated in France the epoch of persecution and martyrdom. On the twenty-first of January, 1535, a king of France, surrounded by his court and ministers, his parliament and clergy, was about to devote to death with all due ceremony the humble disciples of the Gospel. What the Valois began, the Bourbons continued, and the most illustrious of them carried out on a vast scale the system of galleys and of burning piles. Alas! there are dates which coincide in a striking and pitiless manner. Four hundred and fifty-eight years later there was another twenty-first of January. The simplest, the meekest, the most generous of the Bourbons, condemned by misguided men to suffer death, ascended the scaffold erected in a public place in Paris; he received the death-blow on the twenty-first of January, 1793. We do not presume to explain history; we do not say that the innocent Louis XVI. paid the penalty of his predecessor's crimes, and that God ordained the expiation commanded by Francis I. to be followed by another. But the coincidence of these two dates startled us, and we could not avoid stopping to contemplate them with a holy fear.
[237] Journal d'un Bourgeois, p. 414.
[238] Crespin, Martyrol. fol. 43.