Francis I. and his courtiers were not yet satisfied. 'To the Halles! to the Halles!' was the cry, and a mass of curious people rushed thither, knowing that the executioners had prepared a second entertainment of a similar kind. The king and his train had scarcely arrived, when they began to set the frightful strappado in motion. A man known and highly esteemed throughout the quarter, a rich fruit-merchant of the Halles, had been fastened to it, and after him two other evangelical Christians were served in the same way. Francis and his court witnessed the convulsions of the sufferers and could smell the stench of their burning flesh. There were, no doubt, among the spectators many individuals feeling for the sufferings of others, but, surprising to say, there was not a sign of compassion: the best of them suppressed the most legitimate emotions. It was everybody's duty to think that, as a jesuit says, 'the king wished to draw down the blessing of heaven, by giving this signal example of piety and zeal.'[271]
Francis returned satisfied to the Louvre: the courtiers around him declared that the triumph of holy Church was for ever secured in the kingdom of France. But the people went still farther; they displayed a cruel joy; the deaths of the heretics had furnished them with an unknown enjoyment.... It was long before the thirst for blood then awakened in them was assuaged. They had just played the first act of a drama which was to be followed by others bloodier still, the most notorious of which were the massacres of St. Bartholomew, and, with a change of victims, the massacres of September 1792. Certain enraptured clerks thought that Francis I. surpassed Charles V., and exclaimed:
Cæsar edit edicta, Rex edit supplicia.[272]
Francis I. and his officers felt, however, some little vexation: certain victims were wanting. They sought everywhere for nobles, professors, priests, and industrials suspected of protestantism, whom they could not find. A few days after these executions, on the 25th January, the sound of the trumpet was heard in all the cross-ways, and the common crier 'cited seventy-three Lutherans to appear in person. In default thereof, they were declared to be banished from the kingdom of France, their goods confiscated, and themselves condemned to be burnt.' These were the fugitives whom we have already pointed out. None of them appeared to the summons; but one of them wrote to the king:[273]
They call me Lutheran—a name
I have no right to bear.
Luther for me did not come down from heaven;
For me no Luther hung upon the cross
For all my sins; nor was I in his name
Baptised, but in the name of Him alone