544 CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS ORATORY. 



different patois. At Toulouse lie repeated in the local dialect his " General 

 Confession," which he had first delivered in Poitevin at Poitiers ; and at 

 Bruges, in 1502, he repeated a Savoy bergeronette which he had delivered from 

 the Toulouse pulpit at Whitsuntide. Michel Menot was not so poetic as 

 Maillard, but he denounced the vices and follies of all classes of society. At 

 Tours, preaching in a medley of Latin and French, he exclaimed, " Oh, city 

 of Tours, pride dishonours thy daughters ! The wife of a shoemaker wears a 

 tunic like that of a duchess. People who have twenty pounds a year keep 

 horses and dogs ; those who have fifty are friends with the nobles, and keep 

 their town and country house." Then, addressing himself to the ladies who 

 always came in late to church, " It is now nine o'clock (A.M.), and you are 



Fig. 404. Portrait of Claude Despenco. Fig. 405. Portrait of the Cardinal de Lorraine. 



Fac simile of Line Engravings by Leonard Gaultier, in the Series called "Chronologic collee." 

 In the Library of M. Firmin-Didot, Paris. 



still in bed. Forty horses might have been bedded up while all your pins 

 were being put in their places. When you are at your toilette you resemble 

 the cobbler who requires a lot of pieces to put his work together. And if, 

 while the priest is elevating the Host above the altar, some young dandy 

 presents himself at her seat, Madame, in compliance with the customs of the 

 nobility, must rise and offer him her hand ! Let such privileges be put down 

 without form or ceremony" (Fig. 403). 



The fiery Luther, for all his double merits as a theologian and a man of 

 letters, belonged, as an eloquent preacher, to the popular school, and he 

 himself said, " I preach as simply as possible, so as to be understood by the 

 common people, by the children, and by the servants. I do not preach for the 

 learned ; they have their books." The most powerful agency of the Reforma- 



