48 



THE FRENCH BLOOD IN AJVIERICA 



of their principal virtues, and they have no beggars 

 amongst them. They have neither locks nor bolts upon 

 their doors. No one is tempted to steal, for his wants are 

 freely supplied by asking." 



'' They are heretics," said the King sternly. 



"I acknowledge, sire," said de Bellamy, ''that they 

 rarely enter our chui'ches ; if they do, they pray with 

 eyes fixed on the ground. They pay no homage to saints 

 or images ; they do not use holy water, nor do they ac- 

 knowledge the benefit to be derived from pilgrimages, or 

 say mass, either for the living or the dead." 



' ' And it is for such men as these you ask clemency ! 

 For your sake, they shall receive a pardon, if they re- 

 nounce their heresies within three months, and seek a 

 reconciliation with the mother church. Think you that 

 I burn heretics in France, in order that they may be 

 nourished in the Alps!" That was the spirit bred in 

 the monarch by the Roman ecclesiastics who surrounded 

 him and flattered him as the defender of the most holy 

 faith. 



Growth Under 

 Persecution 



Lower 



Nobility 



Protestant 



IV 



For thirty years the Protestant party had been grow- 

 ing stronger in spite of the terrible persecutions it re- 

 ceived, until in 1555 a Huguenot church was established 

 in Paris, the very centre of French Roman Catholicism. 

 The example of Paris was followed rapidly by other 

 cities ; so rapidly, indeed, that six years later there were 

 two thousand one hundred and fifty churches in France 

 from whose pulpits the Word of God was preached. The 

 growth of the Huguenot movement was phenomenal dur- 

 ing these same six years, and its doctrines were embraced 

 by all classes of the population alike. 



The lower nobility, the provincial gentry, were chiefly 

 Protestant. Benoit says, ' ' The country churches were 

 almost entirely composed of noblesse," and that ''in 

 some, one could count from eighty to a hundred families 



