From Rise of Protestantism in France to Publication of the Institutes - James Aitken Wylie

Chapter 21
Other and More Dreadful
Martyrdoms
AS yet we have seen only the beginning of the
tragedy; its more awful scenes are to follow.
Numerous stakes had already been planted in Paris,
but these did not slake the vengeance of the
persecutor; more victims must be immolated if
expiation was to be done for the affront offered to
Heaven in the matter of the placards, and more
blood shed if the land was to be cleansed from the
frightful pollution it had undergone. Such was the
talk which the priests held in presence of the
king.[1] They reminded him that this was a crisis in
France, that he was the eldest son of the Church,
that this title it became him to preserve unsullied,
and transmit with honor to his posterity, and they
urged him to proceed with all due rigour in the
performance of those bloody rites by which his
throne and kingdom were to be purged. Francis I
was but too willing to obey. A grand procession,
338