Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I to Edict of Nantes - James Aitken Wylie

pledge to the service of their heavenly King, even
unto the death. Thus the hours would wear away,
till the morning was on the point of breaking, and
they would take farewell of each other as men who
would meet no more till, by way of the halter or the
stake, they should reassemble in heaven. The
singular beauty of the lives of these men attracted
the notice, and extorted even the praise, of their
bitterest enemies. It was a new thing in France.
Florimond de Raemond, ever on the watch for their
halting, could find nothing of which to accuse them
save that "instead of dances and Maypoles they set
on foot Bible-readings, and the singing of spiritual
hymns, especially the psalms after they had been
turned into rhyme. The women, by their
deportment and modest apparel, appeared in public
like sorrowing Eves, or penitent Magdalenes, as
Tertullian said of the Christian women of his day.
The men too, with their mortified air, seemed to be
overpowered by the Holy Ghost."[2] It does not
seem to have occurred to the monkish chronicler to
inquire why it was that what he considered an evil
tree yielded fruits like these, although a true answer
to that question would have saved France from
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