Still, but for the energy of the priests, it is doubtful whether the city
could have been held by the Confederacy. The Duke of Nemours confessed
that there were occasions when they never would have been able to sustain
a determined onslaught, and they were daily expecting to see the Prince
of Bearne battering triumphantly at their gates.

But the eloquence of the preachers, especially of the one-eyed father
Boucher, sustained the fainting spirits of the people, and consoled the
sufferers in their dying agonies by glimpses of paradise. Sublime was
that devotion, superhuman that craft; but it is only by weapons from the
armoury of the Unseen that human creatures can long confront such horrors
in a wicked cause. Superstition, in those days at least, was a political
force absolutely without limitation, and most adroitly did the agents of
Spain and Rome handle its tremendous enginery against unhappy France.
For the hideous details of the most dreadful sieges recorded in ancient
or modern times were now reproduced in Paris. Not a revolutionary
circumstance, at which the world had shuddered in the accounts of the
siege of Jerusalem, was spared. Men devoured such dead vermin as could
be found lying in the streets. They crowded greedily around stalls in
the public squares where the skin, bones, and offal of such dogs, cats
and unclean beasts as still remained for the consumption of the wealthier
classes were sold to the populace. Over the doorways of these flesh
markets might be read "Haec runt munera pro iis qui vitam pro Philippo
profuderunt." Men stood in archways and narrow passages lying in wait
for whatever stray dogs still remained at large, noosed them, strangled
them, and like savage beasts of prey tore them to pieces and devoured
them alive. And it sometimes happened, too, that the equally hungry dog
proved the more successful in the foul encounter, and fed upon the man.
A lady visiting the Duchess of Nemours--called for the high pretensions
of her sons by her two marriages the queen-mother--complained bitterly