Accordingly, when the time of burial comes, a
Protestant pastor may be kept waiting for hours in consequence of this
wilful obstinacy; supposing that the mayor is under clerical influence,
useless to argue "La loi est avec nous;" cure and mayor persist, and at
the last moment the unfortunate pastor has to telegraph to the Prefet,
who, whether clerical or not, knows the law, and is obliged to follow
it, and consequently sends an authorization which ends the matter. This
is very blind on the part of the clericals, for it naturally turns the
Protestants into martyrs. It happened in a little village, not far from
Besancon, that, after a scene of this kind, all the village population
turned into the cemetery, and, by the time the Prefet's order came, the
Protestant pastor had a large audience for his discourse over the grave.
"C'est si consolant chez les Protestants, l'enterrement des morts,"
people were heard to say, and let us hope that the cure and the mayor
were punished for their folly by a few conversions among their flocks to
Protestantism.
A mediaeval writer, Francois de Belleforest, thus describes Besancon:--
"Si par l'antiquite, continuee en grandeur, la benediction de Dieu se
cognoit en une lieu, il n'y a ville ni cite en toutes les Gaules qui ayt
plus grande occasion de remarquer la faveur de Dieu, en soy que la cite
dont nous avions prise le discours.
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