The proceedings did not stop there.  At the beginning of this same year, and on petition from the University of Paris, the Parliament had commenced a general prosecution of the order of Jesuits, its maxims, tendencies, and influence.  Formal discussions had taken place; the prosecution and the defence had been conducted with eloquence, and a decree of the court had ordained that judgment should be deferred.  Several of the most respected functionaries, notably President Augustin de Thou, had pronounced against this decree, considering the question so grave and so urgent that the Parliament should make it their duty to decide upon the point at issue.  When sentence had to be pronounced upon John Chastel, President de Thou took the opportunity of saying, “When I lately gave my opinion in the matter of the University and the Jesuits, I never hoped, at my age and with my infirmities, that I should live long enough to take part in the judgment we are about to pass to-day.  It was that which led me, in the indignation caused me by the course at that time adopted, to lay down an opinion to which I to-day recur with much joy.  God be praised for having brought about an occasion whereon we have nothing to do but felicitate ourselves for that the enterprise which our foes did meditate against the state and the life of the king hath been without success, and which proves clearly at the same time how much the then opinion of certain honest men was wiser than that of persons who, from a miserable policy, were in favor of deferment!” The court, animated by the same sentiments as President do Thou, “declared the maxims maintained in the Jesuits’ name to be rash, seditious, contrary to the word of God, savoring of heresy and condemned by the holy canons; it expressly forbade them to be taught publicly or privately, on pain, in case of contraveners, of being treated as guilty of treason against God and man.  It decreed, further, that the priests of the college in Rue St. Jacques, their pupils, and, generally, all members of that society, should leave Paris and all the towns in which they had colleges three days after this decree had been made known to them, and the kingdom within a fortnight, as corrupters of youth, disturbers of the public peace, and enemies of the king and of the state.  In default of obedience on their part, their property, real and personal, should be confiscated and employed for pious purposes.  The court, besides, prohibited all subjects of the king from sending their children as students to any Jesuits out of the kingdom, on pain of being declared enemies of the state.”  This decree was issued on the 29th of December, 1594.  And as if to leave no doubt about the sense and bearing of this legislation, it was immediately applied in the case of a Jesuit father, John Guignard, a native of Chartres; his papers were examined, and there were found in his handwriting many propositions and provocatives of sedition, such as, “That a great mistake