Michael Herlin, a very wealthy and distinguished burgher, was arrested upon the first day.  The two ministers, Guido de Bray and Peregrine de la Grange, together with the son of Herlin, effected their escape by the water-gate.  Having taken refuge in a tavern at Saint Arnaud, they were observed, as they sat at supper, by a peasant, who forthwith ran off to the mayor of the borough with the intelligence that some individuals, who looked like fugitives, had arrived at Saint Arnaud.  One of them, said the informer, was richly dressed; and wore a gold-hilted sword with velvet scabbard.  By the description, the mayor recognized Herlin the younger,—­and suspected his companions.  They were all arrested, and sent to Noircarmes.  The two Herlins, father and son, were immediately beheaded.  Guido de Bray and Peregrine de la Grange were loaded with chains, and thrown into a filthy dungeon, previously to their being hanged.  Here they were visited by the Countess de Roeulx, who was curious to see how the Calvinists sustained themselves in their martyrdom.  She asked them how they could sleep, eat, or drink, when covered with such heavy fetters.  “The cause, and my good conscience,” answered De Bray, “make me eat, drink, and sleep better than those who are doing me wrong.  These shackles are more honorable to me than golden rings and chains.  They are more useful to me, and as I hear their clank, methinks I hear the music of sweet voices and the tinkling of lutes.”

This exultation never deserted these courageous enthusiasts.  They received their condemnation to death “as if it had been an invitation to a marriage feast.”  They encouraged the friends who crowded their path to the scaffold with exhortations to remain true in the Reformed faith.  La Grange, standing upon the ladder, proclaimed with a loud voice, that he was slain for having preached the pure word of God to a Christian people in a Christian land.  De Bray, under the same gibbet; testified stoutly that he, too, had committed that offence alone.  He warned his friends to obey the magistrates, and all others in authority, except in matters of conscience; to abstain from sedition; but to obey the will of God.  The executioner threw him from the ladder while he was yet speaking.  So ended the lives of two eloquent, learned, and highly-gifted divines.

Many hundreds of victims were sacrificed in the unfortunate city.  “There were a great many other citizens strangled or beheaded,” says an aristocratic Catholic historian of the time, “but they were mostly personages of little quality, whose names are quite unknown to me.”—­[Pontus Payen]—­The franchises of the city were all revoked.  There was a prodigious amount of property confiscated to the benefit of Noircarmes and the rest of the “Seven Sleepers.”  Many Calvinists were burned, others were hanged.  “For—­two whole years,” says another Catholic, who was a citizen of Valenciennes at the time, “there was, scarcely a week in which several citizens were not executed and often a great number were despatched at a time.  All this gave so much alarm to the good and innocent, that many quitted the city as fast as they could.”  If the good and innocent happened to be rich, they might be sure that Noircarmes would deem that a crime for which no goodness and innocence could atone.