[197] Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris sous le règne de François Ier, April 14, 1526, p. 284.
[198] Crespin, Actiones et monimenta, fol. 118.
[199] Haag, La France protestante, art. Lefèvre; Schmidt, Wilhelm Farel. Bayle (Diet. s. v. Fèvre) maintains, on the authority of Melchior Adam's Life of Capito, that Lefèvre and Roussel were sent by Margaret of Angoulême on a secret mission to Strasbourg. Erasmus, in a letter of March, 1526, and Sleidan (lib. v. ad fin.) know nothing of this, and speak of the trip as merely a flight.
[200] Haag, ubi supra, vi. 507, note.
[201] Haag, La France protestante, art. Lefèvre; Gaillard, Hist. de François premier, vi. 411. The boy, at this time Duke of Angoulême, did not assume the name of Charles until after his eldest brother's death. The Swiss cantons, acting as his sponsors, had given him the somewhat uncommon Christian name Abednego (Abdénago)! Herminjard, ii. 17, 195.
[202] The Duke of Orleans may have had sincere predilections for Protestantism. At least, it is barely possible that the very remarkable instructions given to his secretary, Antoine Mallet, when on the 8th of September, 1543, Charles sent him to the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, were something besides mere diplomatic intrigue to secure for his father's projects the support of these Protestant princes. See, however, a fuller discussion of this incident farther on, Chapter VI.
[203] Margaret to Anne de Montmorency, Génin, Lettres de Marguerite d'Angoulême, i. 279, and Herminjard, ii. 250.
[204] "Come un cavallo ch' ha un apostema stringendoli il naso non sente il cauterio."
[205] "Una retrattationcella." The letter of the Nuncio to Sanga, secretary of Clement VII., Brussels, December 30, 1531, appeared in H. Laemmer, Monumenta Vaticana (ex Tabulariis Sanctæ Sedis Apostolicæ Secretis), Friburgi Brisgoviæ, 1861. I have called attention to its importance in the Bulletin de la Société de l'hist. du prot. franç., xiv. (1865), 345. M. Herminjard has given a French translation, ii. 386.
[206] This incident has been rejected as apocryphal by Bayle, and, after him, by Tabaraud (in the Biographie universelle), as well as more recently by Haag (France protestante). It has rested until now on the unsupported testimony of Hubert Thomas, secretary of the Elector Palatine, Frederick II., whom he accompanied on a visit to Charles V. in Spain. On his return the Elector fell sick at Paris, where he received frequent visits from the King and Queen of Navarre. It was on one of these occasions that Margaret related to him this story, in the hearing of the secretary. (It is reproduced in Jurieu, Histoire du Calvinisme, etc., Rotterdam, 1683, pt. i. 70.) Bayle objected that it was incredible that the reformers should have failed to allude to so striking and suggestive an occurrence. The objection has been scattered to the winds. With singular good fortune, M. Jules Bonnet has discovered among the hidden treasures of the Geneva Library an original memorandum in Farel's own handwriting, prefixed to a letter he had received from Michel d'Arande, fully confirming the discredited statements. "Jacobus Faber Stapulensis noster laborans morbo quo decessit, per aliquot dies ita perterritus fuit judicio Dei, ut actum de se vociferaret, dicens se æternum periisse, quod veritatem Dei non aperte professus fuerit, idque dies noctesque vociferando querebatur. Et cum a Gerardo Rufo admoneretur ut bono esset animo, Christo quoque fideret, is respondit: 'Nos damnati sumus, veritatem celavimus quam profiteri et testari debebamus.' Horrendum erat tam pium senem ita angi animo et tanto horrore judicii Dei concuti; licet tandem liberatus bene sperare cœperit ac perrexerit de Christo." Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., etc., xi. 215; Herminjard, iii. 400.