Froment, young, poor, simple-minded, but intelligent, had refused to undertake so difficult a task. Farel tried once more. Froment did not understand how the attack of one of the strongest fortresses of the enemy could be entrusted to so young a man. 'Fear nothing,' said Farel; 'you will find men in Geneva quite ready to receive you, and your very obscurity will protect you. God will be your guide, and will guard your holy enterprise.'[561] Froment yielded, but felt humbled; and reflecting on the task entrusted to him, he fell on his knees: 'O God,' he said, 'I trust in no human power, but place myself entirely in thy hands. To thee I commit my cause, praying thee to guide it, for it is thine.'[562] He did not pray alone. The little flock at Yvonand, affected at this call which was about to take away their pastor, said: 'O God, give him grace to be useful for the advancement of thy Word!' The brethren embraced, and Froment departed, 'going to Geneva,' he tells us, 'with prayers and blessings.' It was the 1st November 1532.
He reached Lausanne, whence he took his way along the shore of the lake towards Geneva. The poor young man stopped sometimes on the road, and asked himself whether the enterprise he was about to attempt was not sheer madness. 'No,' he said, 'I will not shrink back; for it is by the small and weak things of this world that God designs to confound the great.' And then he resumed his journey.
The Genevese were much occupied at that time with signs in the heaven. A strange blaze shone in the firmament; every night their eyes were fixed upon a long train of light, and the most learned endeavoured to divine the prognostics to be drawn from it. 'At the new moon,' says a manuscript, 'there appeared a comet, at two in the morning, which was visible from the 26th September to the 14th of the following month. About this time Anthony Froment arrived in Geneva.'[563] Many huguenots, irritated at the reception given to Farel, despaired of seeing Geneva reformed, and its liberties settled on a firm basis. Some, however, who were adepts in astronomy, wondered whether that marvellous sheen did not foretel that a divine light would also illuminate the country. They waited, and Froment appeared.
=FROMENT COLDLY RECEIVED.=
The young Dauphinese was at first much embarrassed. He tried to enter into conversation with one and another, but they were very short with the stranger. He hoped to find 'some acquaintance with whom he could retire safely and familiarly;' but he saw none but strange faces. 'Alas!' he said, 'I cannot tell what to do, except it be to return, for I find no door to preach the Gospel.'[564] Then, calling to mind the names of the chief huguenots, friends of Farel, who (as he said) would give him the warmest welcome, Froment resolved to apply to them, and waited upon Baudichon de la Maison-Neuve, Claude Bernard, J. Goulaz, Vandel, and Ami Perrin, ... but strange to say he everywhere met with embarrassed manners and long faces. The mean appearance of the young Dauphinese disconcerted even the best disposed. Farel (they thought) might at least have sent a scholar, and not a working man. Geneva was an important and learned city. There were men of capacity among the Roman clergy, who must be opposed by a minister of good appearance, a well-established doctor.... The huguenots bowed out the mean little man. 'Ah!' said Froment, returning to his inn, 'I found them so cold, so timid, and so startled at what had been done to Farel and his companions, that they dared not unbosom themselves, and still less receive me into their houses.' Confounded and dejected at seeing all his plans overthrown, he walked thoughtfully through the streets with his eyes bent on the ground. He entered the inn, shut himself up in his room, and asked himself what was to be done next. Those who seemed to wish to hear the Gospel looked at him with contemptuous eyes. If he spoke to any persons, they turned their backs on him. Not one door was opened to the Word of God.... His feelings were soured. Wearied and dejected he sank under the weight, and lost courage. 'I am greatly tempted to go back,' he said.[565]
Froment went to the landlord, paid his bill, strapped his little bundle on his shoulders, and, without taking leave of the huguenots, bent his steps towards the Swiss gate, and quitted the city. But he had not gone many yards before he stopped; he felt as if he were detained by an invisible hand; a voice was heard in his conscience, telling him he was doing wrong; a force greater than that of man compelled him to retrace his steps. He returned to his room, shut the door, and sat down; leaning on the table with his head in his hands, he asked what God wanted with him.[566] He began to pray, and seemed to witness in himself the realisation of the promise: I will lead thee in the way in which thou shouldst walk. He called to mind what Farel had told him, and what the reformer had done at Aigle. A flash of light illumined his soul. They will have nothing to do with him in Geneva, because his appearance is mean. Be it so; he will undertake with humility the work that God gives him; and since he is rejected as an evangelist, he will turn schoolmaster.
=FROMENT ADVERTISES HIS SCHOOL.=
During his walks Froment had met with one Le Patu, a man but little known, whom he asked if he could procure for him a place for a school. Le Patu answered that there was the great hall at Boytet's, at the Croix d'Or, near the Molard.[567] They went there together; Froment measured its dimensions with his eye, and hired the room. He breathed again; he had now one foot in the stirrup; it only remained to get into the saddle, and begin his course. It was necessary to find scholars; with God's help Froment despaired of nothing. Returning to the inn, he drew up a prospectus, made several copies in his best handwriting, went out with them, and posted them in all the public places. They ran as follows: 'A man has just arrived in this city who engages to teach reading and writing in French, in one month, to all who will come to him, young and old, men and women, even such as have never been to school; and if they cannot read and write within the said month, he asks nothing for his trouble. He will be found at Boytet's large room, near the Molard, at the sign of the Croix d'Or. Many diseases are also cured gratis.'
These papers having been posted about the city, many of the passers-by stopped to read them. 'We have heard him speak,' said some with whom he had conversed; 'he talks well.' Others thought that the promise to teach reading and writing in a month was suspicious; to which more benevolent men replied, that in any case he did not aim at their purses. But the priests and devout were irritated. 'He is a devil,' said a priest in the crowd; 'he enchants all who go near him. You have hardly heard him before his magical words bewilder you.'[568]
The school opened, however, and he did not want for young pupils. Froment, who had talent (his book of the Actes et Gestes de Genève proves this), taught with simplicity and clearness. Before dismissing his scholars he would open the New Testament and read a few verses, explaining them in an interesting manner; after which (as he had some knowledge of medicine) he would ask them whether any in their families were sick, and distribute harmless remedies among them. It was by the instruction of the mind and the healing of the body that the evangelist paved the way to the conversion of the heart. The school and medicine are great missionary auxiliaries. The children ran home and told their parents all; the mothers stopped in their work to listen to them, and the fathers, especially the huguenots, made them tell it again. Some of the boys and girls were continually prattling about it; they even 'accosted men and women in the streets, inviting them to come and hear that man.'[569] In a short time the city was full of the schoolmaster who spoke French so well.