[49] Du Perron, in the Perroniana, mentions several of Calvin's letters preserved by the Du Tillets.
[50] 'Amico cuidam cujus rogatu breves quasdam admonitiones Christianas scripsit.'—Beza, Vita Calvini, Lat. p. 4; French, p. 15. Bayle (sub voce Calvin) thinks that Du Tillet was the friend of whom Beza speaks; perhaps it was Chaillou.
[51] 'Semel atque iterum in æde S. Petri obivit.'—Flor. Rémond, Hist. Heres. ii. p. 251, &c. Crottet, Chron. protest. p. 97.
[52] Varillas, Hist. des Révolutions Religieuses, ii. p. 459.
CHAPTER III.
CALVIN AT NÉRAC WITH ROUSSEL AND LEFÈVRE.
(Winter of 1533-34.)
=RELIGIOUS AWAKENING IN THE SOUTH.=
WHILE Francis I. was endeavouring to stifle the Reformation in the north of France, it was spreading in the south, and many souls were converted in the districts bordering the Pyrenees. Evangelical Christians of other countries, some of whom were ministers, had taken refuge there, and 'towns and villages were perverted suddenly by hearing a single sermon,' says a Roman Catholic historian. On certain days, the simple peasants and even a few townspeople, arriving by different paths, would meet in a retired spot, in the bed of some dried-up torrent or in a cavern of the mountain. They had often to wait a long time for the preacher; the priests and their creatures forced him to make a wide circuit; sometimes he did not come at all. 'Then,' says a Catholic, 'women might be seen trampling on the modesty of their sex, taking a Bible, reading it and even assuming the boldness to interpret it, while waiting for the minister.'
At this epoch the Queen of Navarre arrived in the south. The noise caused in 1533 by the rector's sermon and Calvin's disappearance, had induced her to quit St. Germain for the states of her husband. Her brother the king was then at a distance from Paris; her nieces with their governesses, Mesdames de Brissac and De Montreal, and the somewhat gloomy and oppressive etiquette which prevailed at the court of Queen Eleanor of Portugal, was not much to the taste of the lively and intelligent Margaret of Navarre. She therefore started for Nérac. Two litters with six mules, three baggage mules, and three or four carriages for the queen's women[53] entered the city, and took the road that leads to the vast Gothic castle of the D'Albrets. It was a very scanty retinue for the sister of Francis I.
=QUEEN MARGARET AT NÉRAC.=