Margaret alighted from her litter, and was hardly settled in her apartments before she felt quite happy, for she had escaped at last from the pomps and struggles of the court of France. She laid aside her showy dresses and her grand manners; she hid the majesty of her house beneath a candour and friendliness that enchanted all who came near her. Dressed like a plain gentlewoman, she quitted the castle, crossed the Baise which flows through the city, and rambled along the beautiful walks of the neighbourhood, having for companions only the seneschaless of Poitou or one of her young ladies of honour. But she had come for something more than this. Having fled far from the palaces and cities where the persecuting spirit of Rome and of the parliament was raging, she occupied herself more particularly in giving a fresh impulse to the evangelical movement in the southern provinces. Her activity was inexhaustible. She sent out colporteurs who made their way into houses, and while selling jewellery to the young women, presented them also with New Testaments, printed in fine characters, ruled in red and bound in vellum with gilt edges. 'The mere sight of these books,' says an historian, 'excited a desire to read them.' Around the queen everybody was in motion, labouring and murmuring like a hive of bees. 'Margaret,' says the king's historiographer, 'was the precious flower that adorned this parterre, and whose perfume attracted the best spirits of Europe to Bearn, as thyme attracts honey-bees.'[54]
The queen might often be seen surrounded by a troop of sufferers, to whom she showed the tenderest respect. These were the refugees: Lefèvre of Etaples, Gerard Roussel, converted priests and monks, and a number of laymen, obliged to leave France, which they had been able to do, thanks to the queen who had assisted their flight. 'The good princess,' said a Catholic, 'has really nothing more at heart than to get those out of the way whom the king wishes to deliver up to the severities of justice. If I attempted to give the names of all those whom she has saved from punishment, I should never finish.'[55]
The Christians exiled for the Gospel did not make her forget the wretched of her own country. One day, when Roussel was describing to her the unfortunate situation of a poor family, Margaret said nothing; but returning to her chamber, she threw a Bearnese hood over her shoulders, and, followed by a single domestic, went out by a private door, hastened to the sufferers, and comforted them with the tenderest affection.[56]
She took pleasure in founding schools. Roussel, her chaplain, would visit the humble room in which the children of the people were learning to read and write, and going up to them would say: 'My dear children ... the death of Christ is a real atonement. There is no sin so small as not to need it, or so great that it cannot be blotted out by it.[57] Praying to God,' he would add, 'is not muttering with the lips: prayer is an ardent and serious converse with the Lord.'[58]
=CALVIN AND ROUSSEL.=
There was one feature, however, in this awakening in the south which, in Calvin's eyes, rendered it imperfect and transitory, unless some remedy were applied to it. There was in it a certain halting between truth and error. The pious but weak Roussel manifested a lamentable spirit of compromise in his teaching. Wearied with the struggles he had gone through, he sheltered himself under the cloak of the Catholic Church. He did not pray to the Virgin, he administered the Holy Sacrament in two kinds; but he celebrated a kind of mass—a mournful and yet touching instance of that mixed Christianity which aimed at preserving evangelical life under catholic forms.
Calvin at Angoulême was not far from Nérac, and his eyes were often turned to that city. He longed to see Lefèvre before the old man was taken from the world, and was uneasy about Roussel, whom he feared to see yielding to the seductions of greatness. One of the christian thoughts that had laid the strongest hold on his mind, was the conviction that the wisdom from on high ought to reject every compromise suggested by ambition or hypocrisy.[59] Ought he not to try and bring back Roussel into the right path from which he appeared to be wandering? Calvin left Du Tillet's house probably about the end of February, and called upon Roussel as soon as he arrived at Nérac.
The most decided and the most moderate of the theologians of the sixteenth century were now face to face. Calvin, naturally timid and hesitating, 'would never have had the boldness so much as to open his mouth (to use his own words); but faith in Christ begot such a strong assurance in his heart, that he could not remain silent.' He, therefore, gave his opinion with decision: 'There is no good left in Catholicism,' he said. 'We must re-establish the Church in its ancient purity.'[60]—'What is that you say?' answered the astonished Roussel; 'God's house ought to be purified, no doubt, but not destroyed.'[61]—'Impossible,' said the young reformer; 'the edifice is so bad that it cannot be repaired. We must pull it down entirely, and build another in its place.'[62]—Roussel exclaimed with alarm: 'We must cleanse the Church, but not by setting it on fire. If we take upon ourselves to pull it down, we shall be crushed under the ruins.'[63]
Calvin retired in sorrow. Type of protestant decision in the sixteenth century, he always protested freely and boldly against everything that was contrary to the Gospel. He displayed this unshakeable firmness not only in opposition to catholic tendencies, but also against rationalistic ideas. It would not be difficult to find in Zwingle, in Melanchthon, and even in Luther, some sprinkling of neology, of which the slightest traces cannot be found in Calvin.