Calvin was ready. Renée invited him to preach in Titian's chapel. Had he not preached in the catholic churches of Noyon, Angoumois, and Poitou? The duchess threw open the doors of that service to all who desired to take part in it. The count of Marennes and his wife, the youthful Jean de Parthenay, seigneur of Soubise and brother to the countess, with other members of that family, the count of Mirambeau, Anne of Beauregard, Clement Marot, and Leon Jamet, the ex-clerk of finance, who had fled from Paris after the affair of the Placards—were all present at these meetings.
The charms which French people found in a French service might excuse these assemblies in the eyes of the duke of Este. But they were soon joined by learned Italians, friends of the Gospel, and among others by Giovanni Sinapi and his brother, as well as by the pious, sprightly, and beautiful Francesca Baciro, whom Giovanni Sinapi married two years later.[780] At this epoch so glorious for Italy, when Curione taught at Pavia, protected by the admiration of his hearers; when Aonio Paleario at Sienna glorified Jesus Christ, 'the king of every people;' when Mollio at Bologna commented on the Epistles of Saint Paul to the great scandal of the pope; when Juan Valdes, Peter Martyr, and Occhino filled Naples with the Gospel; when Christ's truth seemed to be gliding even into Rome itself, a Frenchman, under the patronage of a French princess, was announcing in Ferrara the same Gospel, but with a voice even more distinct. What a future for Italy, if Rome had not extinguished these lights! There was gathered around the preacher a serious and friendly audience in the chapel of the castle of Ferrara.
Calvin, full of the truths he had just set forth in his Institutes, 'put forward that Word of the Lord whose majesty by a holy violence constrains souls to obey it,' and showed that this 'Gospel, whose smallness many folks despised, as if it crouched at their feet, so far surpassed the range of the human mind that the greatest geniuses lift their eyes in vain, for they can never see the top.'[781]
=ANNE OF BEAUREGARD.=
Among the persons whose heart sought after God was the beautiful Anne of Beauregard, who, though still very young, had accompanied Renée to Ferrara. Being betrothed, and all radiant with the joy of her youth, she was soon to be called to other altars than those of marriage. Falling ill, she profited by the Word she had heard, and, content with Christ alone, despised the world. Death cut down that beautiful flower. Renée regretted her bitterly; all the court wept with her; and Marot, who was then at Ferrara, wrote these melancholy lines upon her tomb:
De Beauregard, Anne suis, qui d'enfance,
Laissai parents, pays, amis et France,
Pour suivre ici la duchesse Renée;
Laquelle j'ai depuis abandonnée,
Futur époux, beauté, fleurissant âge;