Thus, in the absence of the king, new blows were continually aimed against the Reformation. Berquin, Toussaint, and many others, were in prison; Schuch, Pavanne, and the hermit of Livry, had been put to death; Farel, Lefevre, Roussel, and many other defenders of the holy doctrine, were in exile; the mouths of the mighty ones were dumb. The light of the Gospel day was growing dim; the storm was roaring incessantly, bending and shaking as if it would uproot the young tree that the hand of God had so recently planted in France.
PERSECUTION MORE VIGOROUS—DU BLET AND MOULIN.
Nor was this all. The humble victims who had already fallen were to be succeeded by more illustrious martyrs. The enemies of the Reform in France, having failed when they began with persons of rank, had submitted to begin at the bottom, but with the hope of rising gradually until they procured the condemnation and death of the most exalted personages. The inverse progress succeeded with them. Scarcely had the ashes with which the persecution had covered the Grève and the avenues of Notre-Dame been dispersed by the wind, before fresh attacks were commenced. Messire Anthony Du Blet, that excellent man, the Lyons merchant, sunk under the persecutions of these enemies of the truth, in company with another disciple, Francis Moulin, of whose fate no details have been handed down.[1145] They went further still; they now took a higher aim; there was an illustrious person whom they could not reach, but whom they could strike in those who were dear to her. This was the Duchess of Alençon. Michael d'Arande, chaplain to the king's sister, for whose sake Margaret had dismissed her other preachers, and who proclaimed the pure doctrine of the Gospel in her presence, became the object of attack, and was threatened with imprisonment and death.[1146] About the same time Anthony Papillon, for whom the princess had obtained the office of chief master of requests to the Dauphin, died suddenly, and the general report, even among the enemies, was that he had been poisoned.[1147]
TERROR AND MOURNING.
Thus the persecution spread over the kingdom, and daily drew nearer to the person of Margaret. After the forces of the Reform, concentrated at Meaux, at Lyons, and at Basle, had been dispersed, they brought down one after another those isolated combatants who here and there stood up for it. Yet a few more efforts, and the soil of France will be free from heresy. Underhanded contrivances and secret practices took the place of clamour and the stake. They will make war in open day, but they will also carry it on in darkness. If fanaticism employs the tribunal and the scaffold for the meaner sort, poison and the dagger are in reserve for the great. The doctors of a celebrated society have made too good a use of these means, and even kings have fallen under the dagger of the assassins. But justice demands that we should remember if Rome has had in every age its fanatical assassins, it has also had men like Vincent de Paul and Fenelon. These blows struck in darkness and silence were well adapted to spread terror on every side.
To this perfidious policy and fanatical persecution from within, were added the fatal reverses from without. A veil of mourning hung over the whole nation. There was not a family, particularly among the nobles, whose tears did not flow for the loss of a father, a husband, or a son left on the fields of Italy,[1148] or whose hearts did not tremble for the liberty and even the life of one of its members. The great reverses that had fallen upon the nation diffused a leaven of hatred against the heretics. People and parliament, church and throne, joined hand in hand.
Was it not enough for the Duchess of Alençon that the defeat of Pavia should have deprived her of a husband, and made her brother a prisoner? Must the torch of the Gospel, in whose mild light she so rejoiced, be extinguished perhaps for ever? In May 1525, she had felt increase of sorrow. Charles of Lannoy had received orders to take his prisoner into Spain. Margaret had recourse to the consolations of faith, and having found them, immediately communicated them to her brother. "My lord," she wrote, "the farther you are removed from us, the stronger is my hope of your deliverance: for when the reason of man is troubled and fails, then the Lord performs his mighty works.—And now, if he makes you partaker of the pains he has borne for you, I beseech you, my lord, to believe that it is only to try how much you love him, and to afford you space to learn how he loves you; for he will have your whole heart, as he through love hath given his own. After having united you to himself by tribulation, he will deliver you to his glory and your consolation, by the merits of his victorious resurrection, in order that by you his name may be known and sanctified, not only in your kingdom, but in all Christendom, until the conversion of the unbelievers. Oh! how blessed will be your brief captivity, by which God will deliver so many souls from unbelief and eternal condemnation!"[1149] Francis I. deceived the hopes of his pious sister.
GOD PRESERVES THE CHURCH.
The news from Spain soon increased the general sorrow. Mortification and illness endangered the life of the haughty Francis. If the king remains a prisoner, if he dies, if his mother's regency is prolonged for many years, will not the Reformation be crushed for ever? "But when all seems lost," said the young scholar of Noyon at a later period, "God saves his Church in a marvellous way."[1150] The Church of France, which was as if in the travail of birth, was to have an interval of ease before her pains returned; and to this end God made use of a weak woman, who never openly declared in favour of the Reformation. At that time she thought more of saving the king and the kingdom, than of delivering obscure Christians, who nevertheless rested great hopes in her.[1151] But under the splendour of worldly affairs God often conceals the mysterious ways by which he governs his people. A noble project arose in the mind of the Duchess of Alençon. To cross the sea or the Pyrenees, and rescue Francis from the power of Charles V., was now the object of her life.
MARGARET'S PROJECT.