Swift remedy found the exasperated Duke for such domestic treason. And here Mnemosyne begs to suggest as a subject for artistic presentment the incident which followed. Scene—the private closet of the Duchess in the castle of Ferrara. The persons assembled there have been engaged in that sweet converse so delightful to persons bound together by common thoughts and feelings in the midst of an unsympathising and hostile world around them. There is the good Duchess, who has perhaps been mingling with more serious discourse questionings of things in that dear distant France, which she never ceased while absent from it to regret. The elderly lady, somewhat austerely dressed in black to the throat, with deep ruffle around her neck, and large hanging sleeves to her dress, is Madame de Soubise, who came with Renée from France, and who was, as is well known, "lame of the same foot," as the Catholic writers phrase it. The great heresiarch himself might have been recognised by those handsome but hard and severe features, the lofty but not noble forehead, and the bright but domineering eye; but he could not have been known from habiliments chosen to suit the character of M. Charles d'Espeville. The Signeurs de Pons and de Soubise may also have been present. But one other person was assuredly there;—a writer of obscene French verses, as the orthodox Italians call him,[50] who had an absurd mania for meddling in theology, and fancying that he comprehended the original language of the sacred writers, one Clement Marot,—he was there too, and "assisted Calvin much in saturating the mind of the Duchess with pestilent doctrine." [Sidenote: DUCHESS RENÉE IN A SCRAPE.] "To them, enter" hurriedly and noisily the Duke in high wrath, and at his heels, opera–stage fashion, a sufficient impersonation of "la force publique." A rapid glance of the angry eye indicates to those active officers the duty in hand. And M. Charles d'Espeville, alias John Calvin, and the luckless poet turned theologian, are marched off, with a very tolerable prospect of martyrdom before them. "And as for you, Madame! ... &c." Calvin and Marot were marched off under escort to Bologna. But the terrible marital lecture, which it has been left to the competent reader's imagination to supply, did not so terrify Renée as to prevent her from promptly and secretly dispatching certain trustworthy emissaries, who, overtaking the escort on their road,[51] liberated the prisoners, and set them free to make the best of their way across the Alps. This incident made a serious difference in the condition of the Duchess. Constant suspicion and severity seem to have henceforth made her life at Ferrara a very unhappy one. And the following lines[52] addressed by Clement Marot to Marguerite, the sister of Francis I., speak touchingly enough the forlorn misery of her life:—