The success of Erasmus was also a success for Berquin; but he was still in prison, ill and maltreated. The king wrote on the 11th of July to Parliament to demand that he should enjoy at least all the liberties that the prison would admit of, that he should no longer be detained in an unhealthy cell, and that he should be placed in that building of the Conciergerie where the court-yard was. “That,” was the answer, “would be a bad precedent; they never put in the court-yard convicts who had incurred the penalty of death.” An offer was made to Berquin of the chamber reserved for the greatest personages, for princes of the blood, and of permission to walk in the court-yard for two hours a day, one in the morning and the other in the evening, in the absence of the other prisoners. Neither the king nor Berquin was inclined to be content with these concessions. The king in his irritation sent from Beaugency, on the 5th of October, two archers of his guard with a letter to this effect: “It is marvellously strange that what we ordered has not yet been done. We do command and most expressly enjoin upon you, this once for all, that you are incontinently to put and deliver the said Berquin into the hands of the said Texier and Charles do Broc, whom we have ordered to conduct him to our castle of the Louvre.” The court still objected; a prisoner favored by so high a personage, it was said, would soon be out of such a prison. The objection resulted in a formal refusal to obey. The provost of Paris, John de la Barre, the king’s premier gentleman, was requested to repair to the palace and pay Berquin a visit, to ascertain from himself what could be done for him. Berquin, for all that appears, asked for nothing but liberty to read and write. “It is not possible,” was the reply; “such liberty is never granted to those who are condemned to death.” As a great favor, Berquin was offered a copy of the Letters of St. Jerome and some volumes of history; and the provost had orders not to omit that fact in his report: “The king must be fully assured that the court do all they can to please him.” [Illustration: Berquin released by John de la Barre----198]