But it was to no purpose. On the 19th of November, 1526, the provost of Paris returned to the palace with a letter from the king, formally commanding him to remove Berquin and transfer him to the Louvre. The court again protested that they would not deliver over the said Berquin to the said provost; but, they said, “seeing what the times are, the said provost will be able to find free access to the Conciergerie, for to do there what he hath a mind to.” The same day, about six in the evening, John de la Barre repaired to the Conciergerie, and removed from it Louis de Berquin, whom he handed over to the captain of the guard and four archers, who took him away to the Louvre. Two months afterwards, in January, 1527, Princess Marguerite married Henry d’Albret, King of Navarre, and about the same time, though it is difficult to discover the exact day, Louis de Berquin issued forth a free man from the Louvre, and the new queen, on taking him at once into her service, wrote to the Constable Anne de Montmorency, whom the king had charged with the duty of getting Berquin set at liberty, “I thank you for the pleasure you have done me in the matter of poor Berquin, whom I esteem as much as if he were myself; and so you may say that you have delivered me from prison, since I consider in that light the pleasure done to me.” Marguerite’s sympathetic joy was as natural as touching; she must have thought Berquin safe; he was free and in the service of one who was fundamentally a sovereign-prince, though living in France and in dependence upon the King of France, whose sister he had just married. In France, Berquin was under the stigma of having been condemned to death as a heretic, and was confronted by determined enemies. In so perilous a position his safety depended upon his courting oblivion. But instead of that, and consulting only the dictates of his generous and blind confidence in the goodness of his cause, he resolved to assume the offensive and to cry for justice against his enemies. “Beneath the cloak of religion,” he wrote to Erasmus, “the priests conceal the vilest passions, the most corrupt morals, and the most scandalous infidelity. It is necessary to rend the veil which covers them, and boldly bring an accusation of impiety against the Sorbonne, Rome, and all their flunkies.” Erasmus, justly alarmed, used all his influence to deter him: but “the more confidence he showed,” says he, “the more I feared for him. I wrote to him frequently, begging him to get quit of the case by some expedient, or even to withdraw himself on the pretext of a royal ambassadorship obtained by the influence of his friends. I told him that the theologians would probably, as time went on, let his affair drop, but that they would never admit themselves to be guilty of impiety. I told him to always bear in mind what a hydra was that Beda, and at how many mouths he belched forth venom. I told him to reflect well that he was