Anthony de Bourbon, dazzled, seduced, won, profited by a conference between the theologians of the two communions, to declare that the Calvinist ministers, after all their boasting, had not been able to withstand the (Roman) Catholic doctors; and full of violence, like a man who has just sold himself, he treated them as charlatans and impostors, with whom he would have nothing more to do. On learning this, the Cardinal de Lorraine cried out, with an air of triumph, “See what truth has gained by those conferences, for which I have been so much reproached!” Theodore de Bèze, who had been called to France by the king of Navarre, went to him several times to beseech him not to abandon the cause of (the Reformed) religion. He was coldly received: and in a letter to Calvin, dated the 26th of February, 1562, he said, “Never was there witnessed such an example of treachery and wickedness. In an audience which he gave me, he was not ashamed to treat me as if I were ignorant of things, of which even children were cognizant.” Calvin wrote pressing letters to the king, but in vain. Jeanne d’Albret herself employed both tears and prayers without success. “She excited pity in all who beheld her,” says Bèze, “except in her husband, the king, so besotted was he!” Anthony de Bourbon was, in fact, so enraged against her, as positively to maltreat her; and Jeanne d’Albret, losing all hope, retired to Béarn. She was born at Paris, in 1528, and was the only daughter of Margaret of Valois: she had all the brilliant qualities of her mother, combined with a firmer piety, and a more decided character. Her education was solid and well directed. She understood Greek, Latin, and Spanish, and wrote verses with facility in a poetical contest with Joachim du Bellay. In 1548 she married Anthony de Bourbon, and in 1555, on the death of her father, she took the name of queen of Navarre. Jeanne d’Albret was slower than her husband in embracing the Reformed faith; she only decided in 1560; but she was unalterably constant to it; and when Catherine de Medicis advised her to fall in with the altered humour of the king of Navarre, she made this answer, which marks the fervour of the newly-converted: “Madame, rather than ever go to mass, if I had my kingdom and my son in my hand, I would cast them both into the depths of the sea.” At the moment of her departure for Béarn, she clasped her son Henry in her arms, bathed him with her tears, and beseeched him to preserve the faith, in which he had been educated. One day Henry IV. had to forget both the prayers and the farewell of his mother.