Twelve commissioners, delegated by the Parliament, condemn him to make a public abjuration, then to remain incarcerated for the rest of his life, after having had his tongue pierced with a hot iron. “I appeal to the king,” exclaimed Berquin. “If you do not submit to our sentence,” replied one of the judges, “we will find means to stop your appeals for ever.” “I would rather die,” said Berquin, “than only approve by my silence that the truth is thus condemned.” “Let him then be strangled and burned upon the Place de Grève!” said the judges with one voice. The execution was delayed until Francis was absent; for it was feared lest a last remnant of affection should be awakened in the heart of the monarch for his loyal servant. On the 10th of November, 1539, six hundred soldiers escorted Berquin to the place of execution. He showed no sign of depression. “You would have said” (it is Erasmus, who recounts it on the testimony of an eyewitness), “that he was in a library pursuing his studies, or in a temple meditating upon things divine. When the executioner, with husky voice, read to him his sentence, he never changed countenance. He alighted from the tumbril with a firm step. His was not the brutal indifference of the hardened criminal; it was the serenity, the peace of a good conscience.” Berquin tried to speak to the people. He was not heard; the monks had posted bands of wretches to drown his voice with their clamour. Thus the Sorbonne of 1529 gave the populace of Paris of 1793 the dastard example of smothering upon the scaffold the sacred words of the dying. After the execution, Doctor Merlin, the grand penitentiary, said aloud before the people, that no one in France for perchance a hundred years had died so good a Christian. III. In spite of the persecutions, a great number of Lutherans had remained in the town of Meaux.[10] These faithful, deserted by their preachers, and disavowed by the bishop, assembled in secret. An isolated hut, the garret of a woolcarder, the cover of a wood, anything sufficed, so that they might read the Scriptures and pray together. From time to time, one of them, torn from his humble asylum, went to seal his faith with his blood. The preachers were dispersed. Jacques Lefevre, after long journeyings, terminated his career at Nérac, under the protection of Marguérite de Valois. Too old to play an active part in the French Reformation, he followed its progress from afar. On his death-bed, he said: “I leave my body to the earth, my soul to God, and my goods to the poor.” These words were carved, it is said, upon his gravestone. Guillaume Farel was neither of an age nor character to be stopped by persecution. On quitting Meaux, he went to preach the Gospel in the mountains of Dauphiny. Three of his brothers shared his faith. Encouraged by this success, he went preaching from town to town and place to place.