While the new religion made proselytes in the towns, in the country, and even in the convents of the provinces, it began to penetrate into Paris. It found there a powerful protector in Marguérite de Valois. “Her name,” says Theodore de Bèze, “is deserving of perpetual honour, because of her piety, and of the holy affection she has shown for the advancement and preservation of the church of God; so much so, that we are indebted to her for the lives of many worthy persons.”[13] Having heard of a reform which was shaking off the yoke of human traditions, she wished to know it, and conversed thereupon with Lefevre d’Etaples, Farel, and Briçonnet. Their ideas pleased her: she read the Bible, and adopted the new doctrines, at the same time with that tincture of mysticism, which characterized some of those, whose lessons she heard.[14] The volume of poems which she published under the title of _Marguérite de la Marguérite des Princesses_, contains many touching revelations upon the state of her mind. She protected the preachers of the Reformation, gave them money for their voyages, sheltered them in secure retreats, and obtained the liberation of many from prison. Therefore, in their correspondence, they called her the good lady, the very excellent, and very dear Christian. Intelligent and devoted, she had rendered her brother Francis I., during his captivity at Madrid, services not to be forgotten, and had acquired over him an influence which she turned to the profit of the new ideas. Francis I. never well knew what he was, or what he wished, on the subject of religion. Endowed with qualities more brilliant than solid, he often mistook the variations of his humour for profound calculations. Proud, beyond all things, of being thought a knightly king, he had a passion for arms and adventures of gallantry, which distinguished the older chivalry, but without its stern loyalty and nice sense of honour. The Italy of the Borgias and the Machiavels had corrupted him, and if he had not protected the men of letters, who have acquitted themselves before posterity most generously of their debt to him, one might ask if he had anything but the appearance of the virtues, which have gained for him the appellation of a great king. The Reformation pleased him as an engine for attacking the monks, whom he contemned; but it repulsed, by its austere maxims, a prince who had filled his court with female favourites. The priests, beside, never ceased to represent to him the followers of the new religion as the enemies of all social order. The historian Seckendorf cites a letter, dated from the French court in 1530, where they are accused of seeking the fall of princes, perfect equality of rights, and even the rupture of marriages and the community of goods. Francis I. was much alarmed at these calumnies, and Brantôme reports that he said: “These novelties have no other aim than the destruction of all monarchy, human and divine.”