Going to Brittany, where the property of his house was situated, he took with him a pastor who preached from town to town, with open doors: an unheard-of thing in 1558. Henry II. reproached him sharply for it. “Sire,” answered D’Andelot, “you must not think it strange that, after doing my duty in your service, I employ the rest of my time for the safety of my soul. Wherefore I supplicate you to leave my conscience safe, and to keep for your service my body and my goods, which are entirely yours.” “But I did not give you that order,” said the king, pointing to the collar about his neck, “to use it thus. You have promised and sworn to go to mass and to follow your religion.” “I did not then know,” replied the knight in his integrity, “what it was to be a Christian, and I would not have accepted it on that condition, had God touched my heart as He has since.” The king, who could contain himself no longer, threw across the table his plate, which struck the dauphin, and he would have pierced D’Andelot with his sword. He had him imprisoned, and took away from him his commission of colonel-general of the infantry, which was given to Blaise de Montluc. This matter made a great noise. Calvin wrote to the prisoner to felicitate him on his courage, and Pope Paul IV. was indignant that the offender had not been led straight to execution. The ambassador of France represented to him in vain that it was out of the question to treat a Châtillon in this way, the nephew of the Constable, the brother of the Admiral. The intractable pontiff exclaimed, “A heretic never repents; it is an evil for which there is no remedy but the fire.” Relations and friends intervened; D’Andelot consented to allow a mass to be said in the chamber of his prison, but without taking any part in it, and he was set at liberty. Gaspard de Coligny, the greatest layman of the French Reformation, will detain us longer. We shall endeavour above all to describe the religious side of his character, and the details of private life neglected by other historians. Born at Châtillon-sur-Loing in 1516, Coligny received his education from Nicolas Bérault, a renowned professor of the age, and he exhibited such taste for his studies, that he was compelled to interrupt them, lest he should be turned from the career of arms. At twenty-five he was made colonel-general of the French infantry, and through his regulations he introduced a severe discipline among these bands of mercenaries, who before his time were more like brigands than soldiers. “These ordinances,” says Brantôme, “were the most elegant and the wisest that were ever made in France, and I believe that since they were made, the lives of a million of persons have been preserved, and as much of their goods and faculties; for before there was nothing but pillage, theft, brigandage, ransomings, murders, quarrels, and disorder among these bands. This, then, is the obligation the world owes to this eminent person.”[28]