She soon regained her courage, asked for another audience, returned to the attack, and her agitated soul spoke with new eloquence to the emperor and his ministers. Never had the Escurial or the Alcazar seen a petitioner so ardent and so persevering. She returned to her apartments in alternations of sorrow and joy. ‘Sometimes I get a kind word,’ she wrote, ‘and then suddenly all is changed. I have to deal with the greatest of dissemblers.’[437] This beautiful and eloquent ambassadress filled the Spaniards with admiration. They talked at court of nothing but the sister of Francis I. Letters received in France and Germany from Madrid and Toledo extolled her sweetness, energy, and virtues. The scholars of Europe felt their love and respect for her increase, and were proud of a princess whom they looked upon as their Mæcenas. What charmed them was something more than that inquiring spirit which had led Margaret in her earliest years towards literature and divinity, and had made her learn Latin and Hebrew;[438] Erasmus enthusiastically exclaimed when he heard of the wonders she was doing in Spain: ‘How can we help loving, in God, such a heroine, such an amazon?’[439] The courage with which the Duchess of Alençon had gone to Spain to save her brother led some christians to imagine that she would display the same heroism in delivering the Church from her long captivity. CHAPTER II. MARGARET SAVES THE EVANGELICALS AND THE KING. (1525-1526.) The captive Francis was not Margaret’s only sorrow. If her brother was a prisoner to the emperor, her brethren in the faith were prisoners to her mother. The parliament of Paris having issued a decree against the Lutherans, and the pope having on the 17th of March invested with apostolical authority the councillors authorised to proceed against them,[440] the persecutors set vigorously to work. The regent Louisa of Savoy, mother of Francis I. and of Margaret, inquired of the Sorbonne: ‘By what means the _damnable doctrine_ of Luther could be extirpated?’ The fanatic Beda, syndic of that corporation, enchanted with such a demand, replied without hesitation on the part of the Faculties: ‘It must be punished with the utmost severity.’ Accordingly Louisa published letters-patent, ‘_to extinguish the damnable heresy of Luther_.’[441] France began to seek in persecution an atonement for the faults which had led to the defeat of Pavia. Many evangelical christians were either seized or banished. Marot, valet-de-chambre to the Duchess of Alençon, the best poet of his age, who never spared the priests, and translated the Psalms of David into verse, was arrested; Lefèvre, Roussel, and others had to flee; Caroli and Mazurier recanted the faith they had professed.[442] ‘Alas!’ said Roussel, ‘no one can confess Jesus any longer except at the risk of his life.’[443]--‘It is the hour of triumph,’[444] proudly said Beda and the men of the Roman party. A blow more grievous still was about to reach Margaret.