Berquin’s death being decided upon, the Sorbonne applied to the parliament, who raised no objections in the matter. A man was put to death in those times for an offensive passage in his writings; it was the censorship of a period just emerging from the barbarism of the middle ages. Demailly, an officer of the court, started for Abbeville, proceeded to the gentleman’s estate, and arrested him in the name of the law. His vassals, who were devoted to him, murmured and would have risen to defend him; but Berquin thought himself strong in his right; he remembered besides these words of the Son of God: ‘_Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain_;’ he entreated his friends to let him depart, and was taken to the prison of the Conciergerie, which he entered with a firm countenance and unbending head.[449] This sad news which reached the Duchess of Alençon in Spain moved her deeply, and while she was hurrying from Madrid to Toledo, Alcala, and Guadalaxara, soliciting everybody, ‘plotting’ her brother’s marriage with the sister of Charles V., and thus paving the way to the reconciliation of the two potentates, she resolved to save her brethren exiled or imprisoned for the Gospel. She applied to the king, attacking him on his better side. Francis I., Brantôme tells us, was called the father of letters. He had sought for learned men all over Europe and collected a fine library at Fontainebleau.[450] ‘What!’ said his sister to him, ‘you are founding a college at Paris intended to receive the enlightened men of foreign countries; and at this very time illustrious French scholars, Lefèvre of Etaples and others, are compelled to seek an asylum out of the kingdom.... You wish to be a propagator of learning, while musty hypocrites, black, white, and grey, are endeavouring to stifle it at home.’[451] Margaret was not content to love with word and tongue; she showed her love by her works. The thought of the poor starving exiles, who knew not where to lay their heads, haunted her in the magnificent palaces of Spain; she distributed four thousand gold pieces among them, says one of the enemies of the Reformation.[452]