The delegates, in great surprise, read the letter over and over again: it seemed very strange to them. They deliberated upon it, and, thinking themselves of more consequence than this woman, quietly pursued their work. The haughty and resolute Louisa of Savoy, having heard of their insolence, was exasperated beyond measure, and ordered a second letter to be written to the pontiff’s agents,[467] who contented themselves with saying ‘_Non possumus_,’ and made the more haste, for fear their victim should escape them. The king’s mother, still more irritated, applied to the parliament, who held Berquin in respect, and who said boldly that the whole thing was nothing but a monkish conspiracy. At this the members of the Roman party made a still greater disturbance. Many of them (we must acknowledge) thought they were doing the public a service. ‘Erasmus is an apostate,’ they said, ‘and Berquin is his follower.[468] ... Their opinions are heretical, schismatic, scandalous.... We must burn Erasmus’s books ... and Berquin with them.’[469] But Margaret did not lose courage. She recollected that the widow in the Gospel had obtained her request by her importunity. She entreated her mother, she wrote to her brother: ‘If you do not interfere, Berquin is a dead man.’[470] Francis I. yielded to her prayer, and wrote to the first president that he, the king, would make him answerable for Berquin’s life if he dared to condemn him. The president stopped all proceedings; the monks hung their heads, and Beda and his friends, says the chronicler, ‘were nigh bursting with vexation.’[471] Yet Margaret did not hide from herself that she had still a hard struggle before her, which would require strength and perseverance. She felt the need of support to bring to a successful end in France a transformation similar to that which was then renewing Germany. The Count of Hohenlohe, at Strasburg, was not enough: she wanted at her side a staff that would enable her to bear with her brother’s rebukes. God appeared willing to give her what she wished.