More important deliverances still were in preparation. Strasburg was to rejoice. There was no city out of France where the king’s return had been hailed with so much enthusiasm. Many evangelical christians had sought refuge there from the cruelties of Duprat, and were sighing for the moment that would restore them to their country. Among the number of the refugees was the famous Cornelius Agrippa. His reputation was not unblemished; a book on the ‘Vanity of Science’ does him little credit; but he seems at this time to have been occupied with the Gospel. Having received a letter from the excellent Papillon, who told him how favourable the king appeared to the new light, Agrippa, who, surrounded by pious men, took their tone and tuned his voice in harmony with theirs, exclaimed: ‘All the Church of the saints with us, hearing of the triumphs of the Word at the court and in the most part of France, rejoiced with exceeding great joy.[500] I bless the Lord for the glory with which the Word is crowned among you. Would to God that we were permitted, as well as you, to return to France!’ Another country was equally attractive to this scholar: ‘Write to me what they are doing at Geneva ... tell me if the Word is loved there, and if they care for learning.’[501] Men more decided than Cornelius Agrippa were to be found at Strasburg. During all the winter the hospitable house of Capito had often witnessed the meetings of those christians who had raised highest the standard of the Gospel in France. There assembled the aged Lefèvre, the first translator of the Bible, who had escaped the stake only by flight; the pious Roussel, Vedastes, Simon, and Farel who had arrived from Montbéliard. These friends of the Reformation concealed themselves under assumed names: Lefèvre passed as Anthony Peregrin; Roussel as Tolnin; but they were known by everybody, even by the children in the streets.[502] They often met Bucer, Zell, and the Count of Hohenlohe, and edified one another. Margaret undertook to bring them all back to France. The court was then in the south; the king was at Cognac, his birthplace, where he often resided; the duchesses (his mother and sister) at Angoulême. One day when they met, Margaret entreated her brother to put an end to the cruel exile of her friends: Francis granted everything.