At these words his friends were troubled and alarmed; they endeavoured to check his impetuosity. ‘The greater the success you promise yourself,’ wrote Erasmus, ‘the more afraid I am.... O my friend! live in retirement; taste the sweets of study, and let the priests rage at their leisure. Or, if you think they are plotting your ruin, employ stratagem. Let your friends at court obtain some embassy for you from the king, and under that pretext leave France.[627] Think, dear Berquin, think constantly what a hydra you are attacking, and by how many mouths it spits its venom. Your enemy is immortal, for a faculty never dies. You will begin by attacking three monks only; but you will raise up against you numerous legions, rich, mighty, and perverse. Just now the princes are for you; but backbiters will contrive to alienate their affection. As for me, I declare I will have nothing to do with the Sorbonne and its armies of monks.’ This letter disturbed Berquin. He read it again and again, and each time his trouble increased. He an ambassador ... he the representative of the king at foreign courts! Ah! when Satan tempted Christ he offered him the kingdoms of this world. Better be a martyr on the Grève for the love of the Saviour! Berquin separated from Erasmus. ‘His spirit,’ said his friends, ‘resembles a palm-tree; the more you desire to bend it, the straighter it grows.’ A trifling circumstance contributed to strengthen his decision. One day Beda, syndic of the Sorbonne, went to court, where he had some business to transact with the king on behalf of that body. Some time before, he had published a refutation of the ‘Paraphrases and Annotations’ of Erasmus, and Francis I., who boasted of being a pupil of this king of letters, having heard of Beda’s attack, had given way to a fit of passion. As soon, therefore, as he heard that Beda was in the palace, he gave orders that he should be arrested and kept prisoner. Accordingly the syndic was seized, shut up in a chamber, and closely watched. Beda was exasperated, and the hatred he felt against the Reformation was turned against the king. Some of his friends, on hearing of this strange adventure, conjured Francis to set him at liberty. He consented on the following day, but on condition that the syndic should appear when called for.[628]