more rarely and more coldly to his illustrious master, and employed all his strength to carry by main force the place he was attacking. If Erasmus, like Achilles, had retired to his tent, were not Margaret and Francis, and Truth especially, fighting by his side? The catholic party grew alarmed, and resolved to oppose a vigorous resistance to these attacks. The watchword was given. Many libels were circulated; men were threatened with the gaol and the stake; even ghosts were conjured up; all means were lawful. One sister Alice quitted the fires of purgatory and appeared on the banks of the Rhone and Saone to confound ‘the damnable sect of heretics.’ Any one might read of this prodigy in the ‘Marvellous History of the Ghost of Lyons,’ written by one of the king’s almoners. The Sorbonne knew, however, that phantoms were not sufficient; but they had on their side something more than phantoms. They could oppose Berquin with adversaries who had flesh and blood like himself, and whose power seemed irresistible. These adversaries were a princess and a statesman. CHAPTER X. EFFORTS OF DUPRAT TO BRING ABOUT A PERSECUTION: RESISTANCE OF FRANCIS I. (1527-1528.) A woman reigned in the councils of the king. Inclined at first to ridicule the monks, she had after the defeat of Pavia gone over to the side of the priests. At the moment when the kingly authority received such a blow, she had seen that their power remained, and had made them her auxiliaries. This woman was Louisa of Savoy, Duchess of Angoulême, mother of Francis I., worthy predecessor of Catherine de’ Medici. A clever woman, ‘an absolute lady in her wishes both good and bad,’ says Pasquier; a freethinker, who could study the new doctrine as a curiosity, but who despised it; a dissolute woman, of whom Beaucaire, Brantôme, and others relate many scandalous anecdotes; a fond and absolute mother, who all her life preserved an almost sovereign authority over her son,--Louisa held in her hand two armies which she managed at will. One of these was composed of her maids of honour, by whose means she introduced into the court of France gallantry, scandal, and even indecency of language; the other was formed of intelligent, crafty men, who had no religion, no morality, no scruples; and at their head was Duprat.