The Queen of Navarre had hardly left for Bearn, when Duprat and the Sorbonne endeavoured to carry their cruel plans into execution. Among the number of the gentlemen of John Stuart, Duke of Albany, was a nobleman of Poitou named De la Tour. The Duke of Albany, a member of the royal family of Scotland, had been regent of that kingdom, and De la Tour had lived with him in Edinburgh, where he had made the most of his time. ‘When the lord duke was regent of Scotland,’ people said, ‘the Sieur de la Tour sowed many Lutheran errors there.’[642] This French gentleman must therefore have been one of the earliest reformers in Scotland. He showed no less zeal at Paris than at Edinburgh, which greatly displeased the priests. Moreover, the Duke of Albany, who was in high favour with the king, was much disliked by the ambitious chancellor. An indictment was drawn up; Francis I., whose good genius was no longer by his side, shut his eyes; De la Tour and his servant, an evangelical like himself, were condemned by the parliament for heresy. On the 27th of October these two pious christians were bound in the same cart and led slowly to the pig-market to be burnt alive. When the cart stopped, the executioners ordered the servant to get down. He did so and stood at the cart’s tail. They stripped off his clothes, and flogged him so long and so severely that the poor wretch declared that he ‘repented.’ Some little mercy was consequently shown him, and they were content to cut out his tongue. They hoped by this means to shake De la Tour’s firmness; but though deeply moved, he raised his eyes to heaven, vowed to God that he would remain true to him, and immediately an ineffable joy replaced the anguish by which he had been racked. He was burnt alive. Margaret must have heard at Pau of the death of the pious De la Tour; but however that may be, she left for Paris immediately after her delivery, giving her people orders to make haste. What was it that recalled her so promptly to the capital? Was it the news of some danger threatening the Gospel? A council was about to assemble at Paris; did she desire to be at hand to ward off the blows aimed at her friends? That is the reason given by one historian.[643] ‘She had determined to make haste,’ and, her confinement scarcely over, this weak and delicate princess, urging her courier to press on, crossed the sands and marshes of the Landes. In a letter from Barbezieux, she complains of the bad roads by which her carriage was so roughly jolted. ‘I can find nothing difficult, nor any stage wearisome. I hope to be at Blois in ten days.’[644]