punished the quarrelsome boys by putting them in opposite corners. Preparations were made for investigating the two cases, but the matter was not so easy as the king had imagined. The theologians were indignant at finding themselves placed in the same rank with the Lutherans. Far from submitting to be prosecuted for sedition, they claimed to prosecute the others for heresy. They would not be the accused or even the accusers; they took their stand as inquisitors of the faith and as judges.[310] [Sidenote: BEDA BREAKS LOOSE.] The terrible Beda, shut up in the college of Montaigu,[311] and not daring to go out, found himself condemned, considering his restless temper, to the severest penance. At first he was content to keep his agents at work, who were ready at any moment to bear his orders. But when he learnt that his right to judge was disputed, and that he was to be put in the same rank with Roussel, the turbulent doctor could restrain himself no longer. His room was too narrow to contain his anger. He made light of the king's commands, and, disobeying his orders, mounted his mule and rode into the city. From time to time he stopped. The catholic tribune, the defender of the pope, was soon recognised; a crowd gathered round him; he addressed the people from his mule, and did his best to arouse their fanatical passions. While the catholics flocked round him, some evangelicals were watching the orator and his audience from a distance. 'I saw him riding on his mule,' says Siderander.[312] Beda thought himself stronger than the king, and in some respects he was; he reigned over the savage appetites of an ignorant and fanatical populace. Such was the power in the sixteenth century by which the pope triumphed more than once in the capital of France and elsewhere. Beda was vigorously supported by all his subalterns: Le Picard especially, who had not been put under arrest, expressed his indignation in his fanatical discourses that the king should desire to hold the balance even between the Church and heresy; and advocated a resort to force to insure the triumph of the oppressed papacy. A riot seemed about to break out. The friends of learning and of the king were alarmed. Might not the Roman party take advantage of Francis's absence to establish another power than his in Paris, and to treat this monarch as the Seize in after years treated his grandson Henry III.?