The King of Navarre and the Bishop of Paris hastened to Meaux, where Francis was staying with his court, and informed him that Beda, Le Picard, and their colleagues had thrown aside all reserve, and that, unless energetic measures were taken, the public tranquillity and perhaps his crown might be endangered. The king gave way to a paroxysm of anger. Beda's freak of parading the streets of Paris on his mule, notwithstanding the prohibition, was one of those insults that Francis felt very keenly. He ordered Cardinal Duprat and the Bishop of Senlis to make all haste to Paris, and stop the intrigues of the Sorbonne and the promenades of Beda, and also arrest Le Picard. 'As for the inquiry about heresy,' said the king, 'I reserve that for myself.'[313] Heresy was treated with more tenderness than the first catholic faculty of christendom. Francis began to find the Lutherans gentle as lambs in comparison with the hot-headed papists. Certain personages, whose arrival was soon to be announced by the officers of his court, confirmed him in this opinion. [Sidenote: SORBONNE THREATENS FRANCIS.] Scarcely had the two prelates left Meaux, when a deputation from the Sorbonne arrived. When Francis received them, he was evidently in a bad humour, but he did not address them sharply, as the courtiers had expected. The theologians approached him with all the required formalities; they desired, if possible, to win him by meekness. But by degrees they raised their tone; they beset him with their accusations, and irritated him with their pretensions, repeating again and again that it was the prerogative of the Sorbonne, and not of the prince, to give their opinion in a matter of heresy. There was some truth in this, but the truth did not please Francis, who claimed to be master in everything. Still he contained himself, until the doctors, coming to threats of revolt, and shouting their loudest, reminded him of the possibility of a deposition of kings by the popes.[314] These recollections of the middle ages, with which they menaced the haughty monarch, who claimed to begin a new era, and who desired that the Reformation should serve at least to abate the pretensions of Rome, and emancipate princes from its yoke, made the king shudder, and aroused a terrible fit of anger. His face grew red, his eyes flashed fire, and putting aside his usual courtesy, he drove the reverend fathers from his presence, calling them beasts, and saying: 'Get about your business, you donkeys!'[315] At this moment Francis inaugurated modern times—though certainly in a fashion rather cavalier.