However, Cardinal Duprat was on the road. What would he do, this vile courtier of the popes, who at their demand had destroyed the bulwark of the Gallican liberties, and who hated the Reformation? The Sorbonne placed their hope in him. But Duprat served his master before all things, and he could not hide from himself that the hot-headed catholics were threatening the king's crown. He resolved to strike heavily. As soon as he reached Paris, he had Le Picard arrested, as being the most compromised. He confined him in his own palace, seized his books and papers, and had him interrogated by the advocate-general. The seditious bachelor raved in his prison, and protested aloud against the indignity of such treatment; but all his storming was of no use. He was condemned to be shut up in the abbey of St. Magloire, and forbidden to teach.[316] Nor did Duprat stop here. He was shocked that paltry priests should dare speak against that royal majesty of Francis I. for which he, a cardinal and chancellor, had nothing but humble flatteries. He never ceased to be the mortal enemy of the Gospel, and originated many a measure of persecution against the reformed; but his chief quality was a slavish devotion to the wishes of his master. To the mendicant monks sent out by the Sorbonne he opposed 'inquirers'—the name he gave to the spies who were in every parish, and who skilfully interrogated men and women, nobles and sacristans, to find out whether the preachers or the friars had attacked the king's government in their hearing. Many of the townspeople were unwilling to say anything; yet the clever and dreaded minister attained his ends, and having discovered the most refractory priests, he summoned them before him. This summons from a cardinal of the holy Church, from the most powerful person in the kingdom, alarmed these violent clerics; on a sudden their courage collapsed, and they appeared before his eminence with downcast eyes, trembling limbs, and confused manner. 'Who permitted or who authorised you to insult the king and to excite the people?' asked the haughty Duprat.[317] The priests were too much terrified to conceal anything: 'It was with the consent and the good pleasure of our reverend masters,' they replied.[318]