resolved to compensate themselves by falling with their whole strength upon a plain doctor, who was besides by birth a Swiss. Every one of them raised a cry against him. The university was divided into two distinct parties, and the meeting reechoed with the most contradictory appeals. The theologians shouted loudest: 'Time presses,' they said; 'the crisis has arrived. If we yield, the Romish doctrine, vanquished and expelled from the university, will give place to the new errors. Heresy is at our gates; we must crush it by a single blow!'—'The Gospel, philosophy, and liberty!' said one party.—'Popery, tradition, and submission!' said the other. The noise and disturbance became such that nothing could be heard. At last the question was put to the vote: two faculties, those of letters and medicine, were for Cop's proposition; and two, namely, law and divinity, were against it. The rector, to show his moderation, refused to vote, being unwilling to give the victory to himself.[493] The meeting broke up in the greatest confusion. The rector's address, and the discussions to which it gave rise, made a great noise at court as well as in the city; but no one took more interest in it than the Queen of Navarre. The question of her poetry had been the first act; Calvin's address was the second. Margaret knew that he was the real author of the discourse. She always granted her special patronage to the students trained in any of her schools. She watched the young scholars with the most affectionate interest, and rejoiced in their successes. There was not one of them that could be compared with Calvin, who had studied at Bourges, Margaret's university. The purity of his doctrine, the boldness of his profession, the majesty of his language, astonished everybody, and had particularly struck the queen. Calvin was one of her students for whom she anticipated the highest destinies. That princess was not indeed formed for resistance; the mildness of her character inclined her to yield; and of this she was well aware. About this time, being commissioned by the king to transact certain business with one of her relations, a very headstrong woman, she wrote to Montmorency, 'Employ a head better steeled than mine, or you will not succeed. She is a Norman woman, and smells of the sea; I am an Anjoumoise, sprinkled with the soft waters of the Charente.'[494] But, mild as she was, she took this matter of Cop and Calvin seriously to heart. When the friends of the Gospel placed the candle boldly on the candlestick to give light to all France, should a violent wind come and extinguish it? [Sidenote: INTERVIEW OF CALVIN AND MARGARET.]