be thy pestilence and death!' Calvin and Du Tillet arrived at Basle. That city possessed a university with distinguished scholars, good theologians, and celebrated printers; but Calvin did not knock at any of their doors. In a bye-street there lived one Catherine Klein, a pious woman, who took delight in serving God, and loved to wash the feet of the saints, as the Gospel says. It was her house the young doctor sought. Coming to the banks of the Rhine, the two friends crossed the famous bridge which unites Little Basle to the old City, and knocked at this pious woman's door. Here Calvin found 'the obscure corner' he had so longed for.[313] Catherine received him with frankness and soon learnt the worth of the man she had in her house. She was not one of those women who from vanity 'toy and coquet,' to use Calvin's own words;[314] but of those who having the fear of God before their eyes, are honest and chaste in their appearance.[315] Distinguished by her virtues and piety, she loved to listen to Calvin, and never grew weary of admiring the beauty of his genius, the holiness of his life, the integrity of his doctrines, and the zeal with which he applied, day and night, to study.[316] Calvin seemed like a lighted candle in her house; and thirty years later, receiving as a lodger a man who was to be one of the victims of the St. Bartholomew—Peter Ramus—this estimable woman took pleasure in describing to him the reformer's mode of life.[317] The illustrious philosopher, uniting his voice with that of the aged Catherine, and standing in the very chamber that Calvin had occupied, apostrophized the reformer, as 'the light of France, the light of the Christian Church all over the world.'[318] In the early part of his stay at Basle, Calvin appears to have seen nobody but his hostess and his inseparable friend Louis du Tillet. He avoided all acquaintanceships that might have led to his being recognised, and he went out but seldom.[319] Sometimes, however, he and his friend would climb the hills which rise above the Rhine, and contemplate the magnificence of that calm and mighty river, whose waters are ever flowing onwards, with nothing to interrupt their majestic course. Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis œvum.[320] [Sidenote: INWARD WORK IN CALVIN.]