Calvin did not regret, however, the testimony he had borne to the truth, and resigned himself to exile. Far from resembling the unbroken horse (to use his own expression) who refuses to carry his rider, he voluntarily bowed his shoulders to the cross.[12] _Never tire in the middle of your journey_, was his maxim always.[13] Yet as he travelled along those rough byroads of the Mantois, he often asked himself what this severe dispensation was to teach him. Was he to retire from Paris and renounce the idea of making that city the centre of his christian activity? That would, indeed, be a hard trial for him. His people seemed to be waking, and he must leave them!... Still he kept on his way. On arriving near Mantes, he went to the residence of the Sire de Haseville, to whom he was known, and there remained in hiding several days. He then resumed his journey, either because he thought himself too near his enemies, or because his host was afraid. Calvin took the road to the south; he crossed the charming plains and valleys of Touraine, entered the pasturages and forests of Poitou, and thence turned his steps towards Saintonge and the Angoumois.[14] This latter province was the end of his journey. On a hill at whose foot the Charente 'softly flowed,' stood the cathedral, the old castle and city of Angoulême, the birth-place of Margaret of Navarre. Calvin entered the gates of this antique town, and made his way to one of the principal streets, which afterwards received in his honour the name it still bears—_Rue de Genève_. In that street was a large mansion whose principal apartment was a long gallery in which more than four thousand volumes, printed or manuscript, were collected: it was one of the most valuable private libraries then existing in France.[15] The fugitive halted before this house. Learned works were doubtless well calculated to attract him; but he was animated by another motive also. This mansion belonged to the family of Du Tillet, whose members were reckoned among the most learned in the kingdom. The father and two of his sons were detained in Paris by their duties in the Chamber of Accounts, at the Louvre and in parliament; but another son, Louis, canon of the cathedral, was at Angoulême, and lived alone in that large house, when he was not at his parish of Claix. Louis was Calvin's friend,[16] and it was the remembrance of this gentle, mild, and rather weak young man, whose disposition was very engaging, that had induced the fugitive to bend his steps towards the Angoumois. [Sidenote: DU TILLET'S HOUSE AND LIBRARY.]