One day, therefore, the modest doctor appeared in the midst of the Prior of Bouteville's guests; one idea had absorbed him on the road to Gérac. He thought that 'truth is not a common thing; that it rises far above the capacity of the human understanding, and that we ought to purchase it at any price.' At last when he joined his friends, after mutual greetings had been exchanged, he spoke to them of the subject that filled his heart. He opened the Bible, placed his hand on it, and said, 'Let us find the truth!'[43]... 'The whole conference,' says Florimond Rémond, a staunch Catholic, 'had no other object but _the investigation of truth_, a phrase which he had generally in his mouth.' Calvin, however, did not set himself up as an oracle: addressing the conscience, he showed that Christ answered all the wants of the soul; the conversation soon became animated, his friends bringing forward objections. He never was at a loss; 'having a marvellous facility,' they said, 'in penetrating suddenly the greatest difficulties and clearing them up.' The visitors of Gérac departed joyfully to their homes. After these conferences, Calvin returned quietly to his retreat, and prayed for those to whom he had spoken and for others besides. 'If sometimes we are cold in prayer,' he said, 'let us at once remember how many of our brethren are sinking under heavy burdens and grievous troubles; how many are oppressed by great anguish in their hearts and in all extremity of evils.... We must have hearts of iron or steel, if such sluggishness in prayer cannot then be expelled from our bosoms.'[44]