Calvin was about to begin at Poitiers a work of regeneration. Indeed no long time elapsed before numerous hearers crowded round him. Some were offended by his words; and there were some who, looking only for disputations and sophistry, tormented the young doctor with their accustomed insolence; while others opposed the heretic 'with dilemmas and cunning catches.' Others, again, who thought themselves masters of the world, turned their backs on him, 'as if he were an ordinary mountebank.' Calvin, surprised at such resistance, 'instead of entangling himself in useless disputes,' seriously thrust aside these frivolous subtleties, and 'put forward what is true.'[94] [Sidenote: CALVIN'S FRIENDS.] But if the doctrine he announced met with enemies, it also met with friends. The word of God perpetually separates light from darkness in the spiritual world, as it did at the time of the creation of heaven and earth. Generous men gathered eagerly round the young and powerful doctor. These were Albert Babinot, jurist, poet, and law-reader; Anthony Veron, procureur to the lower court; Anthony de la Dugie, doctor-regent; Jean Boisseau de la Borderie, advocate; Jean Vernou of Poitiers, the Sieur de St. Vertumien, and Charles le Sage, doctor-regent, a man of great esteem, who possessed the entire confidence of Madame, the king's mother.[95] One of these distinguished men especially won Calvin's heart: it was Pierre de la Place, a native of Angoulême, a friend of Du Tillet, afterwards president of the Court of Aids, and one of the St. Bartholomew martyrs. But Le Sage, another of these eminent men, kept himself rather aloof; he was from Noyon, and was not very anxious to put himself in the train of the son of the old episcopal secretary; moreover, he believed sincerely in the miracle of transubstantiation.