One day a man had been murdered in the streets of Paris; a great crowd had gathered round his body, and a pious Christian exclaimed: 'Alas! who has committed this crime?' Quintin, who was there also, made answer immediately, in his Picard _patois_: 'Since you want to know, it was _me_!' The other said to him with surprise: 'What! could you be such a coward?' 'It was not me, it was God.' 'What!' exclaimed the man, 'you impute to God a crime which He punishes?' Then the wretched man, 'discharging his poison more copiously,' continued: 'Yes, it's thee, it's me, it's God; for what thee or me does, it is God who does it; and what God does, we do.'[164] Another analogous circumstance occurred in the house of Calvin's friend. De la Forge had a servant to whom he paid high wages; this man robbed his master, and ran away with the money. A shoemaker of the neighbourhood, who held Quintin's opinions, having gone to the shop the same day, found the tradesman very uneasy: 'The man who has committed such a base action,' he said, 'might easily take advantage of my credit, and borrow in my name.' Whereupon, as Calvin relates, the shoemaker immediately began to flap his wings, and was up into the clouds, exclaiming: 'It is blaspheming God to call this action base; ... seeing that God does everything, we ought to reckon nothing bad.' Some days later, this philosopher was himself robbed by a servant. Immediately forgetting all his spiritual knowledge, he rushed out of the house 'like a madman,' to search after the thief, and on reaching De la Forge's, was lavish of his abuse against the culprit. De la Forge ironically repeated to him his own words: 'But you accuse God,' he said, 'since it is He who did it.' The shoemaker sneaked of abashed, 'like a dog with his tail between his legs.'[165] [Sidenote: FALSE LIBERTY OF THE SPIRITUALS.]