As the two parties could not come to an understanding, they determined to send one of their number to Switzerland, in order to obtain the opinion of Farel and the other refugees. Should they wait or should they act?—such was the question they put. They selected for that consultation a simple, pious, intelligent Christian, by name Feret, who belonged to the royal pharmacy: he accepted the mission and departed. No one suspected at that time that this journey would lead to an explosion that would shake the capital, terrify France, and perhaps destroy the cause of the Reformation. Feret proceeded to Switzerland. He had hardly crossed the Jura when a striking spectacle met his eyes. Everything was in commotion, as in a hive of bees. Farel, Viret, Saunier, Olivetan, Froment, Marcourt, Hollard, Le Comte, and others besides, coming from Dauphiny, Basle, Paris, Strasburg, or belonging to the country, were boldly preaching the evangelical doctrine everywhere. At Neufchatel all _idolatry_ had been removed from public worship; and the same had been done at Aigle, and in its four _mandements_. Orbe, Grandson, and the Pays de Vaud were beginning to make up their minds; Geneva was tottering; the old Waldenses of Piedmont were holding out their hands to the new reformers. In many places they were even 'destroying the altars and breaking down the images,' according to the command in Deuteronomy.[200] What a contrast with the timid precautions of the christians of Paris! Feret was quite struck with it, and that alone was an answer. He explained to the christians to whom he was accredited the very different state of things at Paris; he described the difficulties of France and the two parties that existed among the reformed, and asked for their advice. Farel and his friends held that a subject ought not to rise in rebellion against his lord, but if the king of France commanded anything forbidden by the King of heaven, it was necessary to obey him who was the master of the other. These decided christians rejected all those medleys of the Gospel and popery that Francis I., Margaret of Navarre, Du Bellay, and even Melanchthon (as it was said) desired. 'These two (the Gospel and the pope) cannot exist together,' they said, 'any more than fire and water.' The mass especially, that main point of the Romish doctrine, must, in their opinion, be abolished. If the papal hierarchy was the tree whose deadly shade killed the living seeds of the Word, the mass was its root. It must be plucked up, and thus prevented from stretching its fatal branches any longer over the wide field of Christendom. The writing and posting of placards were proposed.