Curione himself was surprised. The thought that he had escaped not only from the hands of his guards, but also from the terrible condemnation of the sovereign pontiff, whose support the bishop had gone to solicit, still further magnified in his eyes the greatness of his deliverance. He had felt, and severely too, the power of his enemies; but he saw that however keen the hatred of the world, a breath of heaven was sufficient to frustrate its plots. He hastened to leave Turin, and took refuge in a secluded village in the duchy of Milan, where his family joined him. His reputation as a man of letters had spread through that country, and certain Milanese gentlemen who came to pass the summer in the villas near the lonely house which he inhabited, entertained a high opinion of him. One of them, happening to meet him, recognized him; he spoke of him to others of his friends, who made his acquaintance, and all of them, delighted with his amiable character and cultivated mind, were unwilling that such fine talents should remain buried in a sequestered village. They got him invited to the university of Pavia, where he was soon surrounded by an admiring audience. The inquisition, for a time at fault, discovered at last that the daring heretic who had escaped from his prison at Turin was teaching quietly at Pavia; it issued an arrest against him, being determined to put an end to the harassing warfare which this independent man was waging against the darkness of the Middle Ages. The familiars of the Holy Office lay in ambush with the intention of seizing the Piedmontese professor as he was leaving his house to go to the lecture-room. But the plot got wind; the students, who were very numerous, supported by some of the chief people of the town, formed a battalion which surrounded Curione as he left his house, conducted him to the Academy, and when the lecture was over, escorted him home again.[830] Public opinion declared itself so strongly in favor of liberty of teaching and against Romish tyranny, that three years elapsed without the inquisitors being able to seize the professor, which caused great joy all over the city. The pope, irritated at such resistance, threatened to excommunicate the senate of Pavia; and Curione, unwilling to imperil his friends, quitted that town for Venice, whence he proceeded to Ferrara to live under that enlightened protection which the Duchess Renée extended to all who loved the Gospel. [Sidenote: Renée Of France.]