De Beauregard, Anne suis, qui d'enfance, Laissai parents, pays, amis et France, Pour suivre ici la duchesse Renée; Laquelle j'ai depuis abandonnée, Futur époux, beauté, fleurissant âge; _Pour aller voir au ciel mon héritage_. Laissant le monde avec moins de souci Que laissai France, alors que vins ici?[782] The count of Marennes, a man of no decision of character, often attended Calvin's preaching. He was rather afraid that the duke, his master, would be displeased; still the duchess herself had arranged these meetings. The countess, his wife, whose humble servant he was, asked him to join them; his brother-in-law, Soubise, also invited him; Marennes, therefore, followed the others to chapel, being urged from without and not from within. [Sidenote: ZEAL OF SOUBISE.] Soubise, on the contrary, an independent man, of noble, decided, and energetic character, went with his whole heart, and, after Renée, was the best conquest of the Gospel at Ferrara. In that fanatical age it was choosing a hard and miserable life; but the Gospel Word had conquered him, and he was determined to walk among the thorns. 'John of Soubise, a hero of the sixteenth century,' says Moreri, 'suffered himself to be perverted at the court of the duke of Ferrara, when Renée of France received there certain doctors of the pretended reformed religion.'[783] He had been trained for the profession of arms; he now found at Calvin's side the sword of the Word of God, and returning into France courageously 'occupied himself in defending the truths he had believed.'[784] A gentleman of the king's chamber, a knight of the Order, having had command of the French army in Italy, a man of great resources and great service, 'having effected a hundred masterstrokes,' he was, above all, very zealous for God; and, without neglecting the important affairs of the kingdom, he sought the salvation of the humblest tenant on his estates. A good old pastor, Mulot des Ruisseaux, 'impelled by the singular virtue of the lord of that place' (Soubise), used to leave his house at the approach of night—the only time when evangelical Christians dared meet together—and visit the adjoining districts, everywhere teaching the Scriptures. More than once, on hearing the signal of alarm, he had to hide in the woods and pass the night there. In a short time a great part of the people had forsaken mass.[785] Soubise even desired to convert Catherine de Medicis, and with that view held long conversations with the queen,[786] and the crafty Italian woman led him to hope for a moment that she was on the point of turning Protestant. The trouble that he had taken was not entirely lost. The duchess of Bourbon Montpensier, 'a woman of virile character and of wisdom beyond her sex,' as De Thou describes her,[787] being present at Soubise's conversations with Catherine de Medicis, received the truths which he was explaining to another; and somewhat