Calvin had been a faithful and active workman in his Master's vineyard, yet he did not always meet with friendly and docile hearers, even in Ferrara. Among the persons forming the duchess's court, he had noticed a cringing person with insinuating manners, whose look and expression displeased him greatly. That man, by name Master François, chaplain to Renée was one of those double-hearted people who wish to satisfy God and their own cupidity. Calvin had heard that the life of that priest was far from saintly. 'I do not interfere,' he answered, when called upon to declare his opinion as to the chaplain's superstitious doctrines—'I do not interfere, for if I laid myself out to speak evil of him, I should have to speak of far different matters, on which I remain silent.' Master François, seeing the favor which the young stranger enjoyed at court, assumed an air of being convinced by his words, appeared to become his friend, and began to preach as evangelically as he could. He raised no objections to Calvin's meetings, but prevailed on the duchess to be present at mass also, which he continued to say, notwithstanding his evangelical appearances. Such a man could not please the upright and inflexible reformer. 'When I see any one extinguishing the light of truth,' he wrote one day to Renée, 'I cannot forgive him, were he a hundred times my father.'[791] Calvin tried, therefore, to convince François that the celebration of what he called 'the sacrifice at the altar' was contrary to Holy Scripture. Whenever the chaplain went astray the reformer admonished him. 'I have often tried to bring him into the true path,' he said. The priest would then appear sorrowful, and ashamed of his weakness, and Calvin, pressing him still more closely, would succeed in 'making him confess his iniquity.' But human respect still prevailed in François, and if any one about the court happened to be present at his conversations with the reformer, he would make excuses for himself before them. [Sidenote: THE CHAPLAIN AND THE INSTITUTES.]