The "anguish of spirit and terror of God's judgment experienced by so pious an old man as Lefèvre," because he had concealed the truth which he ought openly to have espoused, supplied an instructive warning for his even more timid disciples. Farel, who never lacked courage, was not slow to avail himself of it. Taking advantage of the freedom of an old associate, he addressed a letter containing an account of Lefèvre's death, with some serious admonitions, to Michel d'Arande, who never venturing to separate from a church whose corruptions he acknowledged, had reached the position of Bishop of Saint Paul-Trois-Châteaux, in Dauphiny. The letter has perished, but the reply in which the prelate's dejection and internal conflicts but too plainly appear, has seen the light after a burial of three centuries. Admitting the guilt of his course, the bishop begs the intrepid reformer to pray for him continually, and meanwhile not to withhold his friendly exhortations, that at length the writer may be able to extricate himself from the deep mire in which he finds no firm foundation to stand upon.[207] Such was the unhappy state of mind to which many good, but irresolute men were reduced, who, in view of the persecution certain to follow an open avowal of their reformatory sentiments, endeavored to persuade themselves that it was permissible to conceal them under a thin veil of external conformity to the rites of the Roman church. [Sidenote: Fortunes of Gérard Roussel.] Gérard Roussel, the most distinguished representative of this class of mystics, was appointed by the Queen of Navarre to be her preacher and confessor, and promoted successively to be Abbot of Clairac and Bishop of Oléron. Yet he remained, to his death, a sincere friend of the Reformation. Occasionally, at least, he preached its doctrines with tolerable distinctness; as, for instance, in the Lenten discourses delivered by him, in conjunction with Courault and Bertault, before the French court in the Louvre (1532). In his writings he was still more outspoken. Some of them might have been written not only by a reformer, but by a disciple of Calvin, so sharply drawn were the doctrinal expositions.[208] Meanwhile, in his own diocese he set forth the example of a faithful pastor. Even so bitter an enemy of Protestantism as Florimond de Ræmond, contrasting Roussel's piety with the worldliness of the sporting French bishops of the period, is forced to admit that his pack of hounds was the crowd of poor men and women whom he daily fed, his horses and attendants a host of children whom he caused to be instructed in letters.[209]