The younger daughter of Louis the Twelfth resembled her father not less in character than in appearance and speech.[401] Cut off by the pretended Salic law from the prospect of ascending the throne, she had in her childhood been thrown as a straw upon the variable tide of fortune. After having been promised in marriage to Charles of Spain, heir to the most extensive and opulent dominions the sun shone upon, and future Emperor of Germany, she had (1528) been given in marriage to the ruler of a petty Italian duchy, himself as inferior to her in mind as in moral character.[402] As for Renée, if her face was homely and unprepossessing, her intellect was vigorous. She had turned to good account the opportunities for self-improvement afforded by her high rank. Admiring courtiers made her classical and philosophical attainments the subject of lavish panegyric, perhaps with a better basis of fact than in the case of many other princes of the time; while with the French, her countrymen, the generous hospitality she dispensed won for her unfading laurels. "Never was there a Frenchman," writes the Abbé de Brantôme, "who passing through Ferrara applied to her in his distress and was suffered to depart without receiving ample assistance to reach his native land and home. If he were unable to travel through illness, she had him cared for and treated with the utmost solicitude, and then gave him money to continue his journey."[403] Ten thousand poor Frenchmen are said to have been saved by her munificent charity, on the occasion of the recall of the Duke of Guise, after Constable Montmorency's disastrous defeat at St. Quentin. Her answer to the remonstrance of her servants against this excessive drain upon her slender resources bore witness at once to the sincerity of her patriotism and to a virile spirit which no Salic law could extinguish.[404] The brief stay of Calvin at Ferrara is involved in the same obscurity that attends his motives in visiting Italy. But it is known that he exerted at this time a marked influence not only on others,[405] but on Renée de France herself, who, from this period forward, appears in the character of an avowed friend of the reformatory movement. Calvin had from prudence assumed the title of _Charles d'Espeville_, and this name was retained as a signature in his subsequent correspondence with the duchess. [Sidenote: Calvin leaves Ferrara.]