The teachers whom Briçonnet had so cordially invited to assist him were compelled one by one to abandon Meaux. Among the earliest to leave was Farel.[170] His was no faint heart. If he gave up his activity in Brie, it was only to return to his native Dauphiny, where a young nobleman, Anemond de Coct, and a preacher, Pierre de Sebeville, were among the leading men whose conversion was the fruit of his indefatigable exertions. After a visit to Guyenne, of which little is known, he passed into German Switzerland, and labored successively in Basle, Strasbourg, and Montbéliard.[171] [Sidenote: Annoyances of those who remain.] Lefèvre and Roussel were among the last to withdraw; but, beset with watchful enemies, they found their position neither safe nor comfortable. It was as difficult to maintain a semblance of friendship with an ecclesiastical system which they detested in their hearts, as to refuse their sympathy and support to the persecuted whose opinions they shared without possessing the courage necessary to suffer in attestation of the common faith. Busy informers at one time found evidence, more than warranting the suspicion that Roussel's manuscripts had furnished the material of which scandalous placards defamatory of the Pope were framed.[172] A little later the proctor of the cathedral drew attention to the irregular conventicles held in the church itself, every Sunday and feast-day, after Roussel had preached. These "combers, carders, and other persons of the same stamp, unlettered folk,"[173] brought with them books containing the Epistles of St. Paul, the Gospels, and the Psalms, in flagrant disregard of the prohibitions they had heard respecting the discussion of such topics as faith, the sacraments, the privileges of Rome, and the use of pictures in the churches. It was made the occasion of "charitable rebuke" and then of formal complaint against Roussel by his fellow canons, that he failed to repeat the angelic salutation, according to the orthodox practice, after the exordium of his sermon. To the combined exhortations and threats of his accusers Roussel replied in the chapter that, if he had done wrong, it belonged to the bishop to reprove him, but that as to himself he esteemed the repetition of the Lord's Prayer quite as efficacious as the recital of the Ave Maria.[174] [Sidenote: Lefèvre and Roussel take refuge in Strasbourg.] [Sidenote: Excessive caution of Roussel.]