The wretched tumbrel upon which he rode, the frowning faces of his persecutors, the dreadful death to which he was going,—these he heeded not; He who liveth and was dead, and is alive forevermore, and hath the keys of death and of hell, was beside him. Berquin’s countenance was radiant with the light and peace of heaven. He had attired himself in goodly raiment, wearing “a cloak of velvet, a doublet of satin and damask, and golden hose.”(325) He was about to testify to his faith in presence of the King of kings and the witnessing universe, and no token of mourning should belie his joy. As the procession moved slowly through the crowded streets, the people marked with wonder the unclouded peace, the joyous triumph, of his look and bearing. “He is,” they said, “like one who sits in a temple, and meditates on holy things.”(326) At the stake, Berquin endeavored to address a few words to the people; but the monks, fearing the result, began to shout, and the soldiers to clash their arms, and their clamor drowned the martyr’s voice. Thus in 1529, the highest literary and ecclesiastical authority of cultured Paris “set the populace of 1793 the base example of stifling on the scaffold the sacred words of the dying.”(327) Berquin was strangled, and his body was consumed in the flames. The tidings of his death caused sorrow to the friends of the Reformation throughout France. But his example was not lost. “We too are ready,” said the witnesses for the truth, “to meet death cheerfully, setting our eyes on the life that is to come.”(328) During the persecution at Meaux, the teachers of the reformed faith were deprived of their license to preach, and they departed to other fields. Lefevre after a time made his way to Germany. Farel returned to his native town in eastern France, to spread the light in the home of his childhood. Already tidings had been received of what was going on at Meaux, and the truth, which he taught with fearless zeal, found listeners. Soon the authorities were roused to silence him, and he was banished from the city. Though he could no longer labor publicly, he traversed the plains and villages, teaching in private dwellings and in secluded meadows, and finding shelter in the forests and among the rocky caverns which had been his haunts in boyhood. God was preparing him for greater trials. “The crosses, persecutions, and machinations of Satan, of which I was forewarned, have not been wanting,” he said; “they are even much severer than I could have borne of myself; but God is my Father; He has provided and always will provide me the strength which I require.”(329) As in apostolic days, persecution had “fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel.”(330) Driven from Paris and Meaux, “they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word.”(331) And thus the light found its way into many of the remote provinces of France.