But having thus done my duty, your Majesty will not think it strange if I employ the rest of my time in caring for my own salvation. It is many years since I have been to mass, and I shall never go again. I entreat your Majesty to leave my conscience alone, and permit me to serve you with my body and goods, which are wholly at your disposal.” Henry II., who could bear no contradiction, flew into a passion, and seizing him by the collar of St. Michael that was round his neck, exclaimed: “But I did not give you this to use it thus--keeping away from mass and refusing to follow my religion.” “I did not know then, what it was to be a Christian,” answered Andelot, “or I should not have accepted it on such conditions.” Henry could contain himself no longer. He seized a platter which lay before him and threw it across the table, but it struck the dauphin; he then drew his sword upon Andelot, who was hurried away by the guards and afterward shut up in the castle of Melun. From prison he wrote to the church of Paris: “_Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death. For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain._” He also addressed a letter to the king: “Sire,” he wrote, “if I have done any thing to displease you, I beseech you in all humility to forgive me, and to believe that, the obedience I owe to God and my conscience excepted, you can command nothing in which I will not expose my goods, my body, and my life. And what I ask of you, Sire, is not, thanks be to God, through fear of death, and still less from a desire to recover my liberty, for I hold nothing so dear that I would not resign it willingly for the salvation of my soul and God’s glory.” He was alike unmoved by the tender entreaties of his wife, Claude de Rieux, and by the prudent advice of his brother the cardinal, who urged him to satisfy Henry II. if it were only by an apparent submission. At length, however, he consented to hold a conference with a learned doctor of the Sorbonne, and to hear mass in his presence, but without previous abjuration. Calvin, who had written exhorting Andelot to be firm, now reproached him for his weakness; but it was easy for the Reformer of Geneva, who was in a place of safety, and who had never been tested by the fires of persecution, to censure one whose faith was weak, and whose affectionate, loyal nature was worked upon by those who were dearest to him.