Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/101

86 (always hostile to the power of Rome and even now counting its Protestants by thousands) a refuge for whosoever was persecuted, and whosoever was poor or oppressed.

There was much need of such an asylum, for the hatred of the Sorbonne towards the new ideas became with every month more virulent and more capable. In the preceding year, in 1529, Margaret herself, in continued supplication, had been unable to save Loys Berquin, a learned gentleman of Artois, from the stake. He had been burned alive; and the flames of this bonfire lit up many pale and scared faces throughout the whole of France. Roussel, Lefêbvre, Calvin, Baduel, d'Arande, all her old friends and her masters of Meaux; Marot, Desperriers, Antoine Heroet, gay young poets and gallants in her service, suspected of heresy no less than she herself, all these and many others looked to Margaret in anxious appeal. In settling at Nérac, she made a welcome home for all of these. The children of her adoption, and the children of her bearing had alike been taken from her. Margaret at Nérac received all that were exiled and all that were oppressed to be as her sons and her daughters.

Queen Margaret made the exiled Roussel Bishop of Oloron; though he preached in lay dress, and in the tongue of the people. She had Lutheran services held in the castle. Calvin, Michel d'Arande, and Lefêbvre she sheltered in her house. She paid the schooling of Baduel and other young divines. Her court was a home and a refuge for all who fled the wrath of the Sorbonne. Clément Marot, poet and Lutheran suspect, who had been her secretary at Alençon, was made her Gentleman of the Chamber at