Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/115

100 was no mention of the Saints in it, neither of Purgatory; the prayer to the Virgin, the Salve Regina, was paraphrased in honour of Jesus Christ. Here the prompt and aggressive Béda perceived his opportunity. In the next Index of the works forbidden to the faithful, the Sorbonne published the title of the Myrouer de l'Âme Pecheresse.

All this took place in 1533. Francis, ever devoted to his sister, still devoted to the cause of progress and tolerance, ruminating an alliance with Soliman and the Protestant League, was thunderstruck with indignation. He sent for the Rector of the Sorbonne and ordered a complete list to be made of those magisters who had composed the Index. He caused the Bishop of Senlis to defend the work before the University, which meekly retracted its accusation. The occasion was made into a triumph for Margaret.

Béda and his party were not silenced yet. A few weeks after this the students and four professors of the theological college of the Navarrene Fathers at Paris publicly performed a farce in the great hall of the building. Margaret was the heroine of this ingenious representation. In the first act she is represented as leaving her spindle and letting fall her distaff, to accept from an Infernal Fury a French translation of the four gospels; Margaret then becomes herself a Fury, a spirit of controversy and bitterness, devoured by insensate tyranny, infected with the cruelty of Hell. Such was the movement of the play; such the portrait of the endearing and sweet-hearted sister of the King. Francis was terribly incensed. He sent the four Navarrene Fathers to the prison of the Conciergerie, whence only at Margaret's most earnest intercession they were, after some days, set free. Béda