Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/151

136 he been able to point to Marano, the Turk might have believed him. As it was, Soliman felt an immense contempt for his credulous and vacillating ally. When Captain Paulin brought at length the long delayed despatches, Soliman refused to admit him to his presence.

Paulin, or Pollino, was a man of low origin, but shrewd talent and plausible address. He succeeded at last in gaining the ear of Soliman. The Turk promised, at length, to renew his alliance, and to send, next year, should the King require it, an Ottoman fleet to the aid of France. But his faith in Francis was destroyed. Meanwhile, at home, the King, at last awakened, was doing his best to regain his ground with the German Lutherans. But the Emperor's lie fought hard against him; and the news of the recently concluded alliance with the Porte did him harm with the League. "Germany for the Turks," the superstitious Germans heard, under the promises and advances of the King. All that Francis could do was by tolerance at home to give, as it were, a new guarantee to the Lutherans abroad. And his clemency to the rebellious Huguenots of La Rochelle served in some sort as a guarantee of his good faith.

The Court was now all for tolerance and the New Ideas; the Psalms of David, in Marot's version, were set to all the popular vaudevilles, or to airs composed for them at court. For one the Dauphin himself wrote the music. Everyone had an air, a psalm, and a text of his own. Villemadon, Margaret's envoy, marvelled to find the gay court of Fontainebleau thus out-Nérac Nérac. The Cardinal de Tournon looked on aghast. He might have spared his fears; this Lutheranism had no roots. It was but a demonstration