Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/40

Rh there was a great famine, so that in Paris no corn and no bread were to be found in all the town for any price; and throughout the land of Normandy a still greater famine and scarcity of corn and of bread, so that ten bushels of wheat sold for ten livres. And it must be noted that the greater part of the town of Meaux was infected by the doctrines of Luther."

Meaux was a town of weavers, a great industrial centre. Close enough to Paris to share the intellectual activity, the fever of speculation, which signalised Paris from the time of Duns Scotus to the time of Vatable, Meaux was yet aloof, apart; removed from the envies and glories of the court, from the hurry and business of the capital. It was a town of priests and weavers. From the episcopal palace there, a mild elderly bishop swayed the quiet city. This man, Guillaume Briçonnet, a gentle, humane, dreamy scholar, ex-man-of-the-world, garrulous and mystical, had gathered about him the most thoughtful of the French clergy. Under him Meaux remained a serene oasis among the spreading cupidity and corruption of the Church. The pious, the wise, the speculative spirits of France were attracted to that placid neighbourhood; the great Lefebvre d'Étaples, Gérard Roussel, Michel d'Arande, settled there. Then, all at once this humane and idealistic clergy—this starved, fiery, mystical population of weavers and artisans, was seized with a sudden panic: Charles was besieging Mézières. Hunger, desertion, fearful ravage, hovered over all alike. The world was proved an impracticable, an intolerable place of trial. There was nothing to comfort men, saving to build a refuge unseen and secure, a land that no rude soldiery could trample