s fervent adherents. William Briconnet, Bishop of Meaux, a
prelate who had been Louis XII.'s ambassador to Pope Julius II., and one
amongst the negotiators of Francis I.'s Concordat with Leo X., opened his
diocese to the preachers and writers recommended to him by his friend
Lefevre of Staples, and supported them in their labors for the
translation and propagation, amongst the people, of the Holy Scriptures.
They had at court, and near the king's own person, the avowed support of
his sister, Princess Marguerite, who was beautiful, sprightly, affable,
kind, disposed towards all lofty and humane sentiments as well as all
intellectual pleasures, and an object of the sometimes rash attentions of
the most eminent and most different men of her time, Charles V., the
Constable de Bourbon, Admiral Bonnivet, and Clement Marot. Marguerite,
who was married to the Duke d'Alencon, widowed in 1525, and married a
second time, in 1527, to Henry d'Albret, King of Navarre, was all her
life at Pau and at Nerac, as well as at Paris, a centre, a focus of
social, literary, religious, and political movement. "The king her
brother loved her dearly," says Brantome, "and always called her his
darling. . . Very often, when he had important business, he left it to
her, waiting for her definitive and conclusive decision.

[Illustration: The Castle of Pau----183]

The ambassadors who talked with her were enchanted by her, and always
went to see her after having paid their first ambassadorial visit. She
had so great a regard and affection for the king, that when she heard of
his dangerous illness she said, 'Whosoever shall come to my door, and
announce to me the recovery of the king my brother, such courier, should
he be tired, and worn out, and muddy, and dirty, I will go and kiss and
embrace as if he were the sprucest prince and gentleman of France; and,
should he be in want of a bed and unable to find one whereon to rid him
of his weariness, I would give him mine, and I would rather lie on the
hard, for the good news he brought me.' . . . She was suspected of
inclining to the religion of Luther, but she never made any profession or
sign thereof; and, if she believed it, she kept it in her heart very
secret, inasmuch as the king did hate it sorely." . . . "The heresy
was seen glimmering here and there," says another contemporary witness
[Florimond de Raimond in his _Histoire de l'Heresie_], "but it appeared
and disappeared like a night