t, he considered himself safe, and he testified as much to
Erasmus in a long letter, in which he told him the story of his trial,
and alluded to "the fresh outbreak of anger on the part of those hornets
who accuse me of heresy," said he, "simply because I have translated into
the vulgar tongue some of your little works, wherein they pretend that
they have discovered the most monstrous pieces of impiety." He
transmitted to Erasmus a list of the paragraphs which the pope's
delegates had condemned, pressing him to reply, "as you well know how.
The king esteems you much, and will esteem you still more when
you have heaped confusion on this brood of benighted theologians whose
ineptitude is no excuse for their violence." By a strange coincidence,
Berquin's most determined foe, Noel Beda, provost of the Sorbonne, sent
at the same time to Erasmus a copy of more than two hundred propositions
which had been extracted from his works, and against which he, Beda, also
came forward as accuser. Erasmus was a prudent man, and did not seek
strife; but when he was personally and offensively attacked by enemies
against whom he was conscious of his strength, he exhibited it proudly
and ably; and he replied to Beda by denouncing him, on the 6th of June,
to the Parliament of Paris itself, as an impudent and ignorant
calumniator. His letter, read at the session of Parliament on the 5th of
July, 1526, was there listened to with profound deference, and produced a
sensation which did not remain without effect; in vain did Beda persist
in accusing Erasmus of heresy and in maintaining that he was of the
brotherhood of Luther; Parliament considered him in the wrong,
provisionally prohibited the booksellers from vending his libels against
Erasmus, and required previous authorization to be obtained for all books
destined for the press by the rectors of the Sorbonne.

The success of Erasmus was also a success for Berquin; but he was still
in prison, ill and maltreated. The king wrote on the 11th of July to
Parliament to demand that he should enjoy at least all the liberties that
the prison would admit of, that he should no longer be detained in an
unhealthy cell, and that he should be placed in that building of the
Conciergerie where the court-yard was. "That," was the answer, "would be
a bad precedent; they never put in the court-yard convicts who had
incurred the penalty of death." An offer was made to Berquin of the
chamber reserved for the