imself, "that a single dissertation had brought me
a cure." In 1534, study, meditation on the Gospels, discussion of the
religious and moral questions raised on every side, and the free
atmosphere of the new spirit that was abroad, changed his convictions and
his resolves; he abandoned the career of the law as well as that of the
established church, resigned his cure at Pont-l'Eveque, and devoted
himself entirely to the work of the nascent and much opposed Reformation.
Having a mind that was judicious and free from illusion in the very heat
of passion, he soon saw to what an extent the success of the Reformation
in France was difficult and problematical; in 1535, impressed by the
obstacles it met with even more than by the dangers it evoked, he
resolved to leave his country and go else whither in search of security,
liberty, and the possibility of defending a cause which became the dearer
to him in proportion as it was the more persecuted. He had too much
sagacity not to perceive that he was rapidly exhausting his various
places of asylum: Queen Marguerite of Navarre was unwilling to try too
far the temper of the king her brother; Canon Louis du Tillet was a
little fearful lest his splendid library should be somewhat endangered
through the use made of it by his guest, who went about, arguing or
preaching, in the vicinity of Angouleme; the queen's almoner, Gerard
Roussel, considered that Calvin was going too far, and grew apprehensive
lest, if the Reformation should completely succeed, it might suppress the
bishopric of Oleron which he desired, and which, indeed, he at a later
period obtained. Lefevre of Etaples, who was the most of all in sympathy
with Calvin, was seventy-nine years old, and had made up his mind to pass
his last days in peace. Calvin quitted Angouleme and Nerac, and went to
pass some time at Poitiers, where the friends of the Reformation,
assembling round him and hanging upon his words, for the first time
celebrated the Lord's Supper in a grotto close to the town, which still
goes by the name of Calvin's Grotto. Being soon obliged to leave
Poitiers, Calvin went to Orleans, then secretly to Paris, then to Noyon
to see his family once more, and set out at last for Strasbourg, already
one of the strongholds of the Reformation, where he had friends, amongst
others the learned Bucer, with whom he had kept up a constant
correspondence. He arrived there at the beginning of the year 1535; but
it was not at