itter of the
civilization of the Renaissance.

It seemed at first, however, as though the doctrines of the Reform might
find as stable a footing in France as they did in Germany. Among the
lettered and cultivated classes their conquests were rapid; even in the
court, the king's mother, Louise de Savoie, was not apparently disposed
to oppose them; his sister, Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, and his dear
friend the Duchesse d'Etampes, were more or less openly inclined in
their favor; Clement Marot, the court poet, translated the Psalms of
David into French, which the Reformers sang at the Pre-aux-Clercs. Two
scholars greatly esteemed by Francois I, Lefebvre d'Etaples, who had
begun six years before Luther, and Louis de Berquin, considered by his
contemporaries as "the wisest of the nobility," publicly supported the
Reform doctrines. But the king, fearing in them an organized movement
against all authority, sacred or secular, soon withdrew his support;
Berquin was burned at the stake in the Place de Greve, and the Sorbonne
even ventured to pursue, with open prosecution and denunciation, and
with hidden satire in a comedy represented at the College de Navarre,
the king's sister for having caused her brother to adopt a book of
prayers translated into French and for having caused to be printed a
work of her own in verse: _Le Miroir de l'Ame pecheresse_. The Parlement
formally forbade the scholars of the Universite to translate any of the
sacred books in Hebrew or Greek into French, as being a work of heresy.
In 1546, Etienne Dolet, the printer, was hanged and then burned, for
impiety and atheism, on the Place Maubert where his statue now stands.
There was even invented, for the benefit of the heretics, a refinement
of cruelty on the ordinary horrors of the stake,--a pulley over the
victim's head to which he was suspended by chains, so that he could
alternately be raised out of the flames and lowered into them again.
This was called _l'estrapade_.

[Illustration: COSTUME FOR YOUNG GIRL. PERIOD, 1821.

From a sketch by F. Courboin.]

This reign witnessed one of those unjust condemnations of the royal
treasurer which had become so common in French history. Jacques de
Beaune, Seigneur de Semblancay, had succeeded his father in this
important post; Louis XII and Francois I alike had found every reason to
repose the utmost confidence in their financial officer, but the latter
monarch, and his mother, set no bounds to their lavish