re d'Etaples, who had fled the wrath of the Sorbonne, and who
"regarded the young man with a benignant eye, predicting that he was to
become the author of the restoration of the Church in France." Le Fevre
recalls to our mind that priest about whom Mathesius tells us, who said
to Luther, when sick: "My child, you will not die; God has great designs
in your regard." As to the rest, James le Fevre d'Etaples was a
sufficiently charitable and honest man. He died a Catholic, and very
probably without ever having prophesied in the terms mentioned by Beza.

It does not appear that Margaret enjoined the law of silence upon her
guest of Noyon, for we find him disseminating his errors in Saintonge,
where many laborers flocked to hear him and abandoned Catholicism to
embrace the Reformation. It was while on one of his excursions that the
missionary encountered Louis du Tillet, clerk of the Parliament of
Paris and secretary of Du Tillet, Bishop of Meaux. Louis possessed a
beautiful dwelling at Claix, a sort of Thebais, retired and pleasant,
where Calvin commenced his most serious work, _Institutes of the
Christian Religion_. The time he could spare from this literary
occupation he devoted to preaching in the neighboring cities, and
especially at Angouleme. A vine, beneath which he loved to recline and
muse, may still be seen; it was for a long time called "Calvin's vine."
He was still living on the last bounties of a church which he had
renounced, and which he called "a stepmother and a prostitute"; and on
the presents of a queen gallant, whose morals and piety he lauded,
continuing to assist at the Catholic service, and composing Latin
orations, which were delivered out of the assembly of the synod, at the
temple of St. Peter. He left the court of Margaret and reappeared at
Orleans.

The Reformation in France, as in Germany, wherever it showed itself,
produced, on all sides, disorder and trouble. In place of a uniform
symbol, it brought contradictory confessions, which gave rise to
interminable disputes. In Germany the Lutheran word caused a thousand
sects to spring up--each of which wished to establish a Christian
republic on the ruins of Catholicism. Carlstadt, Schwenkfield,
Oecolampadius, Zwingli, Munzer, Boskold, begotten by Luther, had
denied their father, and taught heterogeneous dogmas, of which every one
passed for the production of the Holy Ghost. Luther, who no longer
concealed himself beneath a monk's robe, but borrowe