At the beginning of the sixteenth century, there lived, at a small castle near Gap in Dauphiny, in the bosom of a noble and unostentatiously pious family, a young man of ardent imagination, fiery temperament, and energetic character, who shared his relatives’ creeds and joined in their devotions, but grew weary of the monotony of his thoughts and of his life.  William Farel heard talk of another young man, his contemporary and neighbor, Peter du Terrail, even now almost famous under the name of Bayard.  “Such sons,” was said in his hearing, “are as arrows in the hand of a giant; blessed is he who has his quiver full of them!” Young Farel pressed his father to let him go too and make himself a man in the world.  The old gentleman would willingly have permitted his son to take up such a life as Bayard’s; but it was towards the University of Paris, “that mother of all the sciences, that pure and shining mirror of the faith,” that the young man’s aspirations were directed.  The father at first opposed, but afterwards yielded to his wishes; and, about 1510, William Farel quitted Gap and arrived at Paris.  The questions raised by the councils of Bale and Florence, and by the semi-political, semi-ecclesiastical assembly at Tours, which had been convoked by Louis XII., the instruction at the Parisian University, and the attacks of the Sorbonne on the study of Greek and Hebrew, branded as heresy, were producing a lively agitation in the public mind.  A doctor of theology, already advanced in years, of small stature, of mean appearance, and of low origin, Jacques Lefevre by name, born at Etaples in Picardy, had for seventeen years filled with great success a professorship in the university.  “Amongst many thousands of men,” said Erasmus, “you will not find any of higher integrity and more versed in polite letters.”  “He is very fond of me,” wrote Zwingle about him; “he is perfectly open and good; he argues, he sings, he plays, and be laughs with me at the follies of the world.”  Some circumstance or other brought the young student and the old scholar together; they liked one another, and soon became friends.  Farel was impressed by his master’s devotion as well as learning; he saw him on his knees at church praying fervently; and, “Never,” said he, “had I seen a chanter of mass who chanted it with deeper reverence.”  But this old-fashioned piety did not interfere at all with the freedom of the professor’s ideas and conversations touching either the abuses or the doctrines of the church.  “How shameful it is,” he would say, “to see a bishop soliciting people to drink with him, caring for nought but gaming, constantly handling the dice and the dice-box, constantly hunting, hallooing after birds and game, frequenting bad houses! . . .  Religion has but one foundation, but one end, but one head, Jesus Christ blessed forever; he alone trod the wine-press.  Let us not, then, call ourselves by the name of St. Paul, or Apollos, or St. Peter.”  These free conversations