to Berquin of the chamber reserved for the greatest personages, for princes of the blood, and of permission to walk in the court-yard for two hours a day, one in the morning and the other in the evening, in the absence of the other prisoners.  Neither the king nor Berquin was inclined to be content with these concessions.  The king in his irritation sent from Beaugency, on the 5th of October, two archers of his guard with a letter to this effect:  “It is marvellously strange that what we ordered has not yet been done.  We do command and most expressly enjoin upon you, this once for all, that you are incontinently to put and deliver the said Berquin into the hands of the said Texier and Charles do Broc, whom we have ordered to conduct him to our castle of the Louvre.”  The court still objected; a prisoner favored by so high a personage, it was said, would soon be out of such a prison.  The objection resulted in a formal refusal to obey.  The provost of Paris, John de la Barre, the king’s premier gentleman, was requested to repair to the palace and pay Berquin a visit, to ascertain from himself what could be done for him.  Berquin, for all that appears, asked for nothing but liberty to read and write.  “It is not possible,” was the reply; “such liberty is never granted to those who are condemned to death.”  As a great favor, Berquin was offered a copy of the Letters of St. Jerome and some volumes of history; and the provost had orders not to omit that fact in his report:  “The king must be fully assured that the court do all they can to please him.”

[Illustration:  Berquin released by John de la Barre——­198]

But it was to no purpose.  On the 19th of November, 1526, the provost of Paris returned to the palace with a letter from the king, formally commanding him to remove Berquin and transfer him to the Louvre.  The court again protested that they would not deliver over the said Berquin to the said provost; but, they said, “seeing what the times are, the said provost will be able to find free access to the Conciergerie, for to do there what he hath a mind to.”  The same day, about six in the evening, John de la Barre repaired to the Conciergerie, and removed from it Louis de Berquin, whom he handed over to the captain of the guard and four archers, who took him away to the Louvre.  Two months afterwards, in January, 1527, Princess Marguerite married Henry d’Albret, King of Navarre, and about the same time, though it is difficult to discover the exact day, Louis de Berquin issued forth a free man from the Louvre, and the new queen, on taking him at once into her service, wrote to the Constable Anne de Montmorency, whom the king had charged with the duty of getting Berquin set at liberty, “I thank you for the pleasure you have done me in the matter of poor Berquin, whom I esteem as much as if he were myself; and so you may say that you have delivered me from prison, since I consider in that light the pleasure done to me.”