It is said that Francis I., when near his end, repented of this odious extermination of a small population, which, with his usual fickleness and carelessness, he had at one time protected, and at another abandoned to its enemies.  Amongst his last words to his son Henry II. was an exhortation to cause an inquiry to be made into the iniquities committed by the Parliament of Aix in this instance.  It will be seen, at the opening of Henry II.’s reign, what was the result of this exhortation of his father’s.

Calvin was lately mentioned as having pleaded the cause of the Vaudians, in 1544, amongst the Protestants of Switzerland and Germany.  It was from Geneva, where he had lived and been the dominant spirit for many years, that the French Reformer had exercised such influence over the chiefs of the German Reformation in favor of that small population whose creed and morals had anticipated by several centuries the Reformation in the sixteenth century.  He was born, in 1509 at Noyon in Picardy, was brought up in the bosom of the Catholic church, and held a cure in 1527 at Pont-l’Eveque, where he preached several times, “joyous and almost proud,” as he said himself, “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