use in the breasts of the Protestants in all parts
of the kingdom. His appearance at Poissy became their favorite episode
in recent history. His portrait was hung up in many a chamber. He was
almost adored by whole multitudes of Frenchmen,[1131] as one whom noble
birth, learning, and brilliant prospects had not deterred from following
the dictates of his conscientious convictions; whom security in a
foreign land had not rendered indifferent to the interests of the land
of his birth; whose persuasive eloquence had won new adherents to the
cause of the oppressed from among the rich and noble; who had maintained
the truth unabashed in the presence of the king and "of the most
illustrious company on earth."

[Sidenote: His frankness justified.]

Nor will the candid student of history, if he but consider the attitude
of the prelates at the colloquy of Poissy, be more inclined than were
the Protestants of his own day to censure Theodore Beza for any degree
of alleged injudiciousness exhibited in that celebrated sentence in his
speech which provoked the outburst of indignation on the part of Tournon
and his colleagues. What, forsooth, had their reverences come to the
colloquy expecting to hear from the lips of the reformed orators? If not
the most orthodox of sentiments--more orthodox than many sentiments
whose proclamation had been tolerated in their own private
convocation--was there not a moderate allowance of hypocrisy in their
pretended horror at the impiety of the heretic Beza? For certainly it
was scarcely to be anticipated by the most sanguine that he would
profess an unwavering belief in the transmutation of the substance of
the bread and wine into the very body and blood of Jesus Christ that
suffered on the cross; seeing that for a little more than a third of a
century those of whom he was the avowed representative had, it must be
admitted, pretty clearly testified to the contrary on a thousand
"estrapades" from the _Place de Greve_ to the remotest corner of France.
Surely this extreme sensitiveness, this refined orthodoxy, unable to
endure the simple enunciation of an opinion differing from their own on
the part of an avowed opponent, savored a little of affectation; the
more so as it came from prelates whose solicitude for their flocks had
been manifested more in the way of seeking to obtain as large a number
of folds as possible, than in the way of giving any special pastoral
supervision to one, and who found a m