n orders his release.]

Meantime Louis de Berquin had retired to his own estates, in the
expectation of pursuing his plans with less danger of interference than
in the capital. Even there, however, he was not safe. The propitious
moment for striking a decisive blow seemed to his enemies to have come
when, the king being a captive, his mother, the regent, had permitted
Pope and parliament to erect a tribunal for the summary trial and
execution of heretics. The Bishop of Amiens, in whose diocese De
Berquin's lands were situated, having applied to parliament, easily
obtained the authority to seize him, disregarding even the ordinary
rights of asylum.[272] After his arrest he was again transferred from
the episcopal palace to the _conciergerie_ at Paris, and his trial
entrusted to the new inquisitorial commission. A series of propositions
extracted from his writings, and censured by the Sorbonne, insured his
condemnation as a relapsed heretic, and De Berquin was handed over to
the secular arm for condign punishment. But again, at the very instant
when his ruin was imminent, he met with unexpected deliverance. The
sympathy of the king's sister was enlisted, and she used her influence
with her mother to obtain an order adjourning all proceedings against De
Berquin until the monarch should be released. Meanwhile she wrote urgent
letters in his behalf to Francis and to his favorite, the grand master
of the palace and future constable of France, Anne de Montmorency. The
reply came in an order from the king, at Madrid, directing his
parliament to cease from giving disturbance to Berquin and such men of
learning.[273]

[Sidenote: Dilatory measures of parliament.]

It is suggestive of the delays attending even the execution of the will
of so arbitrary a prince as Francis, that, although De Berquin was thus
delivered from the immediate prospect of death, months passed before he
regained his liberty. Successive royal orders were required to secure
any alleviation of his hard confinement. Thus, when his health suffered
from want of exercise and pure air, parliament grudgingly permitted him
to leave his solitary cell for an hour morning and evening, at such time
as the court might be clear of other prisoners whom he could
contaminate. And when De Berquin complained that his books and writing
materials had been denied him, the extent of the parliament's generosity
was to grant him "the epistles of St. Jerome and some other Catholic
b