ooks." At length, the king's patience becoming exhausted by the court's
procrastination and technical objections, he sent (November 21, 1526)
the Provost of Paris forcibly to remove De Berquin from the
_conciergerie_ to the Louvre, where he was soon restored his
freedom.[274]

[Sidenote: Hopes of Margaret of Angouleme.]

The return of Francis from Madrid, and the rescue of Berquin, Lefevre,
Roussel, and others, from the dangers to which they had been exposed,
encouraged the more sanguine reformers to hope that now at length the
king would declare himself openly in favor, if not of the evangelical
doctrines, at least of some form of religions toleration. Margaret of
Angouleme had certainly labored piously and assiduously to open her
brother's eyes to the true character of his fanatical advisers. In a
letter still preserved and apparently written even before Francis had
been removed from Italy to Spain, she begged him to regard his
misfortune as only a mark of the Divine love, and intended to give him
time for reflection and consecration. This end being accomplished,
Heaven would gloriously deliver him and make him a blessing to all
Christendom--nay, even to infidel nations to be converted by his
means.[275]

However fanciful these brilliant anticipations may now appear, they did
not seem unreasonable at the time. It was not improbable that the
example of the illustrious German princes, his allies, who had embraced
the Reformation, might incline Francis decidedly to the same side.
Margaret had conceived great expectations, based upon a projected visit
to the French court by Count Von Hohenlohe, Dean of the Cathedral of
Strasbourg--a nobleman, who, having become a Protestant, was anxious to
turn to the advantage of his new convictions the influence secured to
him by high social rank. The correspondence of Francis's sister with the
zealous German noble opens a suggestive page of history. At first,
Margaret, while applauding the count's design and building great hopes
upon it, advises him to defer his visit until the king's return from
Spain. Two months later, she is even more anxious to see Hohenlohe in
Paris, but feels constrained to tell him that his friends have, for a
certain reason, concluded that the proper time has not yet arrived. A
third letter, dated after the restoration of Francis to his throne,
informs us what that certain reason was. "I cannot tell you all the
grief I feel," Margaret writes, "for I clearly