slightest
variation in the breeze to which they trim their sails. The greater part
of the high dignitaries, the early historian of the reformed churches
informs us, adapting themselves to the king's humor, abandoned the study
of the Bible, and in time became violent opponents of practices which
they had sanctioned by their own example. Even Margaret of Navarre is
accused by the same authority--and he honestly represents the belief of
the contemporary reformers--of having yielded to these seductive
influences. She plunged, like the rest, he tells us, into conformity
with the most reprehensible superstitions; not that she approved them,
but because Gerard Roussel and similar teachers persuaded her that they
were things indifferent. Thus, allowing herself to trifle with truth,
she was so blinded by the spirit of error as to offer an asylum in her
court of Nerac to Quintin and Pocques, blasphemous "Libertines" whose
doctrines called forth a refutation from the pen of Calvin.[388]

[Sidenote: The French Reformation becomes a popular movement.]

[Sidenote: Geneva the centre of activity.]

The French Reformation was thus constrained to become a _popular_
movement. The king had refused to lead it. The nobles turned their backs
upon it. Its adherents, threatened with the gallows and stake, or driven
into banishment, could no longer look for encouragement or direction
toward Paris and the vicinage of the court. The timid counsels of the
high-born were to be exchanged for the bold and fiery words of reformers
sprung from the _people_. Excluded from the luxurious capital, the
Huguenots were, during a long series of years, to draw their inspiration
from a city at the foot of the Alps--a city whose invigorating climate
was no less adapted to harden the intellectual and moral constitution
than the bodily frame, and where rugged Nature, if she bestowed wealth
with no lavish hand, manifested her impartiality by more liberal
endowments conferred upon man himself. Geneva henceforth becomes the
centre of reformatory activity, of which fact we need no stronger
evidence than the severe legislation of France to destroy its influence;
and the same causes that gave the direction of the movement to the
people shaped its theological tendencies. Under the guidance of Francis
and Margaret, it must have assumed much of the German or Lutheran type;
or, to speak more correctly, the direct influence of Germany upon
France, attested by the name of "L