mind as in
moral character.[402] As for Renee, if her face was homely and
unprepossessing, her intellect was vigorous. She had turned to good
account the opportunities for self-improvement afforded by her high
rank. Admiring courtiers made her classical and philosophical
attainments the subject of lavish panegyric, perhaps with a better basis
of fact than in the case of many other princes of the time; while with
the French, her countrymen, the generous hospitality she dispensed won
for her unfading laurels. "Never was there a Frenchman," writes the Abbe
de Brantome, "who passing through Ferrara applied to her in his distress
and was suffered to depart without receiving ample assistance to reach
his native land and home. If he were unable to travel through illness,
she had him cared for and treated with the utmost solicitude, and then
gave him money to continue his journey."[403] Ten thousand poor
Frenchmen are said to have been saved by her munificent charity, on the
occasion of the recall of the Duke of Guise, after Constable
Montmorency's disastrous defeat at St. Quentin. Her answer to the
remonstrance of her servants against this excessive drain upon her
slender resources bore witness at once to the sincerity of her
patriotism and to a virile spirit which no Salic law could
extinguish.[404]

The brief stay of Calvin at Ferrara is involved in the same obscurity
that attends his motives in visiting Italy. But it is known that he
exerted at this time a marked influence not only on others,[405] but on
Renee de France herself, who, from this period forward, appears in the
character of an avowed friend of the reformatory movement. Calvin had
from prudence assumed the title of _Charles d'Espeville_, and this name
was retained as a signature in his subsequent correspondence with the
duchess.

[Sidenote: Calvin leaves Ferrara.]

A point so close to the centre of the Roman Catholic world as Ferrara
could scarcely afford safety to an ardent reformer, even if the fame of
his "Institutes" had not yet reached Rome; and Ercole the Second was too
dependent upon the Holy See to shrink from sacrificing the guest his
wife had invited to the palace. Returning, therefore, from Ferrara,
without apparently pursuing his journey to Rome or even to Florence,
Calvin retraced his steps and took refuge beyond the Alps. Possibly he
may have stopped on the way in the valley of Aosta, and displayed a
missionary activity, which has been denied