intelligent sympathy he testified towards learned men of letters, and
afterwards by the foundation of the _College Royal,_ an establishment of
a special, an elevated, and an independent sort, where professors found a
liberty protected against the routine, jealousy, and sometimes
intolerance of the University of Paris and the Sorbonne. The king and
his sister Marguerite often went to pay a visit, at his printing-place in
St. Jean de Beauvais Street, to Robert Estienne (Stephanus), the most
celebrated amongst that family of printer-publishers who had so much to
do with the resurrection of ancient literature. It is said that one day
the king waited a while in the work-room, so as not to disturb Robert
Estienne in the correction of a proof.

[Illustration: Francis I. waits for Robert Estienne----168]

When the violence bred of religious quarrels finally forced the learned
and courageous printer to expatriate himself, his first care was to say,
at the head of his apology, "When I take account of the war I have
carried on with the Sorbonne for a space of twenty years or thereabouts,
I cannot sufficiently marvel how so small and broken-down a creature as I
am had strength to maintain it. When I was seen being harried on all
sides, how often have I been the talk on street and at banquets, whilst
people said, 'It is all over with him; he is caught, he cannot escape;
even if the king would, he could not save him.' . . . I wish to
justify myself against the reproach of having left my country, to the
hurt of the public weal, and of not having acknowledged the great
liberality displayed towards me by the king; since it was a high honor
for me that the king, having deigned to make me his printer, always kept
me under his protection, in the face of all who envied me and wished me
ill, and never ceased to aid me graciously in all sorts of ways."

The _College Royal,_ no less than Robert Estienne, met with obstacles and
ill-wishers; it was William Bude (Budeaus) who first suggested the idea
of the college to the king, primarily with the limited purpose of
securing instruction in Greek and Hebrew, after the fashion of the
College of Young Grecians and the College of the Three Languages (the
Trilingual, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin), of which the former was founded at
Rome by Leo X., the latter at Louvain by Canon Jerome Busleyden. Francis
I. readily surrendered himself to more magnificent projects; he was
anxious to erect a splendi