ds was sufficiently strong without
having it redoubled by the charity you have been pleased to show poor
Berquin according to your promise; I feel that He for whom I believe
him to have suffered will approve of the mercy which, for His honor,
you have had upon His servant and your own."

Marguerite had saved Berquin and had even taken him into her service.
Her letter to the constable, Anne de Montmorency, shows her esteem of
men of genius and especially of Berquin:

"I thank you for the pleasure you have afforded me in the matter of
poor Berquin whom I esteem as much as if he were myself; and so you
may say you have delivered me from prison, since I consider in that
light the favor done me."

When on June 1, 1528, a statue of the Virgin was thrown down and
mutilated by unknown hands, a reversion of feeling arose immediately,
and even Marguerite was not able to save poor Berquin, and he was
burned at the stake. Upon learning of his imminent peril, she wrote to
Francis from Saint-Germain:

"I, for the last time, very humbly make you a request; it is that
you will be pleased to have pity upon poor Berquin, whom I know to be
suffering for nothing other than loving the word of God and obeying
yours. You will be pleased, Monseigneur, so to act that it be not
said that separation has made you forget your most humble and obedient
sister and subject, Marguerite."

Encouraged by their success in that instance, the intolerant party
began furious attacks upon her, one monk going so far as to say from
the pulpit that she should be put into a sack and thrown into the
Seine. Upon her publication of a religious poem, _Miroir de l'ame
pecheresse_, in which she failed to mention purgatory or the saints,
she was vigorously attacked by Beda, who had the verses condemned
by the Sorbonne and caused the pupils of the College of Navarre to
perform a morality in which Marguerite was represented under the
character of a woman quitting her distaff for a French translation
of the Gospels presented to her by a Fury. This was too much even for
Francis, and he ordered the principal and his actors arrested; it was
then that Marguerite showed her gentleness, mercy, and humanity by
throwing herself at her brother's feet and asking for their pardon.

After but a short respite the persecution broke out anew, and with
the full sanction of the king, who, upon finding at his door a placard
against the mass, went even so far as to sign letters patent o