TO MY LORD THE DUKE OF MONTMORANCY, PEER AND CONSTABLE OF FRANCE.

My Lord, I believe that you will not find it amiss that I have not come to thank you when it pleased you to employ the Roine mere Queen Mother to pull me out of the hands of my mortal and capital enemies. You know that the occupation of your work, together with my poverty, would not permit it. I believe you would not have found it good that I had left your work to bring you a great thank you. Jesus Christ left us a counsel written in Saint Matthew, chapter 7, by which he forbids us to cast pearls before swine, for fear that they might turn against us and tear us apart. If I had believed this counsel, I would not have been in the trouble of asking you for my deliverance, assuring you in truth that my haters had no occasion against me, except that I had pointed out to them several times certain passages of the Holy Scriptures, where it is written that he is unhappy and cursed who drinks the milk and wears the wool of the sheep without giving it pasture. And although that should have incited them to love me, they took occasion from it to want to have me destroyed as a wrongdoer. It is a true thing that if I had confessed myself to the Judges of this City, they would have had me put to death before I could have managed to obtain any service from you. And the occasion that moved some Judges to be one body, one soul, and one same will with the Dean and Chapter, my opposing parties, was because some of said Judges were relatives of the said Dean and Chapter, and possess some morsel of a benefice, which they fear losing because the laborers are starting to grumble while paying tithes to those who receive them without earning them. I would have taken very good care not to fall into their bloodthirsty hands, had it not been that I had hope they would have regard for your work, and for the imitation of My Lord the Duke of Montpensier, who gave me a safe-conduct, forbidding them