From Rise of Protestantism in France to Publication of the Institutes - James Aitken Wylie

France. The. Keys and the Fleur-de-lis were united
for better for worse. The rejoicings and festivities
were now at an end. The crowd of princes and
courtiers, of prelates and monks, of liveried
attendants and men-at-arms, which for weeks had
crowded the streets of Marseilles, and kept it night
and day in a stir, had dispersed; and Francis and
Clement, mutually satisfied, were on their way
back, each to his own land. The winds slept, the
uneasy Gulf of Lyons was still till the Pontiff's
galley had passed; and as he sailed away over that
glassy sea, Clement felt that now the tiara sat
firmer on his head than before, and that he might
reckon on happier days in the Vatican. Alas, how
little could he forecast the actual future! What
awaited him at Rome was a shroud and a grave.
Francis I., equally overjoyed, but equally
mistaken, amused himself, on his journey to Paris,
with visions of the future, arrayed in colors of
equal brilliancy. He had not patience till he should
arrive at the Louvre before making a beginning
with these grand projects. He halted at Avignon,
that old city on the banks of the Rhone, which had
257