Francis I.contributed to this progress, first by the 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.'.

.