His mask of veneration slowly turned into a licentious grin.
Their religion was a nature-worship intimately connected with the veneration of ancestors.
Luther's colleague at Wittenberg, Carlstadt, began denouncing the monastic life, the celibacy of the clergy, the veneration of images; and before the end of 1521 we find the first characteristic outward symptoms of Protestantism.
In this work he for the first time systematized an old Oriental (perhaps Phoenician) method of interpreting the popular myths, asserting that the gods who formed the chief objects of popular worship had been originally heroes and conquerors, who had thus earned a claim to the veneration of their subjects.
In Paris, too, at this time he made a whimsical but pleasant friendship. Marie de Jars de Gournay (1565-1645), one of the most learned ladies of the 16th and 17th centuries, had conceived such a veneration for the author of the Essays that, though a very young girl and connected with many noble families, she travelled to the capital on purpose to make his acquaintance.
