"You are Chancellor of France," he said, "in the place of this felon.

Monsieur de Maille, take Monsieur de l'Hopital to prison with the Prince de

Conde.--As to you, madame," and he turned to Catherine, "your protest will

not be recognized, and you would do well to remember that such actions need

the support of adequate force. I am acting as a faithful and loyal subject

of King Francis II., my sovereign.--Proceed, Ambroise," he said to the

surgeon.

"Monsieur de Guise," said l'Hopital, "if you use any violence, either on

the person of the King or on that of his Chancellor, remember that in the

hall without there is enough French nobility to arrest all traitors."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," said the surgeon, "if you prolong this debate, you

may as well shout 'Vive Charles IX.,' for King Francis is dying."

Catherine stood unmoved, looking out of window.

"Well, then, we will use force to remain masters in the King's bedroom,"

said the Cardinal, trying to keep the door; but he was startled and

horrified, for the great hall was quite deserted. The Court, sure that the

King was dying, had gone back to Antoine of Navarre.

"Come; do it, do it," cried Mary Stuart to Ambroise.--"I and you, Duchess,"

she said to Madame de Guise, "will protect you."

"Nay, madame," said Pare, "my zeal carried me too far; the doctors, with

the exception of my friend Chapelain, are in favor of the injection; I must

yield to them. If I were physician and surgeon-in-chief, he could be

saved!--Give it me," he said, taking a small syringe from the hand of the

chief physician, and filling it.

"Good God!" cried Mary Stuart; "I command you----"

"Alas! madame," replied Pare, "I am subordinate to these gentlemen."

The young Queen and the Duchesse de Guise stood between the surgeon and the

doctors and the other persons present. The chief physician held the King's

head, and Ambroise made the injection into the ear. The two Princes of

Lorraine were watchful; Robertet and Monsieur de Maille stood motionless.

At a sign from Catherine, Madame de Fieschi left the room unnoticed. At the

same instant l'Hopital boldly threw open the door of the King's bedroom.

"I have arrived in the nick of time," exclaimed a man, whose hasty steps

rang through the hall, and who, in another minute, was at the door of the

King's room. "What, gentlemen! You thought to cut off my fine nephew, the

Prince de Conde's head?--You have roused the lion from his lair, and here

he is!" added the Connetable de Montmorency.--"Ambroise, you are not to

stir up my King's brains with your instruments! The Kings of France do not

allow themselves to be knocked about in that way unless by their enemies'

sword in fair fight! The first Prince of the Blood, Antoine de Bourbon, the

Prince de Conde, the Queen-mother, and the Chancellor are all opposed to

the operation."

To Catherine's great satisfaction, the King of Navarre and the Prince de

Conde both made their appearance.

"What is the meaning of this?" said the Duc de Guise, laying his hand on

his poniard.

"As Lord High Constable, I have dismissed all the sentinels from their

posts. Blood and thunder! we are not in an enemy's country, I suppose. The

King our Master is surrounded by his subjects, and the States-General of

the realm may deliberate in perfect liberty. I have just come from the

Assembly, gentlemen; I laid before it the protest of my nephew de Conde,

who has been rescued by three hundred gentlemen. You meant to let the royal

blood, and to decimate the nobility of France. Henceforth I shall not trust

anything you propose, Messieurs de Lorraine. And if you give the order for

the King's head to be opened, by this sword, which saved France from

Charles V., I say it shall not be done----!"

"All the more so," said Ambroise Pare, "because it is too late, suffusion

has begun."

"Your reign is over, gentlemen," said Catherine to the two Guises, seeing

from Pare's manner that there was now no hope.

"You, madame, have killed your son!" said Mary Stuart, springing like a

lioness from the bed to the window, and seizing the Italian Queen by the

arm with a vehement clutch.

"My dear," replied Catherine de' Medici, with a keen, cold look that

expressed the hatred she had suppressed for six months past, "you, to whose

violent passion this death is due, will now go to reign over your own

Scotland--and you will go to-morrow. I am now Regent in fact as well as in

name."

The three physicians had made a sign to the Queen-mother.

"Gentlemen," she went on, addressing the Guises, "it is an understood thing

between Monsieur de Bourbon--whom I hereby appoint Lieutenant-General of

the kingdom--and myself that the conduct of affairs is our business.--Come,

Monsieur le Chancelier."

"The King is dead!" said the Grand Master, obliged to carry out the

functions of his office.

"God save King Charles IX.!" cried the gentleman who had come with the King

of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, and the Constable.

The ceremonies performed when a King of France dies were carried out in

solitude. When the king-at-arms called out three times in the great hall,

"The King is dead!" after the official announcement by the Duc de Guise,

there were but a few persons present to answer--"God save the King!"

The Queen-mother, to whom the Countess Fieschi brought the Duc d'Orleans,

now Charles IX., left the room leading the boy by the hand, and followed by

the whole Court. Only the two Guises, the Duchesse de Guise, Mary Stuart,

and Dayelle remained in the room where Francis II. had breathed his last,

with two guards at the door, the Grand Master's pages and the Cardinal's,

and their two private secretaries.

"Vive la France!" shouted some of the Reformers, a first cry of opposition.

Robertet, who owed everything to the Duke and the Cardinal, terrified by

their schemes and their abortive attempts, secretly attached himself to the

Queen-mother, whom the Ambassadors of Spain, England, the German Empire,

and Poland met on the stairs, at their head Cardinal Tournon, who had gone

to call them after looking up from the courtyard to Catherine de' Medici

just as she was protesting against Ambroise Pare's operation.

"Well, the sons of Louis d'Outre-Mer, the descendants of Charles de

Lorraine, have proved cravens," said the Cardinal to the Duke.

"They would have been packed off to Lorraine," replied his brother. "I

declare to you, Charles," he went on, "if the crown were there for the

taking, I would not put out my hand for it. That will be my son's task."

"Will he ever have the army and the Church on his side as you have?"

"He will have something better."

"What?"

"The people."

"And there is no one to mourn for him but me--the poor boy who loved me so

well!" said Mary Stuart, holding the cold hand of her first husband.

"How can we be reconciled to the Queen?" said the Cardinal.

"Wait till she quarrels with the Huguenots," said the Duchess.

The clashing interests of the House of Bourbon, of Catherine, of the

Guises, and of the Reformers produced such confusion in Orleans, that it

was not till three days after that the King's body, quite forgotten where

it lay, was placed in a coffin by obscure serving men, and carried to

Saint-Denis in a covered vehicle, followed only by the Bishop of Senlis and

two gentlemen. When this dismal little procession arrived at the town of

Etampes, a follower of the Chancellor de l'Hopital attached to the hearse

this bitter inscription, which history has recorded: "Tanneguy du Chastel,

where are you? Yet you too were French!" A stinging innuendo, striking at

Catherine, Mary Stuart, and the Guises. For what Frenchman does not know

that Tanneguy du Chastel spent thirty thousand crowns (a million of francs

in these days) on the obsequies of Charles VII., the benefactor of his

family?

* * * * *

As soon as the tolling bells announced the death of Francis II., and the

Connetable de Montmorency had thrown open the gates of the town, Tourillon

went up to his hayloft and made his way to a hiding-place.

"What, can he be dead?" exclaimed the glover.

On hearing the voice, a man rose and replied, "_Pret a servir_" ("Ready to

serve," or "Ready, aye ready"), the watchword of the Reformers of Calvin's

sect.

This man was Chaudieu, to whom Tourillon related the events of the last

week, during which he had left the preacher alone in his hiding-place, with

a twelve-ounce loaf for his sole sustenance.

"Be off to the Prince de Conde, brother, ask him for a safe-conduct for me,

and find me a horse," cried the preacher. "I must set out this moment."

"Write him a line then, that I may be admitted."

"Here," said Chaudieu, after writing a few lines, "ask for a pass from the

King of Navarre, for under existing circumstances I must hasten to Geneva."

Within two hours all was ready, and the zealous minister was on his way to

Geneva, escorted by one of the King of Navarre's gentlemen, whose secretary

Chaudieu was supposed to be, and who was the bearer of instructions to the

Reformed party in Dauphine.

Chaudieu's sudden departure was at once permitted, to further the interests

of Queen Catherine, who, to gain time, made a bold suggestion which was

kept a profound secret. This startling scheme accounts for the agreement so

unexpectedly arrived at between the Queen and the leaders of the Protestant

party. The crafty woman had, as a guarantee of her good faith, expressed a

desire to heal the breach between the two Churches in an assembly which

could be neither a Synod, nor a Council, nor a Convocation, for which

indeed a new name was needed, and, above all else, Calvin's consent. It may

be said in passing, that, when this mystery came out, it led to the

alliance of the Guises with the Connetable de Montmorency against Catherine

and the King of Navarre--a strange coalition, known to history as the

Triumvirate, because the Marechal de Saint-Andre was the third person in

this purely Catholic combination, to which Catherine's strange proposal for

a meeting gave rise. The Guises were then enabled to judge very shrewdly of

Catherine's policy; they saw that the Queen cared little enough for this

assembly, and only wanted to temporize with her allies till Charles IX.

should be of age; indeed, they deceived Montmorency by making him believe

in a collusion between Catherine and the Bourbons, while Catherine was

taking them all in. The Queen, it will be seen, had in a short time made

great strides.

The spirit of argument and discussion which was then in the air was

particularly favorable to this scheme. The Catholics and the Huguenots were

all to shine in turn in this tournament of words. Indeed, that is exactly

what happened. Is it not extraordinary that historians should have mistaken

the Queen's shrewdest craft for hesitancy? Catherine never went more

directly to the end she had in view than when she seemed to have turned her

back on it. So the King of Navarre, incapable of fathoming Catherine's

motives, despatched Chaudieu to Calvin; Chaudieu having secretly intended

to watch the course of events at Orleans, where he ran, every hour, the

risk of being seized and hanged without trial, like any man who had been

condemned to banishment.

At the rate of traveling then possible Chaudieu could not reach Geneva

before the month of February, the negotiations could not be completed till

March, and the meeting could not be called till the beginning of May 1561.

Catherine intended to amuse the Court meanwhile, and lull party-feeling by

the King's coronation, and by his first Bed of Justice in the Parlement

when l'Hopital and de Thou passed the royal letter, by which Charles IX.

intrusted the Government of the kingdom to his mother, seconded by Antoine

de Navarre as Lieutenant-General of the realm--the weakest prince of his

time.

Was it not one of the strangest things of that day to see a whole kingdom

in suspense for the Yea or Nay of a French citizen, risen from obscurity,

and living at Geneva? The Pope of Rome held in check by the Pope of Geneva?

The two Princes of Lorraine, once so powerful, paralyzed by the brief

concord between the first Prince of the Blood, the Queen-mother, and

Calvin? Is it not one of the most pregnant lessons that history has

preserved to kings, a lesson that should teach them to judge of men, to

give genius its due without any hesitation, and to seek it out, as Louis

XIV. did, wherever God has hidden it?

Calvin, whose real name was not Calvin, but Cauvin, was the son of a cooper

at Noyon, in Picardy. Calvin's birth-place accounts to a certain degree

for the obstinacy mingled with eccentric irritability which characterized

the arbiter of the destinies of France in the sixteenth century. No one is

less known than this man, who was the maker of Geneva and of the spirit of

its people. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who knew little of history, was utterly

ignorant of this man's influence on his Republic.

At first, indeed, Calvin, dwelling in one of the humblest houses in the

upper town, near the Protestant Church of Saint-Pierre, over a carpenter's

shop--one point of resemblance between him and Robespierre--had no great

authority in Geneva. His influence was for a long time checked by the

hatred of the Genevese.

In the sixteenth century Geneva could boast of Farel, one of those famous

citizens who have remained unknown to the world, some of them even to

Geneva itself. In the year 1537, or thereabouts, this Farel attached Calvin

to Geneva by pointing out to him that it might become the stronghold of a

reformation more thorough than that of Luther. Farel and Cauvin looked on

Lutheranism as an incomplete achievement, ineffectual, and with no hold on

France. Geneva, lying between France and Italy, speaking the French tongue,

was admirably placed for communicating with Germany, Italy, and France.

Calvin adopted Geneva as the seat of his spiritual fortunes, and made it

the citadel of his dogmas. At Farel's request, the town council of Geneva

authorized Calvin to lecture on theology in the month of September 1538.

Calvin left preaching to Farel, his first disciple, and patiently devoted

himself to teaching his doctrine. His authority, which in later years of

his life was paramount, took long to establish. The great leader met with

serious difficulties; he was even banished from Geneva for some time in

consequence of the austerity of his doctrines. There was a party of very

good folk who clung to the old luxury and customs of their fathers. But, as

is always the case, these worthy people dreaded ridicule; they would not

admit what was the real object of their struggles, and the battle was

fought over details apart from the real question.

Calvin insisted on leavened bread being used for the Sacrament, and on

there being no holy days but Sunday. These innovations were disapproved of

at Berne and at Lausanne. The Genevese were required to conform to the

ritual of Switzerland. Calvin and Farel resisted; their political enemies

made a pretext of this refractoriness to exile them from Geneva, whence

they were banished for some years. At a later period Calvin came back in

triumph, invited by his flock.

Such persecution is always a consecration of moral power when the prophet

can wait. And this return was the era of this Mahomet. Executions began,

and Calvin organized his religious Terror. As soon as this commanding

spirit reappeared, he was admitted to the citizenship of Geneva; but after

fourteen years' residence there, he was not yet on the Council. At the time

when Catherine was despatching a minister to treat with him, this king in

the realm of thought had no title but that of Pastor of the Church of

Geneva. Indeed, Calvin never had more than a hundred and fifty francs a

year in money, fifteen hundred-weight of corn and two casks of wine for his

whole remuneration. His brother, a tailor, kept a shop a few paces away

from the Place Saint-Pierre, in a street where one of Calvin's

printing-places may still be seen.

Such disinterestedness, which in Voltaire and Baker was lacking, but which

is conspicuous in the life of Rabelais, of Campanella, of Luther, of Vico,

of Descartes, of Malebranche, of Spinoza, of Loyola, of Kant, and of

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, surely forms a noble setting for these sublime and

ardent souls.

Robespierre's life, so like that of Calvin, can alone perhaps enable our

contemporaries to understand Calvin's. He, founding his power on a similar

basis, was as cruel and as tyrannical as the Arras lawyer. It is strange

too that Picardy--Arras and Noyon--should have given to the world these two

great instruments of reform. Those who examine into the motives of the

executions ordered by Calvin will find, on a different scale, no doubt,

all of 1793 at Geneva. Calvin had Jacques Gruet beheaded "for having

written impious letters and worldly verse, and labored to overthrow Church

ordinances." Just consider this sentence, and ask yourself if the worst

despotism can show in its annals a more absurdly preposterous indictment.

Valentin Gentilis, condemned to death for involuntary heresy, escaped the

scaffold only by making more humiliating amends than ever were inflicted by

the Catholic Church. Seven years before the conference presently to be held

in Calvin's house on the Queen-mother's proposals, Michel Servet (or

Servetus), a Frenchman, passing through Geneva, was put in prison, tried,

condemned on Calvin's testimony, and burned alive for having attacked the

mystery of the Trinity in a work which had not been either composed or

printed at Geneva. Compare with this the eloquent defence of Jean-Jacques

Rousseau, whose book, attacking the Catholic religion, written in France

and published in Holland, was indeed burned by the hand of the executioner;

but the writer, a foreigner, was only banished from the kingdom, where he

had been trying to strike at the fundamental truths of religion and

government; and compare the conduct of the Parlement with that of the

Genevese tyrant.

Bolsee, again, was brought to judgment for having other ideas than Calvin

on the subject of predestination. Weigh all this, and say whether

Fouquier-Tinville did anything worse. Calvin's fierce religious intolerance

was, morally speaking, more intense, more implacable, than the fierce

political intolerance of Robespierre. On a wider stage than was offered by

Geneva, Calvin would have shed more blood than the terrible apostle of

political equality, as compared with Catholic equality.

Three centuries earlier a monk, also a son of Picardy, had led the whole of

Western Europe to invade the East. Peter the Hermit, Calvin, and

Robespierre, sons of the same soil, at intervals of three centuries, were,

in a political sense, the levers of Archimedes. Each in turn was an

embodied idea finding its fulcrum in the interests of man.

Calvin is, beyond doubt, the--almost unrecognized--maker of that dismal

town of Geneva, where, only ten years since, a man, pointing out a carriage

gate--the first in the town, for till then there had only been house doors

in Geneva--said, "Through that gate luxury drove into Geneva." Calvin, by

the severity of his sentences and the austerity of his doctrine, introduced

the hypocritical feeling that has been well called Puritanism [the nearest

English equivalent perhaps to the French word _momerie_]. Good conduct,

according to the _momiers_ or puritans, lay in renouncing the arts and the

graces of life, in eating well but without luxury, and in silently amassing

money without enjoying it otherwise than as Calvin enjoyed his power--in

fancy.

Calvin clothed the citizens in the same gloomy livery as he threw over life

in general. He formed in the Consistory a perfect Calvinist inquisition,

exactly like the revolutionary tribunal instituted by Robespierre. The

Consistory handed over the victims to be condemned by the Council, which

Calvin ruled through the Consistory just as Robespierre ruled the

Convention through the Jacobin Club. Thus an eminent magistrate of Geneva

was sentenced to two months' imprisonment, to lose his office, and to be

prohibited from ever filling any other, because he led a dissolute life and

had made friends among Calvin's foes. In this way Calvin was actually a

legislator; it was he who created the austere manners, sober, respectable,

hideously dull, but quite irreproachable, which have remained unchanged in

Geneva to this day; they prevailed there indeed before the English habits

were formed that are universally known as Puritanism, under the influence

of the Cameronians, the followers of Cameron, a Frenchman who trod in

Calvin's steps. These manners have been admirably described by Walter

Scott.

The poverty of this man, an absolute sovereign, who treated as a power with

other powers, asking for their treasure, demanding armies, and filling his

hands with their money for the poor, proves that the Idea, regarded as the

sole means of dominion, begets political misers, men whose only enjoyment

is intellectual, and who, like the Jesuits, love power for its own sake.

Pitt, Luther, Calvin, and Robespierre, all these _Harpagons_ in greed of

dominion, died penniless. History has preserved the inventory made in

Calvin's rooms after his death, and everything, including his books, was

valued at fifty crowns. Luther's possessions amounted to as much; indeed,

his widow, the famous Catherine de Bora, was obliged to petition for a

pension of fifty crowns bestowed on her by a German Elector.

Potemkin, Mazarin, and Richelieu, men of thought and action, who all three

founded or prepared the foundations of empires, each left three hundred

millions of francs; but these men had a heart, they loved women and the

arts, they built and conquered; while, with the exception of Luther, whose

wife was the Helen of this Iliad, none of the others could accuse himself

of ever having felt his heart throb for a woman.

This brief history was needed to explain Calvin's position at Geneva.

One day early in February 1561, on one of the mild evenings which occur at

that time of year on the shores of Lake Leman, two men on horseback arrived

at Pre-l'Eveque, so called from the ancient residence of the Bishop of

Geneva, driven out thirty years before. These two men, acquainted, no

doubt, with the law of Geneva as to the closing of the gates, very

necessary then, and absurd enough in these days, rode towards the Porte de

Rives; but they suddenly drew rein at the sight of a man of fifty, walking

with the help of a woman-servant's arm, and evidently returning to the

town. This personage, rather stout in figure, walked slowly and with

difficulty, dragging one foot before the other with evident pain, and

wearing broad, laced shoes of black velvet.

"It is he," said Chaudieu's companion, who dismounted, gave his bridle to

the preacher, and went forward open-armed to meet the master.

The man on foot, who was in fact Jean Calvin, drew back to avoid the

embrace, and cast the severest glance at his disciple. At the age of fifty

Calvin looked like a man of seventy. Thick-set and fat, he seemed all the

shorter because frightful pain from the stone obliged him to walk much

bent. These sufferings were complicated with attacks of the worst form of

gout. Anybody might have quaked at the aspect of that face, almost as broad

as it was long, and bearing no more signs of good-nature, in spite of its

roundness, than that of the dreadful King Henry VIII., whom Calvin, in

fact, resembled. His sufferings, which never gave him a reprieve, were

visible in two deep furrows on each side of his nose, following the line of

his moustache, and ending, like it, in a full gray beard.

This face, though red and inflamed like a drunkard's, showed patches where

his complexion was yellow; still, and in spite of the velvet cap that

covered his massive, broad head, it was possible to admire a large and

nobly formed forehead, and beneath it two sparkling brown eyes, which in

moments of wrath could flash fire. Whether by reason of his bulk, or

because his neck was too thick and short, or as a consequence of late hours

and incessant work, Calvin's head seemed sunk between his broad shoulders,

which compelled him to wear a quite shallow, pleated ruff, on which his

face rested like John the Baptist's in the charger. Between his moustache

and his beard there peeped, like a rose, a sweet and eloquent mouth, small,

and fresh, and perfectly formed. This face was divided by a square nose

remarkable for its long aquiline outline, resulting in high-lights at the

tip, significantly in harmony with the prodigious power expressed in this

magnificent head.

Though it was difficult to detect in these features any trace of the

constant headaches which tormented Calvin in the intervals of a slow fever

that was consuming him, pain, constantly defied by study and a strong will,

gave this apparently florid face a terrible tinge, attributable, no doubt,

to the hue of the layer of fat due to the sedentary habits of a hard

worker. It bore the marks of the perpetual struggle of a sickly temperament

against one of the strongest wills known in the history of mankind. Even

the lips, though beautiful, expressed cruelty. A chaste life, indispensable

to vast projects, and compulsory in such conditions of sickly health, had

set its stamp on the face. There was regret in the serenity of that mighty

brow, and suffering in the gaze of the eyes, whose calmness was a terror.

Calvin's dress gave effect to his head, for he wore the famous black cloth

gown, belted with a cloth band and brass buckle, which was adopted as the

costume of Calvinist preachers, and which, having nothing to attract the

eye, directed all the spectator's attention to the face.

"I am in too great pain to embrace you, Theodore," said Calvin to the

elegant horseman.

Theodore de Beze, at that time two-and-forty, and, by Calvin's desire, a

free citizen of Geneva for two years past, was the most striking contrast

to the terrible minister to whom he had given his allegiance. Calvin, like

all men of the middle class who have risen to moral supremacy, like all

inventors of a social system, was consumed with jealousy. He abhorred his

disciples, would suffer no equal, and could not endure the slightest

contradiction. However, between him and Theodore de Beze the difference was

so great; this elegant gentleman, gifted with a charming appearance,

polished, courteous, and accustomed to Court life, was, in his eyes, so

unlike all his fierce Janissaries, that for him he set aside his usual

impulses. He never loved him, for this crabbed lawgiver knew absolutely

nothing of friendship; but having no fear of finding his successor in him,

he liked to play with Theodore, as Richelieu at a later time played with

his cat. He found him pliant and amusing. When he saw that de Beze

succeeded to perfection in every mission, he took delight in the polished

tool of which he believed himself to be the soul and guide; so true is it

that even those men who seem most surly cannot live without some semblance

of affection.

Theodore was Calvin's spoilt child. The great Reformer never scolded him,

overlooked his irregularities, his love affairs, his handsome dress, and

his choice language. Possibly Calvin was well content to show that the

Reformation could hold its own even among Court circles. Theodore de Beze

wanted to introduce a taste for art, letters, and poetry into Geneva, and

Calvin would listen to his schemes without knitting his grizzled brows.

Thus the contrast of character and person was as complete as the contrast

of mind in these two celebrated men.

Calvin accepted Chaudieu's very humble bow, and replied by slightly bending

his head. Chaudieu slipped the bridles of both horses over his right arm

and followed the two great Reformers, keeping on the right of Theodore de

Beze, who was walking on Calvin's right. Calvin's housekeeper ran forward

to prevent the gate being shut, by telling the captain of the Guard that

the Pastor had just had a severe attack of pain.

Theodore de Beze was a native of the Commune of Vezelay, the first to

demand for itself corporate government, of which the curious tale has been

told by one of the Thierrys. Thus the spirit of citizenship and resistance

which were endemic at Vezelay no doubt contributed an item to the great

rising of the Reformers in the person of this man, who is certainly a most

singular figure in the history of heresy.

"So you still suffer great pain?" said Theodore to Calvin.

"The sufferings of the damned, a Catholic would say," replied the Reformer,

with the bitterness that colored his least remarks. "Ah! I am going fast,

my son, and what will become of you when I am gone?"

"We will fight by the light of your writings," said Chaudieu.

Calvin smiled; his purple face assumed a more gracious expression, and he

looked kindly on Chaudieu.

"Well, have you brought me any news?" he asked. "Have they killed a great

many of us?" he added, with a smile, and a sort of mocking glee sparkled in

his brown eyes.

"No," said Chaudieu; "peace is the order of the day."

"So much the worse, so much the worse!" cried Calvin. "Every form of peace

would be a misfortune if it were not always, in fact, a snare. Our strength

lies in persecution. Where should we be if the Church took up the

Reformation?"

"Indeed," said Theodore, "that is what the Queen-mother seems inclined to

do."

"She is quite capable of it," said Calvin. "I am studying that woman."

"From hence?" cried Chaudieu.

"Does distance exist for the spirit?" said Calvin severely, regarding the

interruption as irreverent. "Catherine longs for power, and women who aim

at that lose all sense of honor and faith.--What is in the wind?"

"Well, she suggests a sort of Council," said Theodore de Beze.

"Near Paris?" asked Calvin roughly.

"Yes."

"Ah! that is well!" said Calvin.

"And we are to try to come to an understanding, and draw up a public Act to

consolidate the two Churches."

"Ah! if only she had courage enough to separate the French Church from the

Court of Rome, and to create a patriarch in France, as in the Greek

Church!" cried the Reformer, whose eyes glistened at this idea, which would

place him on a throne. "But, my son, can a Pope's niece be truthful? She

only wants to gain time."

"And do not we need time to recover from our check at Amboise, and to

organize some formidable resistance in various parts of the kingdom?"

"She has sent away the Queen of Scotland," said Chaudieu.

"That is one less, then," said Calvin, as they passed through the Porte de

Rives. "Elizabeth of England will keep her busy. Two neighboring queens

will soon be fighting; one is handsome, and the other ugly enough--a first

cause of irritation; and then there is the question of legitimacy----"

He rubbed his hands, and his glee had such a ferocious taint that de Beze

shuddered, for he too saw the pool of blood at which his master was

gazing.

"The Guises have provoked the House of Bourbon," said de Beze after a

pause; "they broke the stick between them at Orleans."

"Ay," said Calvin; "and you, my son, did not believe me when, as you last

started for Nerac, I told you that we should end by stirring up war to the

death between the two branches of the royal family in France.

"So at last I have a court, a king, a dynasty on my side. My doctrine has

had its effect on the masses. The citizen class understand me; henceforth

they will call those who go to Mass idolaters, those who paint the walls of

their place of worship, and put up pictures and statues there. Oh, the

populace find it far easier to demolish cathedrals and palaces than to

discuss justification by faith or the real presence! Luther was a wrangler,

I am an army! He was a reasoner, I am a system! He, my child, was but a

tormentor, I am a Tarquin!

"Yes, they of the truth will destroy churches, will tear down pictures,

will make millstones of the statues to grind the bread of the people. There

are bodies in great States, I will have only individuals; bodies are too

resistant, and see clearly when individuals are blind.

"Now, we must combine this agitating doctrine with political interests, to

consolidate it and to keep up the material of my armies. I have satisfied

the logic of thrifty minds and thinking brains by this bare, undecorated

worship which lifts religion into the sphere of the ideal. I have made the

mob understand the advantages of the suppression of ceremonial.

"Now it is your part, Theodore, to enlist people's interests. Do not

overstep that line. In the way of doctrine everything has been done,

everything has been said; add not one jot! Why does Cameron, that little

_pasteur_ in Gascony, meddle with writing?"

Calvin, Theodore de Beze, and Chaudieu went along the streets of the upper

town and through the crowd, without any attention being paid to the men who

were unchaining the mob in cities and ravaging France. After this

terrifying harangue, they walked on in silence, till they reached the

little square of Saint-Pierre, and made their way towards the minister's

dwelling. Calvin's lodging consisted of three rooms on the second floor of

this house, which is hardly known, and of which no one ever tells you in

Geneva--where, indeed, there is no statue to Calvin. The rooms were floored

and wainscoted with pine, and on one side there were a kitchen and a

servant's room. The entrance, as is commonly the case in Genevese houses,

was through the kitchen, which opened into a small room with two windows,

parlor, dining, and drawing-room in one. Next to this was the study where,

for fourteen years, Calvin's mind had carried on the battle with pain, and

beyond was his bedroom. Four oak chairs with tapestry seats, placed round a

long table, formed all the furniture of the sitting-room. A white

earthenware stove in one corner of the room gave out a pleasant warmth;

paneling of unvarnished pine covered the walls, and there was no other

decoration. The bareness of the place was quite in keeping with the frugal

and simple life led by the Reformer.

"Well," said de Beze, as he went in, taking advantage of a few minutes when

Chaudieu had left them to put up the horses at a neighboring inn, "what am

I to do? Will you agree to this meeting?"

"Certainly," said Calvin. "You, my son, will bear the brunt of the

struggle. Be decisive, absolute. Nobody, neither the Queen, nor the Guises,

nor I want pacification as a result; it would not suit our purpose. I have

much confidence in Duplessis-Mornay. Give him the leading part. We are

alone----" said he, with a suspicious glance into the kitchen, of which the

door was open, showing two shirts and some collars hung to dry on a line,

"Go and shut all the doors.--Well," he went on, when Theodore had done his

bidding, "we must compel the King of Navarre to join the Guises and the

Connetable de Montmorency, by advising him to desert Queen Catherine de'

Medici. Let us take full advantage of his weakness; he is but a poor

creature. If he prove a turncoat to the Italian woman, she, finding herself

bereft of his support, must inevitably join the Prince de Conde and

Coligny. Such a manoeuvre may possibly compromise her so effectually that

she must remain on our side----"

Theodore de Beze raised the hem of Calvin's gown and kissed it.

"Oh, master," said he, "you are indeed great!"

"Unfortunately, I am dying, my dear Theodore. If I should die before seeing

you again," he went on, whispering in the ear of his Minister for Foreign

Affairs, "remember to strike a great blow by the hand of one of our

martyrs."

"Another Minard to be killed?"

"Higher than a lawyer."

"A king!"

"Higher still. The man who wants to be king."

"The Duc de Guise?" cried Theodore, with a gesture of dismay.

"Well," cried Calvin, fancying that he discerned refusal, or at least an

instinct of resistance, and failing to notice the entrance of Chaudieu,

"have we not a right to strike as we are struck? Yes, and in darkness and

silence! May we not return wound for wound, and death for death? Do the

Catholics hesitate to lay snares for us and kill us? I trust to you! Burn

their churches. Go on, my sons! If you have any devoted youths----"

"I have," Chaudieu put in.

"Use them as weapons of war. To triumph, we may use every means. The

Balafre, that terrible man of war, is, like me, more than a man; he is a

dynasty, as I am a system; he is capable of annihilating us! Death to the

Duc de Guise!"

"I should prefer a peaceful victory, brought about by time and reason,"

said de Beze.

"By time!" cried Calvin, flinging over his chair. "By reason! Are you mad?

Conquer by reason? Do you know nothing of men, you who live among

them--idiot? What is so fatal to my teaching, thrice-dyed simpleton, is

that it is based on reason. By the thunders of Saint Paul, by the sword of

the Mighty! Pumpkin as you are, Theodore, cannot you see the power that the

catastrophe at Amboise has given to my reforms? Ideas can never grow till

they are watered with blood. The murder of the Duc de Guise would give rise

to a fearful persecution, and I hope for it with all my might! To us

reverses are more favorable than success! The Reformation can be beaten and

endure, do you hear, oaf? Whereas Catholicism is overthrown if we win a

single battle.

"What are these lieutenants of mine? Wet rags and not men! Guts on two

legs! Christened baboons! O God, wilt Thou not grant me another ten years

to live? If I die too soon, the cause of religion is lost in the hands of

such rascals!

"You are as helpless as Antoine de Navarre! Begone! leave me! I must have a

better messenger! You are an ass, a popinjay, a poet! Go, write your

Catullics, your Tibullics, your acrostics! Hoo!"

The pain he suffered was entirely swamped by the fires of his wrath. Gout

vanished before this fearful excitement. Calvin's face was blotched with

purple, like the sky before a storm. His broad forehead shone. His eyes

flashed fire. He was not like the same man. He let himself give way to this

sort of epileptic frenzy, almost madness, which was habitual with him; but,

then, struck by the silence of his two listeners, and observing Chaudieu,

who said to de Beze, "The burning bush of Horeb!" the minister sat down,

was dumb, and covered his face with his hands, with their thickened joints,

and his fingers quivered in spite of their strength.

A few minutes later, while still trembling from the last shocks of this

tempest--the result of his austere life--he said in a broken voice:

"My vices, which are many, are less hard to subdue than my impatience! Ah!

wild beast, shall I never conquer you?" he exclaimed, striking his breast.

"My beloved master," said de Beze in a caressing tone, taking his hands and

kissing them, "Jove thunders, but he can smile."

Calvin looked at his disciple with a softened expression.

"Do not misunderstand me, my friends," he said.

"I understand that the shepherds of nations have terrible burdens to bear,"

replied Theodore. "You have a world on your shoulders."

"I," said Chaudieu, who had become thoughtful under the master's abuse,

"have three martyrs on whom we can depend. Stuart, who killed the

President, is free----"

"That will not do," said Calvin mildly, and smiling, as a great man can

smile when fair weather follows a storm on his face, as if he were ashamed

of the tempest. "I know men. He who kills one President will not kill a

second."

"Is it absolutely necessary?" said de Beze.

"What, again?" cried Calvin, his nostrils expanding. "There, go; you will

put me in a rage again. You have my decision.--You, Chaudieu, walk in your

own path, and keep the Paris flock together. God be with you.--Dinah! Light

my friends out."

"Will you not allow me to embrace you?" said de Beze with emotion. "Who can

tell what the morrow will bring forth? We may be imprisoned in spite of

safe-conducts----"

"And yet you want to spare them!" said Calvin, embracing de Beze.

He took Chaudieu's hand, saying:

"Mind you, not Huguenots, not Reformers: be Calvinists! Speak only of

Calvinism.--Alas! this is not ambition, for I am a dying man!--Only,

everything of Luther's must be destroyed, to the very names of Lutheran and

Lutheranism."

"Indeed, divine man, you deserve such honor!" cried Chaudieu.

"Uphold uniformity of creed. Do not allow any further examination or

reconstruction. If new sects arise from among us, we are lost."

To anticipate events and dismiss Theodore de Beze, who returned to Paris

with Chaudieu, it may be said that Poltrot, who, eighteen months later,

fired a pistol at the Duc de Guise, confessed, under torture, that he had

been urged to the crime by Theodore de Beze; however, he retracted his

statement at a later stage. Indeed. Bossuet, who weighed all the historical

evidence, did not think that the idea of this attempt was due to Theodore

de Beze. Since Bossuet, however, a dissertation of an apparently trivial

character, _a propos_ to a famous ballad, enabled a compiler of the

eighteenth century to prove that the song sung throughout France by the

Huguenots on the death of the Duc de Guise was written by Theodore de Beze;

and, moreover, that the well-known ballad or lament on Malbrouck--the Duke

of Marlborough--is plagiarized from Theodore de Beze.[F]

* * * * *

On the day when Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu reached Paris, the Court had

returned thither from Reims, where Charles IX. had been crowned. This

ceremony, to which Catherine gave unusual splendor, making it the occasion

of great festivities, enabled her to gather round her the leaders of every

faction.

After studying the various parties and interests, she saw a choice of two

alternatives--either to enlist them on the side of the Throne, or to set

them against each other. The Connetable de Montmorency, above all else a

Catholic, whose nephew, the Prince de Conde, was the leader of the

Reformation, and whose children also had a leaning to that creed, blamed

the Queen-mother for allying herself with that party. The Guises, on their

side, worked hard to gain over Antoine de Bourbon, a Prince of no strength

of character, and attach him to their faction, and his wife, the Queen of

Navarre, informed by de Beze, allowed this to be done. These difficulties

checked Catherine, whose newly-acquired authority needed a brief period of

tranquillity; she impatiently awaited Calvin's reply by de Beze and

Chaudieu, sent to the great Reformer on behalf of the Prince de Conde, the

King of Navarre, Coligny, d'Andelot, and Cardinal de Chatillon.

Meanwhile, the Queen-mother was true to her promises to the Prince de

Conde. The Chancellor quashed the trial, in which Christophe was involved,

by referring the case to the Paris Parlement, and they annulled the

sentence pronounced by the Commission, declaring it incompetent to try a

Prince of the Blood. The Parlement re-opened the trial by the desire of the

Guises and the Queen-mother. La Sagne's papers had been placed in

Catherine's hands, and she had burnt them. This sacrifice was the first

pledge given, quite vainly, by the Guises to the Queen-mother. The

Parlement, not having this decisive evidence, reinstated the Prince in all

his rights, possessions, and honors.

Christophe, thus released when Orleans was in all its excitement over the

King's accession, was excluded from the case, and, as a compensation for

his sufferings, was passed as a pleader by Monsieur de Thou.

The Triumvirate--the coalition of interests which were imperiled by

Catherine's first steps in authority--was hatching under her very eyes.

Just as in chemistry hostile elements fly asunder at the shock that

disturbs their compulsory union, so in politics the alliance of

antagonistic interests can never last long. Catherine fully understood

that, sooner or later, she must fall back on the Connetable and the Guises

to fight the Huguenots. The convocation, which served to flatter the vanity

of the orators on each side, and as an excuse for another imposing ceremony

after that of the coronation, to clear the blood-stained field for the

religious war that had, indeed, already begun, was as futile in the eyes of

the Guises as it was in Catherine's. The Catholics could not fail to be the

losers; for the Huguenots, under the pretence of discussion, would be able

to proclaim their doctrine in the face of all France, under the protection

of the King and his mother. The Cardinal de Lorraine, flattered by

Catherine into the hope of conquering the heretics by the eloquence of the

Princes of the Church, induced his brother to consent. To the Queen-mother

six months of peace meant much.

A trivial incident was near wrecking the power which Catherine was so

laboriously building up. This is the scene as recorded by history; it

occurred on the very day when the envoys from Geneva arrived at the Hotel

de Coligny in the Rue Bethisy, not far from the Louvre. At the coronation,

Charles IX., who was much attached to his instructor, Amyot, made him High

Almoner of France. This affection was fully shared by the Duc d'Anjou

(Henri III.), who also was Amyot's pupil.

Catherine heard this from the two Gondis on the way home from Reims to

Paris. She had relied on this Crown appointment to gain her a supporter in

the Church, and a person of importance to set against the Cardinal de

Lorraine; she had intended to bestow it on Cardinal de Tournon, so as to

find in him, as in l'Hopital, a second crutch--to use her own words. On

arriving at the Louvre, she sent for the preceptor. Her rage at seeing the

catastrophe that threatened her policy from the ambition of this self-made

man--the son of a shoemaker--was such that she addressed him in this

strange speech recorded by certain chroniclers:

"What! I can make the Guises cringe, the Colignys, the Montmorencys, the

House of Navarre, the Prince de Conde, and I am to be balked by a

priestling like you, who were not content to be Bishop of Auxerre!"

Amyot excused himself. He had, in fact, asked for nothing; the King had

appointed him of his own free will to this office, of which he, a humble

teacher, regarded himself as unworthy.

"Rest assured, Master," for it was by this name that the Kings Charles IX.

and Henri III. addressed this great writer, "that you will not be left

standing for twenty-four hours unless you induce your pupil to change his

mind."

Between death promised him in such an uncompromising way, and the

abdication of the highest ecclesiastical office in the kingdom, the

shoemaker's son, who had grown covetous, and hoped perhaps for a Cardinal's

hat, determined to temporize. He hid in the abbey of Saint-Germain en Laye.

At his first dinner, Charles IX., not seeing Amyot, asked for him. Some

Guisard, no doubt, told the King what had passed between Amyot and the

Queen-mother.

"What!" cried he, "has he been made away with because I created him High

Almoner?"

He went off to his mother in the violent state of a child when one of his

fancies is contravened.

"Madame," said he, as he entered her room, "did I not comply with your

wishes, and sign the letter you asked of me for the Parlement, by virtue of

which you govern my kingdom? Did you not promise me, when you laid it

before me, that my will should be yours? and now the only favor I have

cared to bestow excites your jealousy.--The Chancellor talks of making me

of age at fourteen, three years from hence, and you treat me as a

child!--By God, but I mean to be King, and as much a King as my father and

grandfather were kings!"

The tone and vehemence with which he spoke these words were a revelation to

Catherine of her son's true character; it was like a blow from a bludgeon

on her heart.

"And he speaks thus to me," thought she, "to me, who made him

King."--"Monsieur," she said, "the business of being King in such times as

these is a difficult one, and you do not yet know the master minds you have

to deal with. You will never have any true and trustworthy friend but your

mother, or other adherents than those whom she long since attached to her,

and but for whom you would perhaps not be alive at this day. The Guises are

averse both to your position and your person, I would have you know. If

they could sew me up in a sack and throw me into the river," said she,

pointing to the Seine, "they would do it to-night. Those Lorrainers feel

that I am a lioness defending her cubs, and that stays the bold hands they

stretch out to clutch the crown. To whom, to what is your preceptor

attached? where are his allies? what is his authority? what services can he

do you? what weight will his words have? Instead of gaining a buttress to

uphold your power, you have undermined it.

"The Cardinal de Lorraine threatens you; he plays the King, and keeps his

hat on his head in the presence of the first Prince of the Blood; was it

not necessary to counter-balance him with another cardinal, invested with

authority equal to his own? Is Amyot, a shoemaker who might tie the bows of

his shoes, the man to defy him to his face?--Well, well, you are fond of

Amyot. You have appointed him! Your first decision shall be respected, my

Lord! But before deciding any further, have the kindness to consult me.

Listen to reasons of State, and your boyish good sense will perhaps agree

with my old woman's experience before deciding, when you know all the

difficulties."

"You must bring back my master!" said the King, not listening very

carefully to the Queen, on finding her speech full of reproofs.

"Yes, you shall have him," replied she. "But not he, nor even that rough

Cypierre, can teach you to reign."

"It is you, my dear mother," he exclaimed, mollified by his triumph, and

throwing off the threatening and sly expression which Nature had stamped on

his physiognomy.

Catherine sent Gondi to find the High Almoner. When the Florentine had

discovered Amyot's retreat, and the Bishop heard that the courtier came

from the Queen, he was seized with terror, and would not come out of the

Abbey. In this extremity Catherine was obliged to write to him herself, and

in such terms that he came back and obtained the promise of her support,

but only on condition of his obeying her blindly in all that concerned the

King.

This little domestic tempest being lulled, Catherine came back to the

Louvre. It was more than a year since she had left it, and she now held

council with her nearest friends as to how she was to deal with the young

King, whom Cypierre had complimented on his firmness.

"What is to be done?" said she to the two Gondis, Ruggieri, Birague, and

Chiverni, now tutor and Chancellor to the Duc d'Anjou.

"First of all," said Birague, "get rid of Cypierre; he is not a courtier,

he will never fall in with your views, and will think he is doing his duty

by opposing you."

"Whom can I trust?" cried the Queen.

"One of us," said Birague.

"By my faith," said Gondi, "I promise to make the King as pliant as the

King of Navarre."

"You let the late King die to save your other children; well, then, do as

the grand Signors of Constantinople do: crush this one's passions and

fancies," said Albert de Gondi. "He likes the arts, poetry, hunting, and a

little girl he saw at Orleans; all this is quite enough to occupy him."

"Then you would be the King's tutor?" said Catherine, to the more capable

of the two Gondis.

"If you will give me the necessary authority; it might be well to make me a

Marshal of France and a Duke. Cypierre is too small a man to continue in

that office. Henceforth the tutor of a King of France should be a Marshal

and Duke, or something of the kind----"

"He is right," said Birague.

"Poetry and hunting," said Catherine, in a dreamy voice.

"We will hunt and make love!" cried Gondi.

"Besides," said Chiverni, "you are sure of Amyot, who will always be afraid

of a drugged cup in case of disobedience, and with Gondi you will have the

King in leading strings."

"You were resigned to the loss of one son to save the three others and the

Crown; now you must have the courage to keep this one _occupied_ to save

the kingdom--to save yourself perhaps," said Ruggieri.

"He has just offended me deeply," said Catherine.

"He does not know how much he owes you; and if he did, you would not be

safe," Birague replied with grave emphasis.

"It is settled," said the Queen, on whom this reply had a startling effect;

"you are to be the King's governor, Gondi. The King must make me a return

in favor of one of my friends for the concession I have made for that

cowardly Bishop. But the fool has lost the Cardinal's hat; so long as I

live I will hinder the Pope from fitting it to his head! We should have

been very strong with Cardinal de Tournon to support us. What a trio they

would have made: he as High Almoner with l'Hopital and de Thou! As to the

citizens of Paris, I mean to make my son coax them over, and we will lean

on them."

And Gondi was, in fact, made a Marshal, created Duc de Retz and tutor to

the King, within a few days.

This little council was just over when Cardinal de Tournon came to announce

to the Queen the messengers from Calvin. Admiral Coligny escorted them to

secure them respectful treatment at the Louvre. The Queen summoned her

battalion of maids of honor, and went into the great reception-room built

by her husband, which no longer exists in the Louvre of our day.

At that time the staircase of the Louvre was in the clock-tower.

Catherine's rooms were in the older part of the building, part of which

survives in the Cour du Musee. The present staircase to the galleries was

built where the _Salle des ballets_ was before it. A _ballet_ at that time

meant a sort of dramatic entertainment performed by all the Court.

Revolutionary prejudice led to the most ridiculous mistake as to Charles

IX. _a propos_ to the Louvre. During the Revolution a belief defamatory of

this King, whose character has been caricatured, made a monster of him.

Chenier's tragedy was written under the provocation of a tablet hung up on

the window of the part of the palace that projects towards the Quay. On it

were these words, "From this window Charles IX. of execrable memory fired

on the citizens of Paris." It may be well to point out to future historians

and studious persons that the whole of that side of the Louvre, now called

the Old Louvre--the projecting wing at a right angle to the Quay, connected

the galleries with the Louvre by what is called the Galerie d'Apollon, and

the Louvre with the Tuileries by the picture gallery--was not in existence

in the time of Charles IX. The principal part of the site of the

river-front, where lies the garden known as le Jardin de l'Infante, was

occupied by the Hotel de Bourbon, which belonged, in fact, to the House of

Navarre. It would have been physically impossible for Charles IX. to fire

from the _Louvre de Henri II._ on a boat full of Huguenots crossing the

Seine, though he could see the river from some windows, which are now

built up, in that part of the palace.

Even if historians and libraries did not possess maps in which the Louvre

at the time of Charles IX. is perfectly shown, the building bears in itself

the refutation of the error. The several Kings who have contributed to this

vast structure have never failed to leave their cipher on the work in some

form of monogram. The venerable buildings, now all discolored, of that part

of the Louvre that goes down to the Quay bear the initials of Henri II. and

of Henri IV.; quite different from those of Henri III., who added to his H

Catherine's double C in a way that looks like D to superficial observers.

It was Henri IV. who was able to add his own palace, the Hotel de Bourbon,

with its gardens and domain, on to the Louvre. He first thought of uniting

Catherine de' Medici's palace to the Louvre by finishing the galleries, of

which the exquisite sculpture is too little appreciated.

But if no plan of Paris under Charles IX. were in existence, nor the

monograms of the two Henrys, the difference in the architecture would be

enough to give the lie to this calumny. The rusticated bosses of the Hotel

de la Force, and of this portion of the Louvre, are precisely

characteristic of the transition from the architecture of the Renaissance

to the architecture of Henri III., Henri IV., and Louis XIII.

This archaeological digression, in harmony, to be sure, with the pictures at

the beginning of this narrative, enables us to see the aspect of this other

part of Paris, of which nothing now remains but that portion of the Louvre,

where the beautiful bas-reliefs are perishing day by day.

When the Court was informed that the Queen was about to give audience to

Theodore de Beze and Chaudieu, introduced by Admiral Coligny, every one who

had a right to go into the throne room hastened to be present at this

interview. It was about six o'clock; Admiral Coligny had supped, and was

picking his teeth as he walked upstairs between the two Calvinists. This

playing with a toothpick was a confirmed habit with the Admiral; he

involuntarily picked his teeth in the middle of a battle when meditating a

retreat. "Never trust the Admiral's toothpick, the Constable's 'No,' or

Catherine's 'Yes,'"--was one of the proverbs of the Court at the time. And

after the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, the mob made horrible mockery of

the Admiral's body, which hung for three days at Montfaucon, by sticking a

grotesque toothpick between his teeth. Chroniclers have recorded this

hideous jest. And, indeed, this trivial detail in the midst of a tremendous

catastrophe is just like the Paris mob, which thoroughly deserves this

grotesque parody of a line of Boileau's:

Le Francais, ne malin, crea la guillotine.

(The Frenchman, a born wag, invented the guillotine.)

In all ages, the Parisians have made fun before, during, and after the most

terrible revolutions.

Theodore de Beze was in Court dress, black silk long hose, slashed shoes,

full trunks, a doublet of black silk, also slashed, and a little black

velvet cloak, over which fell a fine white ruff, deeply gauffered. He wore

the tuft of beard called a _virgule_ (a comma) and a moustache. His sword

hung by his side, and he carried a cane. All who know the pictures at

Versailles, or the portraits by Odieuvre, know his round and almost jovial

face, with bright eyes, and the remarkably high and broad forehead, which

is characteristic of the poets and writers of that time. De Beze had a

pleasant face, which did him good service. He formed a striking contrast to

Coligny, whose austere features are known to all, and to the bitter and

bilious-looking Chaudieu, who wore the preacher's gown and Calvinist bands.

The state of affairs in the Chamber of Deputies in our own day, and that,

no doubt, in the Convention too, may enable us to understand how at that

Court and at that time persons, who six months after would be fighting to

the death and waging heinous warfare, would meanwhile meet, address each

other with courtesy, and exchange jests.

When Coligny entered the room, Birague, who would coldly advise the

massacre of Saint-Bartholomew, and the Cardinal de Lorraine, who would tell

his servant Besme not to miss the Admiral, came forward to meet him, and

the Piedmontese said, with a smile:

"Well, my dear Admiral, so you have undertaken to introduce these gentlemen

from Geneva?"

"And you will count it to me for a crime, perhaps," replied the Admiral in

jest, "while, if you had undertaken it, you would have scored it as a

merit."

"Master Calvin, I hear, is very ill," said the Cardinal de Lorraine to

Theodore de Beze. "I hope we shall not be suspected of having stirred his

broth for him!"

"Nay, monseigneur, you would lose too much by that," said Theodore de Beze

shrewdly.

The Duc de Guise, who was examining Chaudieu, stared at his brother and

Birague, who were both startled by this speech.

"By God!" exclaimed the Cardinal, "heretics are of the right faith in keen

politics!"

To avoid difficulties, the Queen, who was announced at this moment,

remained standing. She began by conversing with the Connetable, who spoke

eagerly of the scandal of her admitting Calvin's envoys to her presence.

"But, you see, my dear Constable, we receive them without ceremony."

"Madame," said the Admiral, approaching Catherine, "these are the two

doctors of the new religion who have come to an understanding with Calvin,

and have taken his instructions as to a meeting where the various Churches

of France may compromise their differences."

"This is Monsieur Theodore de Beze, my wife's very great favorite," said

the King of Navarre, coming forward and taking de Beze by the hand.

"And here is Chaudieu!" cried the Prince de Conde. "My friend the Duc de

Guise knows the captain," he added, looking at la Balafre; "perhaps he

would like to make acquaintance with the minister."

This sally made everybody laugh, even Catherine.

"By my troth," said the Duc de Guise, "I am delighted to see a man who can

so well choose a follower, and make use of him in his degree. One of your

men," said he to the preacher, "endured, without dying or confessing

anything, the extreme of torture; I fancy myself brave, but I do not know

that I could endure so well!"

"Hm!" observed Ambroise Pare, "you said not a word when I pulled the spear

out of your face at Calais."

Catherine, in the middle of the semicircle formed right and left of the

maids of honor and Court officials, kept silence. While looking at the two

famous Reformers, she was trying to penetrate them with her fine,

intelligent, black eyes, and study them thoroughly.

"One might be the sheath and the other the blade," Albert de Gondi said in

her ear.

"Well, gentlemen," said Catherine, who could not help smiling, "has your

master given you liberty to arrange a public conference where you may

convert to the Word of God those modern Fathers of the Church who are the

glory of our realm?"

"We have no master but the Lord," said Chaudieu.

"Well, you acknowledge some authority in the King of France?" said

Catherine, smiling, and interrupting the minister.

"And a great deal in the Queen," added de Beze, bowing low.

"You will see," she went on, "that the heretics will be my most dutiful

subjects."

"Oh, madame!" cried Coligny, "what a splendid kingdom we will make for you!

Europe reaps great profit from our divisions. It has seen one-half of

France set against the other for fifty years past."

"Have we come here to hear chants in praise of heretics?" said the

Connetable roughly.

"No, but to bring them to amendment," answered the Cardinal de Lorraine in

a whisper, "and we hope to achieve it by a little gentleness."

"Do you know what I should have done in the reign of the King's father?"

said Anne de Montmorency. "I should have sent for the Provost to hang those

two rascals high and dry on the Louvre gallows."

"Well, gentlemen, and who are the learned doctors you will bring into the

field?" said the Queen, silencing the Constable with a look.

"Duplessis-Mornay and Theodore de Beze are our leaders," said Chaudieu.

"The Court will probably go to the chateau of Saint-Germain; and as it

would not be seemly that this colloquy should take place in the same town,

it shall be held in the little town of Poissy," replied Catherine.

"Shall we be safe there, madame?" asked Chaudieu.

"Oh!" said the Queen, with a sort of simplicity, "you will, no doubt, know

what precautions to take. Monsieur the Admiral will make arrangements to

that effect with my cousins de Guise and Montmorency."

"Fie on it all!" said the Constable; "I will have no part in it."

The Queen took Chaudieu a little way apart.

"What do you do to your sectarians to give them such a spirit?" said she.

"My furrier's son was really sublime."

"We have faith," said Chaudieu.

At this moment the room was filled with eager groups, all discussing the

question of this assembly, which, from the Queen's suggestion, was already

spoken of as the "Convocation of Poissy." Catherine looked at Chaudieu, and

felt it safe to say:

"Yes, a new faith."

"Ah, madame, if you were not blinded by your connection with the Court of

Rome, you would see that we are returning to the true doctrine of Jesus

Christ, who, while sanctifying the equality of souls, has given all men on

earth equal rights."

"And do you think yourself the equal of Calvin?" said Catherine shrewdly.

"Nay, nay, we are equals only in church. What, really? Break all bonds

between the people and the throne?" cried Catherine. "You are not merely

heretics; you rebel against obedience to the King while avoiding all

obedience to the Pope."

She sharply turned away, and returned to Theodore de Beze.

"I trust to you, monsieur," she said, "to carry through this conference

conscientiously. Take time over it."

"I fancied," said Chaudieu to the Prince de Conde, the King of Navarre, and

Admiral Coligny, "that affairs of State were taken more seriously."

"Oh, we all know exactly what we mean," said the Prince de Conde, with a

significant glance at Theodore de Beze.

The hunchback took leave of his followers to keep an assignation. This

great Prince and party leader was one of the most successful gallants of

the Court; the two handsomest women of the day fought for him with such

infatuation, that the Marechale de Saint-Andre, the wife of one of the

coming Triumvirate, gave him her fine estate at Saint-Valery to win him

from the Duchesse de Guise, the wife of the man who had wanted to bring his

head under the axe; being unable to wean the Duc de Nemours from his

flirtations with Mademoiselle de Rohan, she fell in love, meanwhile, with

the leader of the Reformed party.

"How different from Geneva!" said Chaudieu to Theodore de Beze on the

little bridge by the Louvre.

"They are livelier here, and I cannot imagine why they are such traitors,"

replied de Beze.

"Meet a traitor with a traitor-and-a-half," said Chaudieu in a whisper. "I

have saints in Paris that I can rely on, and I mean to make a prophet of

Calvin. Christophe will rid us of the most dangerous of our enemies."

"The Queen-mother, for whom the poor wretch endured torture, has already

had him passed, by high-handed orders, as pleader before the Parlement, and

lawyers are more apt to be tell-tales than assassins. Remember Avenelles,

who sold the secret of our first attempt to take up arms."

"But I know Christophe," said Chaudieu, with an air of conviction, as he

and the Calvinist parted.

* * * * *

Some days after the reception of Calvin's secret envoys by Catherine, and

towards the end of that year--for the year then began at Easter, and the

modern calendar was not adopted till this very reign--Christophe, still

stretched on an armchair, was sitting on that side of the large sombre room

where our story began, in such a position as to look out on the river. His

feet rested on a stool. Mademoiselle Lecamus and Babette Lallier had just

renewed the application of compresses, soaked in a lotion brought by

Ambroise, to whose care Catherine had commended Christophe. When once he

was restored to his family, the lad had become the object of the most

devoted care. Babette, with her father's permission, came to the house

every morning, and did not leave till the evening. Christophe, a subject of

wonder to the apprentices, gave rise in the neighborhood to endless tales,

which involved him in poetic mystery. He had been put to torture, and the

famous Ambroise Pare was exerting all his skill to save him. What, then,

had he done to be treated so? On this point neither Christophe nor his

father breathed a word. Catherine, now all-powerful, had an interest in

keeping silence, and so had the Prince de Conde. The visits of Ambroise

Pare, the surgeon to the King and to the House of Guise, permitted by the

Queen-mother and the Princes of Lorraine to attend a youth accused of

heresy, added to the singularity of this business, which no one could see

through. And then the priest of Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs came several

times to see his churchwarden's son, and these visits made the causes of

Christophe's condition even more inexplicable.

The old furrier, who had a plan of his own, replied evasively when his

fellows of the guild, traders, and friends spoke of his son:--

"I am very happy, neighbor, to have been able to save him! You know! it is

well not to put your finger between the wood and the bark. My son put his

hand to the stake and took out fire enough to burn my house down!--They

imposed on his youth, and we citizens never get anything but scorn and harm

by hanging on to the great. This quite determines me to make a lawyer of my

boy; the law courts will teach him to weigh his words and deeds. The young

Queen, who is now in Scotland, had a great deal to do with it; but perhaps

Christophe was very imprudent too. I went through terrible grief.--All this

will probably lead to my retiring from business; I will never go to Court

any more. My son has had enough of the Reformation now; it has left him

with broken arms and legs. But for Ambroise, where should I be?"

Thanks to these speeches and to his prudence, a report was spread in the

neighborhood that Christophe no longer followed the creed of Colas. Every

one thought it quite natural that the old Syndic should wish to see his son

a lawyer in the Parlement, and thus the priest's calls seemed quite a

matter of course. In thinking of the old man's woes, no one thought of his

ambition, which would have been deemed monstrous.

The young lawyer, who had spent ninety days on the bed put up for him in

the old sitting-room, had only been out of it for a week past, and still

needed the help of crutches to enable him to walk. Babette's affection and

his mother's tenderness had touched Christophe deeply; still, having him in

bed, the two women lectured him soundly on the subject of religion.

President de Thou came to see his godson, and was most paternal.

Christophe, as a pleader in the Parlement, ought to be a Catholic, he would

be pledged to it by his oath; and the President, who never seemed to doubt

the young man's orthodoxy, added these important words:

"You have been cruelly tested, my boy. I myself know nothing of the reasons

Messieurs de Guise had for treating you thus; but now I exhort you to live

quietly henceforth, and not to interfere in broils, for the favor of the

King and Queen will not be shown to such as brew storms. You are not a

great enough man to drive a bargain with the King, like the Duke and the

Cardinal. If you want to be councillor in the Parlement some day, you can

only attain that high office by serious devotion to the cause of Royalty."

However, neither Monsieur de Thou's visit, nor Babette's charms, nor the

entreaties of Mademoiselle Lecamus his mother, had shaken the faith of the

Protestant martyr. Christophe clung all the more stoutly to his religion in

proportion to what he had suffered for it.

"My father will never allow me to marry a heretic," said Babette in his

ear.

Christophe replied only with tears, which left the pretty girl speechless

and thoughtful.

Old Lecamus maintained his dignity as a father and a Syndic, watched his

son, and said little. The old man, having got back his dear Christophe, was

almost vexed with himself, and repentant of having displayed all his

affection for his only son; but secretly he admired him. At no time in his

life had the furrier pulled so many wires to gain his ends; for he could

see the ripe harvest of the crop sown with so much toil, and wished to

gather it all.

A few days since he had had a long conversation with Christophe alone,

hoping to discover the secret of his son's tenacity. Christophe, who was

not devoid of ambition, believed in the Prince de Conde. The Prince's

generous speech--which was no more than the stock-in-trade of princes--was

stamped on his heart. He did not know that Conde had wished him at the

devil at the moment when he bid him such a touching farewell through the

bars of his prison at Orleans.

"A Gascon would have understood," the Prince had said to himself.

And in spite of his admiration for the Prince, Christophe cherished the

deepest respect for Catherine, the great Queen who had explained to him in

a look that she was compelled by necessity to sacrifice him, and then,

during his torture, had conveyed to him in another glance an unlimited

promise by an almost imperceptible tear.

During the deep calm of the ninety days and nights he had spent in

recovering, the newly-made lawyer thought over the events at Blois and at

Orleans. He weighed, in spite of himself, it may be said, the influence of

these two patrons; he hesitated between the Queen and the Prince. He had

certainly done more for Catherine than for the Reformation; and the young

man's heart and mind, of course, went forth to the Queen, less by reason of

this difference than because she was a woman. In such a case a man will

always found his hopes on a woman rather than on a man.

"I immolated myself for her--what will she not do for me?"

This was the question he almost involuntarily asked himself as he recalled

the tone in which she had said, "My poor boy!"

It is difficult to conceive of the pitch of self-consciousness reached by a

man alone and sick in bed. Everything, even the care of which he is the

object, tends to make him think of himself alone. By exaggerating the

Prince de Conde's obligations to him, Christophe looked forward to

obtaining some post at the Court of Navarre. The lad, a novice still in

politics, was all the more forgetful of the anxieties which absorb party

leaders, and of the swift rush of men and events which overrule them,

because he lived almost in solitary imprisonment in that dark parlor. Every

party is bound to be ungrateful when it is fighting for dear life; and when

it has won the day, there are so many persons to be rewarded, that it is

ungrateful still. The rank and file submit to this oblivion, but the

captains turn against the new master who for so long has marched as their

equal.

Christophe, the only person to remember what he had suffered, already

reckoned himself as one of the chiefs of the Reformation by considering

himself as one of its martyrs. Lecamus, the old wolf of trade, acute and

clear-sighted, had guessed his son's secret thoughts; indeed, all his

manoeuvring was based on the very natural hesitancy that possessed the

lad.

"Would not it be fine," he had said the day before to Babette, "to be the

wife of a Councillor to the Parlement; you would be addressed as madame."

"You are crazy, neighbor," said Lallier. "In the first place, where would

you find ten thousand crowns a year in landed estate, which a Councillor

must show, and from whom could you purchase a connection? The Queen-mother

and Regent would have to give all her mind to it to get your son into the

Parlement; and he smells of the stake too strongly to be admitted."

"What would you give, now, to see your daughter a Councillor's wife?"

"You want to sound the depth of my purse, you old fox!" exclaimed Lallier.

Councillor to the Parlement! The words distracted Christophe's brain.

Long after the conference was over, one morning when Christophe sat gazing

at the river, which reminded him of the scene that was the beginning of all

this story, of the Prince de Conde, la Renaudie, and Chaudieu, of his

journey to Blois, and of all he hoped for, the Syndic came to sit down by

his son with ill-disguised glee under an affectation of solemnity.

"My boy," said he, "after what took place between you and the heads of the

riot at Amboise, they owed you so much that your future might very well be

cared for by the House of Navarre."

"Yes," replied Christophe.

"Well," his father went on, "I have definitely applied for permission for

you to purchase a legal business in Bearn. Our good friend Pare undertook

to transmit the letters I wrote in your name to the Prince de Conde and

Queen Jeanne.--Here, read this reply from Monsieur de Pibrac,

Vice-Chancellor of Navarre:--

"_To Master Lecamus, Syndic of the Guild of Furriers._

"His Highness the Prince de Conde bids me express to

you his regret at being unable to do anything for his

fellow-prisoner in the Tour de Saint-Aignan, whom he

remembers well, and to whom, for the present, he offers

the place of man-at-arms in his own company, where he

will have the opportunity of making his way as a man of

good heart--which he is.

"The Queen of Navarre hopes for an occasion of

rewarding Master Christophe, and will not fail.

"And with this, Monsieur le Syndic, I pray God have you

in His keeping.

PIBRAC,

"_Chancellor of Navarre_.

"Nerac."

"Nerac! Pibrac! Crac!" cried Babette. "There is nothing to be got out of

these Gascons; they think only of themselves."

Old Lecamus was looking at his son with ironical amusement.

"And he wants to set a poor boy on horseback whose knees and ankles were

pounded up for him!" cried the mother. "What a shameful mockery!"

"I do not seem to see you as a Councillor in Navarre," said the old

furrier.

"I should like to know what Queen Catherine would do for me if I petitioned

her," said Christophe, much crest-fallen.

"She made no promises," said the old merchant, "but I am sure she would not

make a fool of you, and would remember your sufferings. Still, how could

she make a councillor-at-law of a Protestant citizen?"

"But Christophe has never abjured!" exclaimed Babette. "He may surely keep

his own secret as to his religious opinions."

"The Prince de Conde would be less scornful of a Councillor to the

Parlement of Paris," said Lecamus.

"A Councillor, father! Is it possible?"

"Yes, if you do nothing to upset what I am managing for you. My neighbor

Lallier here is ready to pay two hundred thousand livres, if I add as much

again, for the purchase of a fine estate entailed on the heirs male, which

we will hand over to you."

"And I will add something more for a house in Paris," said Lallier.

"Well, Christophe?" said Babette.

"You are talking without the Queen," replied the young lawyer.

Some days after this bitter mortification, an apprentice brought this brief

note to Christophe:

"Chaudieu wishes to see his son."

"Bring him in," said Christophe.

"O my saint and martyr!" cried the preacher, embracing the young man, "have

you got over your sufferings?"

"Yes, thanks to Pare."

"Thanks to God, who gave you strength to endure them! But what is this I

hear? You have passed as a pleader, you have taken the oath of fidelity,

you have confessed the Whore, the Catholic, Apostolic, Romish Church."

"My father insisted."

"But are we not to leave father and mother and children and wife for the

sacred cause of Calvinism, and to suffer all things?--Oh, Christophe,

Calvin, the great Calvin, the whole party, the whole world, the future

counts on your courage and your greatness of soul! We want your life."

There is this strange feature in the mind of man: the most devoted, even in

the act of devoting himself, always builds up a romance of hope even in the

most perilous crisis. Thus, when on the river under the Pont au Change, the

prince, the soldier, and the preacher had required Christophe to carry to

Queen Catherine the document which, if discovered, would have cost him his

life, the boy had trusted to his wit, to chance, to his perspicacity, and

had boldly marched on between the two formidable parties--the Guises and

the Queen--who had so nearly crushed him. While in the torture-chamber he

still had said to himself, "I shall live through it--it is only pain!"

But at this brutal command, "Die!" to a man who was still helpless, hardly

recovered from the injuries he had suffered, and who clung all the more to

life for having seen death so near, it was impossible to indulge in any

such illusions.

Christophe calmly asked, "What do you want of me?"

"To fire a pistol bravely, as Stuart fired at Minard."

"At whom?"

"The Duc de Guise."

"Assassination?"

"Revenge!--Have you forgotten the hundred gentlemen massacre on one

scaffold! A child, little d'Aubigne, said as he saw the butchery, 'They

have beheaded all France.'"

"We are to take blows and not to return them, is the teaching of the

Gospel," replied Christophe. "If we are to imitate the Catholics, of what

use is it to reform the Church?"

"Oh, Christophe, they have made a lawyer of you, and you argue!" said

Chaudieu.

"No, my friend," the youth replied. "But principles are ungrateful, and you

and yours will only be the playthings of the House of Bourbon."

"Oh, Christophe, if you had only heard Calvin, you would know that we can

turn them like a glove! The Bourbons are the glove, and we the hand."

"Read this," said Christophe, handing Pibrac's letter to the minister.

"Alas, boy! you are ambitious; you can no longer sacrifice yourself;" and

Chaudieu went away.

* * * * *

Not long after this visit, Christophe, with the families of Lallier and

Lecamus, had met to celebrate the plighting of Babette and Christophe in

the old parlor, whence Christophe's couch was now removed, for he could

climb the stairs now, and was beginning to drag himself about without

crutches. It was nine in the evening, and they waited for Ambroise Pare.

The family notary was sitting at a table covered with papers. The furrier

was selling his house and business to his head-clerk, who was to pay forty

thousand livres down for the house, and to mortgage it as security for the

stock-in-trade, besides paying twenty thousand livres on account.

Lecamus had purchased for his son a magnificent house in the Rue de

Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs, built of stone by Philibert de l'Orme, as a

wedding gift. The Syndic had also spent two hundred and fifty thousand

livres out of his fortune, Lallier paying an equal sum, for the acquisition

of a fine manor and estate in Picardy, for which five hundred thousand

livres were asked. This estate being a dependence of the Crown, letters

patent from the King--called letters of rescript--were necessary, besides

the payment of considerable fines and fees. Thus the actual marriage was to

be postponed till the royal signature could be obtained.

Though the citizens of Paris had obtained the right of purchasing manors

and lands, the prudence of the Privy Council had placed certain

restrictions on the transfer of lands belonging to the Crown; and the

estate on which Lecamus had had his eye for the last ten years was one of

these. Ambroise had undertaken to produce the necessary permission this

very evening. Old Lecamus went to and fro between the sitting-room and the

front door with an impatience that showed the eagerness of his ambition.

At last Ambroise appeared.

"My good friend!" exclaimed the surgeon in a great fuss, and looking at the

supper-table, "what is your napery like?--Very good.--Now bring waxlights,

and make haste, make haste. Bring out the best of everything you have."

"What is the matter?" asked the priest of Saint-Pierre aux Boeufs.

"The Queen-mother and the King are coming to sup with you," replied the

surgeon. "The Queen and King expect to meet here an old Councillor, whose

business is to be sold to Christophe, and Monsieur de Thou, who has managed

the bargain. Do not look as if you expected them; I stole out of the

Louvre."

In an instant all were astir. Christophe's mother and Babette's aunt

trotted about in all the flurry of housewives taken by surprise. In spite

of the confusion into which the announcement had thrown the party,

preparations were made with miraculous energy. Christophe, amazed,

astounded, overpowered by such condescension, stood speechless, looking on

at all the bustle.

"The Queen and the King here!" said the old mother.

"The Queen?" echoed Babette; "but what for, what to do?"

Within an hour everything was altered; the old room was smartened up, the

table shone. A sound of horses was heard in the street. The gleam of

torches carried by the mounted escort brought all the neighbors' noses to

the windows. The rush was soon over; no one was left under the arcade but

the Queen-mother and her son, King Charles IX., Charles de Gondi, Master of

the Wardrobe, and tutor to the King; Monsieur de Thou, the retiring

Councillor; Pinard, Secretary of State, and two pages.

"Good folks," said the Queen as she went in, "the King, my son, and I have

come to sign the marriage contract of our furrier's son, but on condition

that he remains a Catholic. Only a Catholic can serve in the Parlement,

only a Catholic can own lands dependent on the Crown, only a Catholic can

sit at table with the King--what do you say, Pinard?"

The Secretary of State stepped forward, holding the letters patent.

"If we are not all Catholics here," said the little King, "Pinard will

throw all the papers into the fire; but we are all Catholics?" he added,

looking round proudly enough at the company.

"Yes, Sire," said Christophe Lecamus, bending the knee, not without

difficulty, and kissing the hand the young King held out to him.

Queen Catherine, who also held out her hand to Christophe, pulled him up

rather roughly, and leading him into a corner, said:

"Understand, boy, no subterfuges! We are playing an honest game?"

"Yes, madame," he said, dazzled by this splendid reward and by the honor

the grateful Queen had done him.

"Well, then, Master Lecamus, the King, my son, and I permit you to purchase

the offices and appointments of this good man Groslay, Councillor to the

Parlement, who is here," said the Queen. "I hope, young man, that you will

follow in the footsteps of your Lord President."

De Thou came forward and said:

"I will answer for him, madame."

"Very well, then proceed, notary," said Pinard.

"Since the King, our master, does us the honor of signing my daughter's

marriage-contract," cried Lallier, "I will pay the whole price of the

estate."

"The ladies may be seated," said the young King graciously. "As a wedding

gift to the bride, with my mother's permission, I remit my fines and fees."

Old Lecamus and Lallier fell on their knees and kissed the boy-King's hand.

"By Heaven, Sire, what loads of money these citizens have!" said Gondi in

his ear.

And the young King laughed.

"Their Majesties being so graciously inclined," said old Lecamus, "will

they allow me to present to them my successor in the business, and grant

him the royal patent as furrier to their Majesties?"

"Let us see him," said the King, and Lecamus brought forward his successor,

who was white with alarm.

Old Lecamus was shrewd enough to offer the young King a silver cup which he

had bought from Benvenuto Cellini when he was staying in Paris at the Tour

de Nesle, at a cost of not less than two thousand crowns.

"Oh, mother! what a fine piece of work!" cried the youth, lifting the cup

by its foot.

"It is Florentine," said Catherine.

"Pardon me, madame," said Lecamus; "it was made in France, though by a

Florentine. If it had come from Florence, it should have been the Queen's;

but being made in France, it is the King's."

"I accept it, my friend," cried Charles IX., "and henceforth I drink out of

it."

"It is good enough," the Queen remarked, "to be included among the Crown

treasure."

"And you, Master Ambroise," she went on in an undertone, turning to the

surgeon, and pointing to Christophe, "have you cured him? Will he walk?"

"He will fly," said the surgeon, with a smile. "You have stolen him from us

very cleverly!"

"The abbey will not starve for lack of one monk!" replied the Queen, in the

frivolous tone for which she has been blamed, but which lay only on the

surface.

The supper was cheerful; the Queen thought Babette pretty, and, like the

great lady she was, she slipped a diamond ring on the girl's finger in

compensation for the value of the silver cup.

King Charles IX., who afterwards was perhaps rather too fond of thus

invading his subjects' homes, supped with a good appetite; then, on a word

from his new tutor, who had been instructed, it is said, to efface the

virtuous teaching of Cypierre, he incited the President of Parlement, the

old retired councillor, the Secretary of State, the priest, the notary, and

the citizens to drink so deep, that Queen Catherine rose to go at the

moment when she saw that their high spirits were becoming uproarious.

As the Queen rose, Christophe, his father, and the two women took up tapers

to light her as far as the door of the shop. Then Christophe made so bold

as to pull the Queen's wide sleeve and give her a meaning look. Catherine

stopped, dismissed the old man and the women with a wave of her hand, and

said to the young man--"What?"

"If you can make any use of the information, madame," said he, speaking

close to the Queen's ear, "I can tell you that assassins are plotting

against the Duc de Guise's life."

"You are a loyal subject," said Catherine with a smile, "and I will never

forget you."

She held out her hand, famous for its beauty, drawing off her glove as a

mark of special favor. And Christophe, as he kissed that exquisite hand,

was more Royalist than ever.

"Then I shall be rid of that wretch without my having anything to do with

it," was her reflection as she put on her glove.

She mounted her mule and returned to the Louvre with her two pages.

Christophe drank, but he was gloomy; Pare's austere face reproached him for

his apostasy; however, later events justified the old Syndic. Christophe

would certainly never have escaped in the massacre of Saint-Bartholomew;

his wealth and lands would have attracted the butchers. History has

recorded the cruel fate of the wife of Lallier's successor, a beautiful

woman, whose naked body remained hanging by the hair for three days to one

of the starlings of the Pont au Change. Babette could shudder then as she

reflected that such a fate might have been hers if Christophe had remained

a Calvinist, as the Reformers were soon generally called. Calvin's ambition

was fulfilled, but not till after his death.

* * * * *

This was the origin of the famous Lecamus family of lawyers. Tallemant des

Reaux was mistaken in saying they had come from Picardy. It was afterwards

to the interest of the Lecamus family to refer their beginnings to the time

when they had acquired their principal estate, situated in that province.

Christophe's son, and his successor under Louis XIII., was father of that

rich President Lecamus, who in Louis XIV.'s time built the magnificent

mansion which divided with the Hotel Lambert the admiration of Parisians

and foreigners, and which is certainly one of the finest buildings in

Paris. This house still exists in the Rue de Thorigny, though it was

pillaged at the beginning of the Revolution, as belonging to Monsieur de

Juigne, Archbishop of Paris. All the paintings were then defaced, and the

lodgers who have since dwelt there have still further damaged it. This fine

residence, earned in the old house in the Rue de la Pelleterie, still shows

what splendid results were then the outcome of family spirit. We may be

allowed to doubt whether modern individualism, resulting from the repeated

equal division of property, will ever raise such edifices.

FOOTNOTES:

[F] See note at the end of this volume.