"News! what, you have not heard it?—the King is dead!"
"Louis dead! Louis the Great, dead!" cried my companion.
"Louis the Great?" said a sullen-looking man,—"Louis the persecutor!"
"Ah, he's a Huguenot!" cried another with haggard cheeks and hollow eyes, scowling at the last speaker. "Never mind what he says: the King was right when he refused protection to the heretics; but was he right when he levied such taxes on the Catholics?"
"Hush!" said a third—"hush: it may be unsafe to speak; there are spies about; for my part, I think it was all the fault of the /noblesse/."
"And the Favourites!" cried a soldier, fiercely.
"And the Harlots!" cried a hag of eighty.
"And the Priests!" muttered the Huguenot.
"And the Tax-gatherers!" added the lean Catholic.
We rode slowly on. My comrade was evidently and powerfully affected.