“I understand that the pastors of peoples bear great burdens,” replied Theodore. “You have a world upon your shoulders.”
“I have three martyrs,” said Chaudieu, whom the master’s outburst had rendered thoughtful, “on whom we can rely. Stuart, who killed Minard, is at liberty—”
“You are mistaken,” said Calvin, gently, smiling after the manner of great men who bring fair weather into their faces as though they were ashamed of the previous storm. “I know human nature; a man may kill one president, but not two.”
“Is it absolutely necessary?” asked de Beze.
“Again!” exclaimed Calvin, his nostrils swelling. “Come, leave me, you will drive me to fury. Take my decision to the queen. You, Chaudieu, go your way, and hold your flock together in Paris. God guide you! Dinah, light my friends to the door.”
“Will you not permit me to embrace you?” said Theodore, much moved. “Who knows what may happen to us on the morrow? We may be seized in spite of our safe-conduct.”
“And yet you want to spare them!” cried Calvin, embracing de Beze. Then he took Chaudieu’s hand and said: “Above all, no Huguenots, no Reformers, but Calvinists! Use no term but Calvinism. Alas! this is not ambition, for I am dying,—but it is necessary to destroy the whole of Luther, even to the name of Lutheran and Lutheranism.”
“Ah! man divine,” cried Chaudieu, “you well deserve such honors.”
“Maintain the uniformity of the doctrine; let no one henceforth change or remark it. We are lost if new sects issue from our bosom.”
We will here anticipate the events on which this Study is based, and close the history of Theodore de Beze, who went to Paris with Chaudieu. It is to be remarked that Poltrot, who fired at the Duc de Guise fifteen months later, confessed under torture that he had been urged to the crime by Theodore de Beze; though he retracted that avowal during subsequent tortures; so that Bossuet, after weighing all historical considerations, felt obliged to acquit Beze of instigating the crime. Since Bossuet’s time, however, an apparently futile dissertation, apropos of a celebrated song, has led a compiler of the eighteenth century to prove that the verses on the death of the Duc de Guise, sung by the Huguenots from one end of France to the other, was the work of Theodore de Beze; and it is also proved that the famous song on the burial of Marlborough was a plagiarism on it.[*]