"Old friend," said the furrier to Lallier, taking up the thread of the conversation, "we are going to see hot work in France; the Reformers are astir."
"If they win the day, it will only be after long fighting, which will be very bad for trade," said Lallier, incapable of looking higher than the commercial point of view.
"My father, who had seen the end of the wars between the Bourguignons and the Armagnacs, told me that our family would never have lived through them if one of his grandfathers—his mother's father—had not been one of the Goix, the famous butchers at the Halle, who were attached to the Bourguignons, while the other, a Lecamus, was on the side of the Armagnacs; they pretended to be ready to flay each other before the outer world, but at home they were very good friends. So we will try to save Christophe. Perhaps a time may come when he will save us."
"You are a cunning dog, neighbor," said the goldsmith.
"No," replied Lecamus. "The citizen class must take care of itself, the populace and the nobility alike owe it a grudge. Everybody is afraid of the middle class in Paris excepting the King, who knows us to be his friends."
"You who know so much, and who have seen so much," said Babette timidly, "pray tell me what it is that the Reformers want."
"Ay, tell us that, neighbor!" cried the goldsmith. "I knew the late King's tailor, and I always took him to be a simple soul, with no great genius; he was much such another as you are, they would have given him the Host without requiring him to confess, and all the time he was up to his eyes in this new religion.—He! a man whose ears were worth many hundred thousand crowns. He must have known some secrets worth hearing for the King and Madame de Valentinois to be present when he was tortured."
"Ay! and terrible secrets too," said the furrier. "The Reformation, my friends," he went on, in a low voice, "will give the Church lands back to the citizen class. When ecclesiastical privileges are annulled, the Reformers mean to claim equality of taxation for the nobles and the middle class, and to have only the King above all alike—if indeed they have a king at all."
"What, do away with the Throne?" cried Lallier.
"Well, neighbor," said Lecamus, "in the Low Countries the citizens govern themselves by provosts over them, who elect a temporary chief."