'Yes,' broke in Frank, 'he has news. Would God he had not!'
'Is the Queen married then?' I asked quickly, for it was always the first inquiry of strangers in those shifting times.
'No!' answered Frank, 'nor like to be, it seems. Be pleased, Monsieur, to tell Mr. Festing what tidings you bring.'
And with that the little French captain, with excited gesture and kindling eyes, poured into my scorched ears the black and awful tale of the Massacre of Paris on St. Bartholomew's day, on the occasion of the King of Navarre's marriage with the Princess Margaret. We could none of us speak for a while when he ended the relation of that most foul and detestable crime. I could only feel leap up in my heart a mad longing, like Frank's, to be revenged, and that speedily. It seemed to revive in me all my old detestation of the Papists, and the whole body of them, innocent and guilty alike, seemed again a cursed thing in my eyes.
Many a better man than I was seized with the same mad rage when he knew that tale. How could we be otherwise? Yet I contained myself enough to express my pity to the French captain, who seemed well-nigh broken-hearted at the blot upon his country's fame.
'Truly, Mr. Festing, it is hard to bear,' he said, with a bitterness that cut me to the heart. 'I never thought to see the day when I could say that those Frenchmen were happiest who were farthest from France. That is why I have sailed hither and turned my back on her. I wash my hands of her. She is France no longer, but rather Frenzy, and all Gaul is gall indeed.'
His attempt at pleasantry touched me very deeply, for I knew how bitterly he felt the loss of his country, and I tried some apology.
'You are kind, Mr. Festing,' he said, taking my hand very warmly, after the manner of his country. 'It is not France—my pure, simple, single-hearted France—that has done this. It is Italian practices that have over-mastered French simplicity. Truly, sir, Italy is an accursed land, that curses all it touches with its noisome humours.'
He seemed a brave heart, and was a seaman in all his inches. For my part I conceived a great liking for him, though I think Frank would have been glad enough to be well rid of him and his company.
'Yet I could not say him nay,' he said to me, 'when I saw his poor fellows more than half starved. Moreover he was so mighty civil, and said that five weeks ago he had heard of us and of our great dealings, as he pleased to put it, and ever since he had been seeking, desiring nothing so much as to meet with the gentlemen who had set the whole Spanish Main in a tremble. I was bound to relieve him with our spare victuals, and so was obliged to abandon our attempt on the Chagres river.'