"What is a rhetoric play?"
"A morality, Highness," replied Rénèe patiently, "that the poor oppressed heretics make to expose their wrongs and strike at their tyrants."
"Ah, plays that make a jest of monks and nuns and all those in authority!"
"It is a grave jest," said Rénèe. "They do it at peril of their lives."
"Are they not often apprehended?" asked Anne spitefully.
"Very often, Highness, and then they are strangled or burnt or tortured, or hacked to death with a rusty sword, as a poor schoolmaster was the other day for reading the Bible to his wife. And it was in her presence they slew him, and she died of it," added Rénèe quietly.
"And they still persist?"
"Ay, they still persist," repeated Rénèe.
"I wish you would keep away from them," said the Princess. "Do you want to involve me in this unruliness?"
Rénèe smiled.