The family of the Arnaulds were well known in French history as soldiers or lawyers—sometimes as both, for the grandfather of the child whose story I am going to tell you commanded a troop of light horse in time of war, and in time of peace was, in spite of his being a Huguenot—that is, a Protestant—Catherine's trusted lawyer and adviser. This Antoine Arnauld, or M. de la Mothe, as he was called, was once publicly insulted by a noble whose claim to some money Arnauld had been obliged to refuse.
'You are mistaking me for somebody else.'
'You are mistaking me for somebody else,' answered M. de la Mothe, quietly.
'What do you mean? I thought you just admitted that you were M. de la Mothe?' replied the angry nobleman.
'Oh, yes,' said the lawyer, 'so I am; but sometimes I change my long robe for a short coat, and once outside this court you would not dare to speak to me in such a manner.'
At this point one of the attendants whispered in his ear that this was the celebrated soldier, and the nobleman, who seems to have been a poor-spirited creature, instantly made the humblest apologies.
Many of his relatives remained Huguenots up to the end, but M. de la Mothe returned to the old religion after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572. No man ever had a narrower escape of his life, for his house in Paris was attacked during the day, and though his servants defended it bravely, neither he nor his children would have been left alive had not a messenger wearing the queen's colours been seen pushing through the crowd. The leaders then called upon the mob to fall back, and the messenger produced a paper, signed by the queen, giving the family leave to come and go in safety.
M. de la Mothe's son, Antoine Arnauld, had in him more of the lawyer than the soldier, and he was clever enough to escape detection for acts which we should certainly call frauds. But he was an excellent husband to the wife of thirteen whom he married, and a very affectionate father to the ten out of his twenty children who lived to grow up.