Gabriel listened with grave face, and apparently with little interest, to this good news.
"I am obliged to you, Master," he said to Ambroise Paré; "I rejoice to learn that our enterprise at Calais will not be without enduring results for France, at all events. Nevertheless it was not curiosity to hear of these matters which was my principal reason for coming to you. Master, long before I came to admire you for your great skill at the bedside of the wounded, I remember that certain words I heard you speak moved me deeply; it was one day last year in the little house on the Rue St. Jacques. Master, I have come to talk with you about these matters of religion, which your keen insight has penetrated so to the core. You have definitively embraced the cause of the Reformed religion, I suppose?"
"Yes, Monsieur d'Exmès," said Ambroise Paré, firmly. "The correspondence which the great Calvin was kind enough to enter into with me has removed my last doubts and my last scruples. I am now the most thoroughly devoted reformer of them all."
"Well, then, Master," said Gabriel, "will you not share your knowledge with a neophyte of the best intentions? I speak of myself. Will you not strengthen my doubting faith, as you would put in place a broken limb?"
"It is my duty to comfort and relieve the souls of my fellow-creatures as well as their bodies, when I can do so," said Ambroise Paré. "I am quite at your service, Monsieur d'Exmès."
For more than two hours they talked together, Ambroise ardent and eloquent, Gabriel calm and sorrowful, but a docile pupil.
At the end of that time Gabriel rose, and said to him, as he warmly pressed his hand,—
"Thanks! This conversation has done me much good. Unfortunately The time has not yet come when I can openly declare myself one of your number. It is necessary that I should wait yet a little while, even in the best interests of the Religion itself. Otherwise my conversion might well expose your holy cause to persecution some day, or to calumny at least. I know what I am saying. But now I understand, thanks to you, Master, that you and your fellows are really marching in the right path, and from this moment, believe that I am with you in heart, if not bodily. Adieu! Master Ambroise, adieu! We shall soon meet again."
Gabriel, without further elucidation of his words, took his leave of the surgeon-philosopher, and left the house.
In the early days of the following month,—May, 1558,—he appeared for the first time since his mysterious departure at his own home in the Rue des Jardins St. Paul.