"Yes," said the Abbé John, speaking for the first time, "and I heard his sister, Madame de Montpensier, say only to-day, that she and her brother Henry were going to give the King the third of the three crowns on his scutcheon. He has been King of Poland, he is King of France, and the third crown represents the heavenly crown which will soon be his. Alternatively, she exhibits to all comers, even in the antechamber of the King, the golden scissors with which she is going to cut a tonsure for 'Brother Henry,' as she calls him—the Monk Henry of that order of the Penitents which he organised in one of his fits of piety!"
Jean-aux-Choux shook his shaggy head like a huge water-spaniel.
"They flatter themselves, these dogs of Guise," he said; "they fill themselves with costly wine, that the flower of life pass them not by. They hasten to crown themselves with rosebuds, ere they be withered. 'Let us leave the husks of our pleasures in every place,' they say. 'For this is our lot. We alone are the great of the earth. The earth belongeth to Lorraine, and the goodliness thereof. Before us, kings twice-born, cradled in purple, are as naught. A good man is an insult to us. Let us slay and make an end, even as we did on the Eve of Bartholomew, that we may pass in and enjoy the land'—such is their insolence—'from Dan to Beer-sheba, and from Zidon even to the sunny slopes of Engedi—lest we be too late, lest we also pass away, as in the summer sky the trace of a cloud. For the Sea of Death is beneath—the Sea of Death is beneath!' Aha, aha! The mouth of the Lord hath spoken by Guise, even as by the mouth of Balaam his ass, in the strait-walled path betwixt the two vineyards, as thou comest unto Arnon!"
At the voice of the Fool turned Prophet, all sound ceased in the wide kitchen-place of good Dame Granier. Anthony Arpajon stood rapt, not daring to move hand or foot. For he believed that the word of the Lord had entered into Jean-aux-Choux, and that he was predicting the fall of the Guises.
"Verily, the bloody and deceitful man shall not live out half his days!" he muttered.
"It were truer, perhaps, to say," the Professor interjected, "that they who take the sword shall perish by the sword, and that those who arouse in King Henry of Valois the blackness of his gall, shall perish by the sword held under the cloak—suddenly, secretly, with none to help, and with the sins of a lifetime as lead upon their souls!"
"Amen!" cried Jean-aux-Choux; "stamp on the serpent's eggs! Cut the Guisards off, root and branch——"
"Is not that only your own Saint Bartholomew turned upside down?" demanded the Professor of Eloquence sharply. "You have read the Book of the Wisdom, I hear. I would remind you of the better way which you will find written therein. For, if prudence worketh, what is there that worketh better than she? You, who are a learned theologue, answer me that!"
"Prudence," cried the Genevan fiercely. "Have not I made myself a fool for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake? This is no time for prudence, but for fewer soft answers and more sharp swords! Ha, wait till the Bearnais comes to his own. Then there will be a day when the butchers of Paris shall cry to their shambles to fall on them and hide them. We of the Faith will track them with bloodhounds, and trap them like rats!"
"Then," retorted the Professor, "if that be so, I solemnly declare that you of the Huguenots are no whit better than the Leaguers and Guisards, who are even now seeking my life. I stand in the middle way. May God (such is your cry) give you victory or give you death. Well, I am sure that victory would be the worst present He could give you, if such were the use you would make of it."