In vain the trembling officials sought to clinch their arguments by stating, that not alone did the conclave consist of the chief members of the university, the senior doctors of theology, medicine, and law, the professors of the humanities, rhetoric, and philosophy, and all the various other dignitaries; but that the debate was honored by the presence of Monsieur Christophe de Thou, first president of Parliament; by that of the learned Jacques Augustin, of the same name; by one of the secretaries of state and Governor of Paris, M. René de Villequier; by the ambassadors of Elizabeth, Queen of England, and of Philip the Second, King of Spain, and several of their suite; by Abbé de Brantôme; by M. Miron, the court physician; by Cosmo Ruggieri, the Queen Mother's astrologer; by the renowned poets and masque writers, Maîtres Ronsard, Baïf, and Philippe Desportes; by the well-known advocate of Parliament, Messire Étienne Pasquier: but also (and here came the gravamen of the objection to their admission) by the two especial favorites of his Majesty and leaders of affairs, the seigneurs of Joyeuse and D'Epernon.
It was in vain the students were informed that for the preservation of strict decorum, they had been commanded by the rector to make fast the gates. No excuses would avail them. The scholars were cogent reasoners, and a show of staves soon brought their opponents to a nonplus. In this line of argument they were perfectly aware of their ability to prove a major.
"To the wall with them--to the wall!" cried a hundred infuriated voices. "Down with the halberdiers--down with the gates--down with the disputants--down with the rector himself!--Deny our privileges! To the wall with old Adrien d'Amboise--exclude the disciples of the university from their own halls!--curry favor with the court minions!--hold a public controversy in private!--down with him! We will issue a mandamus for a new election on the spot!"
Whereupon a deep groan resounded throughout the crowd. It was succeeded by a volley of fresh execrations against the rector, and an angry demonstration of bludgeons, accompanied by a brisk shower of peas from the sarbacanes.
The officials turned pale, and calculated the chance of a broken neck in reversion, with that of a broken crown in immediate possession. The former being at least contingent, appeared the milder alternative, and they might have been inclined to adopt it had not a further obstacle stood in their way. The gate was barred withinside, and the vergers and bedels who had the custody of the door, though alarmed at the tumult without, positively refused to unfasten it.
Again the threats of the scholars were renewed, and further intimations of violence were exhibited. Again the peas rattled upon the hands and faces of the halberdiers, till their ears tingled with pain. "Prate to us of the king's favorites," cried one of the foremost of the scholars, a youth decorated with a paper collar: "they may rule within the precincts of the Louvre, but not within the walls of the university. Maugre-bleu! We hold them cheap enough. We heed not the idle bark of these full-fed court lapdogs. What to us is the bearer of a cup and ball? By the four Evangelists, we will have none of them here! Let the Gascon cadet, D'Epernon, reflect on the fate of Quélus and Maugiron, and let our gay Joyeuse beware of the dog's death of Saint-Mégrin. Place for better men--place for the schools--away with frills and sarbacanes."
"What to us is a president of Parliament, or a governor of the city?" shouted another of the same gentry. "We care nothing for their ministration. We recognize them not, save in their own courts. All their authority fell to the ground at the gate of the Rue Saint Jacques, when they entered our dominions. We care for no parties. We are trimmers, and steer a middle course. We hold the Guisards as cheap as the Huguenots, and the brethren of the League weigh as little with us as the followers of Calvin. Our only sovereign is Gregory the Thirteenth, Pontiff of Rome. Away with the Guise and the Béarnaise!"
"Away with Henri of Navarre, if you please," cried a scholar of Harcourt; "or Henri of Valois, if you list: but by all the saints, not with Henri of Lorraine; he is the fast friend of the true faith. No!--No!--live the Guise--live the Holy Union!"
"Away with Elizabeth of England," cried a scholar of Cluny: "what doth her representative here? Seeks he a spouse for her among our schools? She will have no great bargain, I own, if she bestows her royal hand upon our Duc d'Anjou."
"If you value your buff jerkin, I counsel you to say nothing slighting of the Queen of England in my hearing," returned a bluff, broad-shouldered fellow, raising his bludgeon after a menacing fashion. He was an Englishman belonging to the Four Nations, and had a huge bull-dog at his heels.