"What a man!" whispered D'Aubigné to his nearest neighbour. "Sometimes we of the Faith are angry with him, and then, with a pat on the cheek, or a laugh, we are his children again. Or he is ours, I know not which! Guise shakes hands all day long to make his dukeship popular, but in spite of himself his lip curls as if he touched a loathsome thing. Valois presents his hand to be kissed as if it belonged to some one else. But our Bearnais one would think he never had but one friend in the world, and "
"That this Scots fool is the man!"
"Hush," whispered D'Aubigné, "he is no fool, this fellow. He was of my acquaintance at Geneva. In his youth he knew John Calvin, and learned in the school of Beza. The King does well to attach him! Listen!"
Jean-aux-Choux was certainly giving the King his money's-worth. Henry was pacing up and down, his fingers busily and unconsciously arranging his beard.
"I have not enough men to take him prisoner," he said; "this ex-mignon D'Epernon is a slippery fish. He will deal with me, and with another. But if he could sell my head to my Lord of Guise and these furious wool-staplers of Paris, he would think it better worth his while than the off-chance of the Bearnais coming out on top!"
He pondered a while, with the deep niche of thought running downward from mid-brow to the bridge of his nose, which they called "the King's council of war."
"The girl is to be left in Blois," he muttered, as if to sum up the situation, "with this Professor of the Sorbonne an old man, I suppose, and a priest. Very proper, very proper! My cousin, John Jackanapes, the young ex-Leaguer, goes to Court. They will make a Politique of him, a Valois-divine-right man good again, for after this Valois-by-right-divine (save the mark!) comes not Master John d'Albret, but the Bearnais! Yet I do not know perhaps, after all, he had better come with me. Then I shall hold one hostage the more! Let me see let me see!"
Here Jean-aux-Choux, who had at that time no great love for the Abbé John, but was an honest man, protested.
"The time for crowning and seeking crowns is not yet," he said; "but the lad they call the Abbé John, though he fought a little on the Barricades, as young dogs do in a fray general, means no harm to Your Majesty, and will fight for you better than many who protest more!"
"I believe you I believe you!" said Henry. "If there is aught but eyes-making and laying-on of blows in him, I shall soon find it out, and he shall not trail a pike for long. He shall have his company, and that of the choicest of my army."
Suddenly the pastor sprang up. He had a message to deliver, and being of the prevailing school of the mystics, he put it in the shape of a vision, as, indeed, it had appeared to him.
"I see the earth dissolved," he cried, "the elements going up in a flaming fire, the inhabitants tormented and destroyed "
"Thank God! Thank God!" responded the deep, dominating voice of Jean-aux-Choux.
The King requested to know the meaning of this unexpected thankfulness for universal destruction.
"Anything to settle the League!" said Jean-aux-Choux.
CHAPTER XII. THE WAKING OF THE BEARNAIS
As, however, Claire was the only one concerning whom Jean cared an apple-pip, he would have been perfectly content had he known.
As it was, he waited till the Bearnais had betaken himself to his slumbers in Anthony Arpajon's best green-tapestried chamber, and then sailed out, hooded and robed like a Benedictine friar, to make his observations. In the town of Blois, as almost anywhere else in central and southern France, the ex-student of Geneva knew his way blindfold. He skirted the bare rocky side of the castle, whereon now stands the huge pavilion of Gaston of Orleans.
"They will not come and go by the great door," he said, "but there is the small postern, by which it is the custom to make exits and entrances when Court secrets are in the wind."
Accordingly, Jean placed himself behind a great hedge which marked the limits of the royal domain. The city hummed beneath him like a hive of bees aroused untimeously. He could hear now and then the voice of some Leaguer raised in curses of the Valois King and all his favourites. The voice was usually a little indistinct because of the owner's having too frequently considered the redness of the Blesois wine.
Anon the curses would arrive home to roost, and that promptly. For some good royalist, crying "Vive D'Epernon ," would bear down upon the Guisard. Then dull smitings of combat would alternate with war-cries and over-words of faction songs. Once came a single deadly scream, way for which had evidently been opened by a knife, and then, after that, only the dull pad-pad of running feet and silence!
In the palace wall the postern
door opened and someone looked out. It was closed again immediately.
Jean's eyes strove in vain to see more clearly. But the windows above, being brilliantly lighted, threw the postern into the darkest shadow.
A moment after, however, four persons came out first two men, then a slender figure wrapped in a cloak, which Jean knew in a moment for that of his mistress.