The White Plumes of Navarre: A Romance of the Wars of Religion Read online

  CHAPTER I.

  THE DAY OF BARRICADES

  "_The good Duke! The sweet Prince! The Church's pillar! Guise! The goodGuise!_"

  Through the open window the shouts, near and far, invaded the quietclass-room of the Sorbonne. It was empty, save for the Professor ofEloquence, one Dr. Anatole Long, and a certain vagrant bluebottle which,with the native perversity of its tribe, sought out the only shut squareof glass (bottle-green, by way of distinction) and buzzed loudly allover it.

  The Professor thumbed the discourse of the day on "Peace as theCharacteristic Virtue of the Christian Faith." It was a favouritelecture with him. He had used it as exposition, homily, exhortation; andhad even on one occasion ventured to deliver it before the Venerable theConclave of the Sorbonne itself.

  Professor Anatole sighed as he listened to the ringing shouts outside,the clatter of steel on peaceful educational stairways, and when throughthe open windows, by which the early roses ought to have been sending uptheir good smell, there came a whiff of the reek of gunpowder, theexcellent Anatole felt that the devil was loose indeed.

  It was the great Day of Barricades, and all Paris was in arms againstthe King, royal, long-descended, legitimate--and worthless.

  "Rebellion--rank rebellion," groaned the Professor; "no good will comeof it. Balafre, the Scarred One, will get a dagger in his throat oneday. And then--then--there will be a great killing! The King is tooignorant to forgive!"

  "Ah, what is that?"

  A noise of guns crashed, spat, and roared beneath the window which gaveon to the narrow street. Professor Anatole rose hastily and went to thecasement, worried a moment with the bar-fastening (for the window onthat side was never unhasped), opened it, and looked forth. Littledarting, shifting groups of lads in their dingy student cloaks, weredefending themselves as best they might against a detachment of theKing's Royal Swiss, who, on the march from one part of the city toanother, had been surprised at the head of the narrow Street of theUniversity.

  An old man had somehow been knocked down. His companion, a slim youth ina long, black cape, knelt and tried to hold up the failing head. Thewhite beard, streaked with dark stains, lay across his knees. Now theProfessor of Eloquence, though he lectured by preference concerning thevirtues of peace, thought that there were limits even to these; so,grasping his staff, which had a sword concealed in the handle, ofcunning Venice work, ran downstairs, and so found himself out on thestreet.

  In that short period all was changed. The Royal Swiss had moved on. Thebattling clerks had also vanished. The narrow Street of the Universitywas blank save for the old man who lay there wounded on the little,knobbed cobble-stones, and the slim, cloaked youth bending over him.

  Professor Anatole does not remember clearly what followed. Certain itis that he and the lad must have carried the wounded man up the narrowstair. For when Anatole came a little to himself they were, all thethree of them, in his wide, bare attiring-chamber, from which it was hiscustom to issue forth, gowned and solemn, in the midst of an admiringhush, with the roll of his daily lecture clasped in his right hand,while he upheld the long and troublesome academic skirts with the other.

  But now, all suddenly, among these familiar cupboards and books ofreference, he found himself with a dying man--or rather, as it seemed, aman already dead. And, what troubled him far more, with a lad whose longhair, becoming loosened, floated down upon his shoulders, while he weptlong and continuously, "Oh--oh--oh--my father!" sobbing from the top ofhis throat.

  Now Professor Anatole was a wise man, a philosopher even. It was the dayof _mignons_. The word was invented then. King Henry III. had alwayshalf-a-dozen or so, not counting D'Epernon and La Joyeuse. That mightaccount for the long hair. But even a _mignon_ would not have cried"Ah--ah--ah!" in quick, rending sobs from the chest and diaphragm.

  He, Anatole Long, Professor of Eloquence at the Sorbonne, was inpresence of a great difficulty--the greatest of his life. There was adead man in his robing-room, and a girl with long hair, who wept intremulous contralto.

  What if some of his students were minded to come back! A terriblethought! But there was small fear of that. The rascals were all outshouting for the Duke of Guise and helping to build the great barricadeswhich shut in the Swiss like rats in a trap. They were Leaguers to aman, these Sorbonne students--for fun, however, not from devotion.

  Yet when he went back to the big empty class-room to bethink himself alittle (it was a good twenty years since he had been accustomed to thissort of thing), lo! there were two young fellows rooting about among thecoats and cloaks, from the midst of which he had taken his sword-canewhen he ran downstairs.

  "What are you doing there?" he cried, with a sudden quick anger, as ifstudents of eloquence had no right in the class-room of their ownProfessor. "Answer me, you, Guy Launay, and you, John d'Albret!"

  "We are looking for----" began Guy Launay, the son of the ex-provost ofthe merchants, a dour, dark clod of a lad, with the fingers of aswordsman and the muscles of a wrestler. He was going to say (what wasthe truth) that they had come up to look for the Professor's sword-cane,which they judged might be useful against the King's folk, when, ofinstinct far more fine, his companion, called the Abbe John, nephew ofthe great Leaguer Cardinal, stopped him with a swift sidelong drive ofthe elbow in the ribs, which winded him completely.

  "We have come to listen to your lecture, master!" he said, bowing low."We are sorry indeed to be a little late. But getting entangled in thepress, it was impossible for us to arrive sooner. We ask your pardon,dear master!"

  Under his breath the Abbe John confided to his companion, "Evidently oldBlessings-of-Peace has carried that sword-stick off into hisretiring-room for safety. Let him begin his lecture. Then in fiveminutes he will forget about everything else, and you or I will sneak inand bag it!"

  "You--you mean," said Launay; "I should move about as silently as abullock on a pontoon bridge!"

  With his eye ever on the carefully-shut door of his private chamber,and his ear cocked for the sound of sobbing, the Professor moved slowlyto his reading-desk. For the first time in his life he regretted thepresence of students in the class-room. Why--why could they not havestayed away and dethroned anointed kings, and set up most Catholicprinces, and fought for the Holy League and the pleasure of cloutingheads? That was what students of the Sorbonne seemed to be for in theselatter days. But to come here, at the proper hour, to take notes of alecture on the Blessings of Peace, with the gun-shots popping outside,and dead men--no, somehow he did not care to think of dead men, nor ofweeping girls either! So at this point he walked solemnly across theuneven floor and turned the key in the door of his robing-room.

  Instantly the elbow of Guy Launay sought the side of the Abbe John,called alternatively the Spaniard, and made him gasp.

  "D'ye see that?" whispered Guy, "the old rascal has locked the door. Hesuspects. Come, we may as well trip it. We shan't get either thesword-cane nor yet the pistols and bullets on the top of the guard-robe.My milk-brother, Stephen, saw them there when he took his week ofchamber-valeting Old Peace-with-Honour!"

  "Screw up your mouth--tight!" said the Abbe John politely; "a deal ofnonsense will get spread about otherwise. I will attend to everything inthe room of Old Blessings-of-Peace!"

  "You!"

  "Yes, I--wait and see. Get out your tablets and take notes--spread yourelbows, man! Do as I do, and the blessing of Saint Nicholas of Padua beupon all thieves and rascals--of whom we are two choice specimens!"

  "Speak for yourself, Spaniard!" spluttered the other, havingaccidentally sucked the wrong end of his pen; "my uncle is not acardinal, and as to my father----"

  "He sells hanks of yarn, and cheats in the measurement!"

  "I dare you to say so, you left-hand prince, you grease-spot on thecardinal's purple--you----"

  "That will do," said the Abbe John calmly; "to-morrow I will give youthwacks when and where you like. But now listen, mark, learn, and in anycase keep our good Master Anatole from so frequently glancing at t
hatdoor. One would think he had the devil shut up within!"

  "Impossible--quite impossible; he is loose and exceedingly busy outsidethere! Listen to the shots," said Guy, inclining an ear to the window.

  _Crack--crack! Bang!_

  The windows rattled.

  "Hurrah for the People's Duke! Down with the King! Death to theHuguenots!--to the Barbets!--to the English! Death! Death! Death!"

  "Lively down there--I wish we were up and away!" mourned the son of theex-provost of the merchants, "but without arms and ammunition, what canfellows do?"

  "As sayeth the Wise Man"--the voice of the Professor of Eloquence beganto quicken into its stride--"'all her main roads are pleasant roads; andher very by-paths, her _sentiers_, lead to peace!'"

  "If we could only get at those pistols and things!" murmured Guy Launay."I wager you a groat that the old man is mistaken! Oh, just hearken tothem outside there, will you? Peace is a chafing-dish. War is the greatsport!"

  "Down with the King! Bring along those chains for the barricade!Students to the rescue!"

  Then came up to their ears the blithe marching song, the time stronglymarked:

  "The Guises are good men, good men, The Cardinal, and Henry, and Mayenne, Mayenne! And we'll fight till all be grey-- The Valois at our feet to-day, And in his grave the Bearnais-- Our chief has come--the Balafre!"

  "Keys of Sainted Peter!" moaned Guy Launay, "I cannot stand this. I amgoing down, though I have no better weapon than a barrel-stave."

  And he hummed, rapping on the inscribed and whittled bench with hisfingers, the refrain of the famous League song:

  "For we'll fight till all be grey-- The Valois at our feet to-day, In his deep grave the Bearnais-- Our chief has come--the Balafre!"

  But Professor Anatole did not hear. He was in the whirl of hisexposition of the blessings of universal peace. The Church had alwaysbrought a sword, and would to the end. But Philosophy, DivinePhilosophy, which was what Solomon meant--peace was within her walls,prosperity, etc.

  And by this time the Spaniard, otherwise the Abbe John, was crawlingstealthily towards the locked door. Guy Launay, on the contrary, wasbreathing hard, rustling leaves, taking notes for two, both elbowsworking. The Master was in the full rush of his discourse. He sawnothing, knew nothing. He had forgotten the robing-room in theaffirmation that, "In the midst of turmoil, the truly philosophic may,and often does, preserve the true peace--the truest of all, peace ofmind, peace of conscience."

  _Bang!_

  There was a tremendous explosion immediately under the window.

  "The King's men blowing up a barricade!" thought the Abbe John, with hishand on the great flat key, but drawing back a little. "If that does notwake him up, nothing will."

  But the gentle, even voice went on, triumphing--the periods so familiarto the lecturer ringing out more clearly than ever. "Wars shall ceaseonly when Wisdom, which is God, shall prevail. Philosophy is at one withReligion. The Thousand Years shall come a thousand times over and on theearth shall reign----"

  The key gritted in the lock. The Abbe John disappeared behind the heavycurtain which hid the door of the robing-room.

  The next moment he found himself in the presence of a man, lying rigidlyon the Professor's table, all among the books and papers, and of thefairest young girl the Abbe John had ever seen, gently closing eyeswhich would never more look out upon the world.

  Within, the Professor's voice droned on, discoursing of peace,righteousness, and eternal law. The great Day of the Barricades rattledand thundered without. Acrid blasts of sulphurous reek drove into thequiet room, and the Abbe John, speechless with amazement, looked intothe wet eyes of this wonderful vision--the purest, the loveliest, themost forlorn maid in France.