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

  CHAPTER III.

  THE PROFESSOR OF ELOQUENCE

  "My name," she said, "is Claire Agnew. But since we lived long inProvence and Spanish Roussillon, my father, being learned in thatspeech, called me most often Euphrasia or Euphra, being, as he said,'the light of his eyes'"!

  "Then you are English, and a heretic?" said the young man, while theProfessor, having discharged his papers into the drawer of a cabinet,already full and running over, bent his ear to the breast of the oldman.

  "I am Scottish, and you are the heretic!" said the girl, with spirit.

  "I am no heretic--I am of the Faith!" said the young man.

  "The Faith of treaty-breakers and murderers!"

  She knit her fingers and looked at him defiantly--perhaps, if the truthmust be told, more in anger than in sorrow.

  The voice of the Professor of Eloquence broke in upon them.

  "Young man," he said, "you have surprised a secret which is notmine--much less yours. Be off at once to your uncle, the Cardinald'Albret, and to your friend's father Launay, the ex-provost of themerchants. Get three passports--for me, for my daughter Claire,and--for my nephew----"

  "What nephew?" said the youth, rubbing the ear which the Professor hadpulled.

  "One I have adopted recently!" said the Professor gravely, "a certainworthless loon, who came up hither seeking what was not his--asword-cane and a pistol, and who found that which, God knows, belongs toneither of us--an uncomfortable possession in these days, a Huguenotmaiden with eyes like a flame of fire!"

  "They are more like pansies!" said the young man doggedly.

  "How do you know? How dare you? Is she not my daughter?"

  "Aye, master, she is, of course, your daughter if you say so"--the voiceof the Abbe John was uncertain. He did not like the Professor claimingso much--and he beginning to be bald too. What have bald pates to dowith pretty young girls? Even thus he growled low to himself.

  "Eh, what's that?" the Professor caught him up. "Be off--it is to saveher life, and you are a young blade who should never refuse anadventure, specially when at last it gives you a chance to be taken forthe relative of a respectable man----"

  "And the cousin of this fair maid, your--daughter?"

  "Well, and have I not a good right to a daughter of my own? Once on aday I was married, bonds and bands, parchments and paperings. For tenyears I endured my pain. Well might I have had a daughter, and of herage too, had it not been my hard lot to wed a woman withoutbowels--flint-heart--double-tongue----"

  "I wager it was these ten years that taught him his eloquence!" said theyoung man under his breath. But aloud he answered otherwise, for theyoung girl had withdrawn into the small adjacent piece, leaving the mento talk.

  "And this?" said the Abbe John, indicating the dead man--"what are we todo with this?"

  The face of the Professor of Eloquence cleared.

  "Luckily we are in a place where such accidents can easily be accountedfor. In a twinkle I will summon the servitors. They will find Leagueemblems and holy crosses all about him, candles burning at his head andfeet. The fight still rumbles without. It is but one more good Guisardgone to his account, whom I brought hither out of my love for the Cause,and that the Sorbonne might not be compromised."

  Almost for the first time the student looked at his master withadmiration.

  "Your love for the Cause----" he said. "Why, all the world knows thatyou alone voted against the resolution of the assembled Sorbonne that itwas lawful to depose a king who refused to do his duty in persecutingheretics!"

  "I have repented," said the Professor of Eloquence--"deeply and sorelyrepented. Surely, even in the theology of the Sorbonne, there is placefor repentance?"

  "Place indeed," answered the young man boldly, "but the time is,perhaps, a little ill-chosen."

  However the Professor of Eloquence went on without heeding him.

  "And in so far as this girl's goodwill is concerned, let that be yourpart of the work. Her father, though a heretic, must be interred as ason of the Church. It is the only course which will explain a dead manamong the themes in my robing-room. He has been in rebellion against theKing--but there is none to say against which king! It does not needgreat wisdom to know that in Paris to-day, and especially in theSorbonne, to die fighting against the Lord's Anointed, and for the Dukeof Guise, is to receive the saint's aureole without ever a devil'sadvocate to say you nay!"

  "It is well known," commented the youth, "that you were ever of theKing's party--a Politique! It was even spoken of in the Council of theSixteen."

  "Do you go seek your cousin, sirrah," said the Professor of Eloquence,"and with her be very politic indeed!"

  The Abbe John accepted the duty indicated with brisk alertness.

  "Mind you, no love-making," said Dr. Anatole. "That would be not onlymisplaced, but also exceedingly ill-suited to your ecclesiasticalpretensions."

  "Hear me before we go farther," cried the Abbe John; "I am a goodLeaguer and a good Catholic, but I will not have it said that I am achurchman just because my uncle is!"

  The Professor paid no heed. Instead, he went to a corner cupboard ofornate Spanish mahogany carved into dragons and gargoyles, and from ithe took the medal of the League, the portraits of the Duke of Guise andof the King of Spain. Then, tying a white armlet of Alencon lace aboutthe dead man's wrist, he bade the Abbe John summon the servants.

  The Abbe John stood opened-mouthed watching the preparations.

  "I had always thought----" he began.

  "Of course you had--of course you did. You all do, you half-bakedbabies! You always take your instructors for ancient innocents,purblind, adder-deaf mumblers of platitudes. But you are wrong--you andGuy Launay, and all your like. A good professor is a man who has been agood student, who remembers the tricks of the animal, and is all readyfixed for them before the whisper has run along Bench One! I willconduct this necessary funeral in person. Please do you, since you canbe of no other use, make it your business to explain matters to yourcousin!"

  The servants of the Sorbonne, Leaguers to a man, at last appeared,trickling upstairs half reluctantly. The Professor of Eloquence met themat the door with a grave face.

  "This man has been slain--accidentally," he began, "I believe by theKing's Swiss. I have brought him here myself. It will be as well for theSorbonne that these matters go no further--good for you, as well as formyself, and for all the college of the Doctors, after the resolution ofwhich we know. Let Father Gontier be called, and the dead man interredwith all due ceremony in the private sepulchre of the faculty."

  When the servitors of the Sorbonne had seen the half-hidden wristlet ofthe good Leaguer, the medals of the two great chiefs, they understood.After all, the King might win--and then--men might stay or flee, Guisesrise and set, but it was clearly the destiny of the Sorbonne to go onfor ever, if only to afford them a means of livelihood.

  They were men with families, and the advantage of keeping a still tonguein each several head had often been pointed out to them. It was, indeed,a condition of their service at Sorbonne.

  So the funeral of Francis the Scot took place in the strictest secrecy.As a mourner, close beside the bier, knelt the niece of good Dr.Anatole, the Professor of Eloquence. It was not thought unusual, eitherthat Doctors of the Sorbonne should have nieces, or that they should beovercome at the sight of war and dead men. Grave doctors' nieces werealmost proverbially tender-hearted. The Abbe John, a cousin by themother's side, and near relative of the great Leaguer Cardinal, ordered,explained, and comforted, according as he had to do with Sorbonneservitors, Jesuit fathers, or weeping girls.

  He found himself in his element, this Abbe John.