t out the only shut square
of glass (bottle-green, by way of distinction) and buzzed loudly all
over it.

The Professor thumbed the discourse of the day on "Peace as the
Characteristic Virtue of the Christian Faith." It was a favourite
lecture with him. He had used it as exposition, homily, exhortation; and
had even on one occasion ventured to deliver it before the Venerable the
Conclave 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 through
the open windows, by which the early roses ought to have been sending up
their good smell, there came a whiff of the reek of gunpowder, the
excellent Anatole felt that the devil was loose indeed.

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

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

"Ah, what is that?"

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

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

In that short period all was changed. The Royal Swiss had moved on. The
battling clerks had also vanished. The narrow Street of the University
was blank save for the old man who lay there wounded on the little,
knobbed cobble-stones, and the slim, clo