the man whose body had
so suffered for that royal law of liberty which judges not by
professions but by works, the Abbe John resolved no more to fight in the
armies of the Huguenot Prince merely as a loyal Catholic, but to be even
such a man as Francis Agnew, if it in him lay.

That it did not so lie within his compass detracts nothing from the
excellence of his resolution. The flesh was weak and would ever remain
so. This gay, careless spirit, bold and hardy in action, was much like
that of Henry of Navarre in his earlier days. There were indeed two
sorts of Huguenots in France in the days of the Wars of Religion. They
divided upon the verse in James which says, "Is any among you afflicted?
Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing."

The Puritans afterwards translated the verse, "Let him sing _psalms_."
But the Genevan translators (whom in this book I follow in their first
edition of 1560) more mercifully left out the "psalms": "_Is any merry,
let him sing!_" say they.

Now such was the fashion of the men who fought for Henry IV. Even
D'Aubigne, the greatest of all--historian, poet, and satirist--expelled
from France for over-rigidity, found himself equally in danger in Geneva
because of the liberty of his Muse's wing.

So, though the Abbe John became a suffering and warring Huguenot, on
grounds good and sufficient to his own conscience, he remained ever the
lad he was when he scuffled on the Barricades for the "Good Guise"--and
the better fighting! A little added head-knowledge does not change men.

No motives are ever simple. No eye ever quite single. And I will not say
what force, if any, the knowledge that Francis Agnew the Scot would
never give his daughter in marriage to a Persecutor of the Brethren, had
in bringing about the Abbe John's decision.

Perhaps none at all--I do not know. I am no man's judge. The weight
which such an argument might have with oneself is all any man can know.
And that is, after all, perhaps best left unstated.

At first John was all for revealing his name and quality; but against
this Francis Agnew warned him At present he was treated as a pressed
man, escaping the "hempen breakfasts of the heretic dogs"--which the
captain, the young Duke d'Err, often commanded the "comite" to serve out
to those condemned for their faith. Only the Turks, of whom there were a
good many, captured during the Levantine wars, strong, grave, sturdy
men, were better treated than he.

"If, then," said