s" of the King of
France. But it was not known to many alive that a mind clear and
logical, a heart full of the highest determinations, were hidden away
under the fool's motley and the tattered cloak of the gangrel man.

Only to Francis Agnew had the Fool talked equally and with unbound
heart. Even Claire did not guess what lay beneath this folly of
misapplied texts and mirth-provoking preachments. There can be no better
mask for real fanaticism than the pretence of it. And whereas Francis
Agnew had been a gentleman and a diplomat always, his henchman, Jock the
Fool, was a fanatic of the purest strain, adding thereto a sense of
humour and probably a strain of real madness as well.

"Come up hither, Jean-aux-Choux!" cried the lads on the barricades.
"Turn a somersault for us, Cabbage Jock!" shouted a fellow-countryman,
on his way to preferment in the Scots Guard, who in the meanwhile was
filling up his time by fighting manfully against the King's troops.

"Lick the tip of your nose, Jock!" roared yet a third; "waggle your
ears! Ah, well done! Now jest for us, and we will give you a good
drink--Macon of the fourth year--as much as you can take down at a
draught. This Guisarding is dry work."

The streets were full of excited men, cheering for Holy Faith and the
Duke of Guise. They cried that they were going to kill the King, and
make that most Catholic Prince, the Head of the League, King in his
stead.

The Protestants in Paris had fled or hidden. There were great fears of a
second St. Bartholomew. But those who remembered the first, said that if
that had been intended, there would be a deal less noise and a deal more
private whetting of daggers and sword-blades.

Once the Professor of Eloquence left them for a moment in order to run
upstairs to tell his housekeeper and her husband that they were to hold
his house against all authority save that of the King, and not yield too
soon even to that. He might be away some time, he said.

The Abbe John, whose housekeeping was of a desultory sort--consisting
chiefly in going to see his uncle, the Cardinal d'Albret, when he was in
need of money or of the ghostly counsel of a prince of the Church--made
no preparations for flight, save to feel in his breeches pocket to make
sure that he had his gold safely there.

"My creditors can wait, or importune my uncle, who will have them thrown
in the Seine for their pains," said the young student of the Sorbonne
easily; "and as for