Ninth? Let him
answer that. Down with the infidel--the Jew--the sorcerer! The stake
were too good for him. Down with Ruggieri, I say."

"Aye, down with the accursed astrologer," echoed the whole crew. "He has
done abundant mischief in his time. A day of reckoning has arrived. Hath
he cast his own horoscope? Did he foresee his own fate? Ha! ha!"

"And then the poets," cried another member of the Four Nations--"a
plague on all three. Would they were elsewhere. In what does this
disputation concern them? Pierre Ronsard, being an offshoot of this same
College of Navarre, hath indubitably a claim upon our consideration. But
he is old, and I marvel that his gout permitted him to hobble so far.
Oh, the mercenary old scribbler! His late verses halt like himself, yet
he lowereth not the price of his masques. Besides which, he is grown
moral, and unsays all his former good things. _Mort Dieu!_ your
superannuated bards ever recant the indiscretions of their nonage.
Clement Marot took to psalm-writing in his old age. As to Baif, his name
will scarce outlast the scenery of his ballets, his plays are out of
fashion since the Gelosi arrived. He deserves no place among us. And
Philip Desportes owes all his present preferment to the Vicomte de
Joyeuse. However, he is not altogether devoid of merit--let him wear his
bays, so he trouble us not with his company. Room for the sophisters of
Narbonne, I say. To the dogs with poetry!"

"_Morbleu!_" exclaimed another. "What are the sophisters of Narbonne to
the decretists of the Sorbonne, who will discuss you a position of
Cornelius a Lapide, or a sentence of Peter Lombard, as readily as you
would a flask of hippocras, or a slice of botargo. Aye, and cry
_transeat_ to a thesis of Aristotle, though it be against rule. What
sayst thou, Capete?" continued he, addressing his neighbor, a scholar of
Montaigu, whose modest gray capuchin procured him this appellation: "are
we the men to be thus scurvily entreated?"

"I see not that your merits are greater than ours," returned he of the
capuch, "though our boasting be less. The followers of the lowly John
Standoncht are as well able to maintain their tenets in controversy as
those of Robert of Sorbon; and I see no reason why entrance should be
denied us. The honor of the university is at stake, and all its strength
should be mustered to assert it."

"Rightly spoken," returned the Bernardin; "and it were a lasting
disgrace to our schools were this