nts and advantage of his sojourn at Paris, of which by no
means the least was the society of Philip Sidney, and the charm his
brilliant genius imparted to every pursuit they shared. Books at the
University, fencing and dancing from the best professors, Italian
poetry, French sonnets, Latin epigrams; nothing came amiss to Sidney,
the flower of English youth: and Berenger had taste, intelligence, and
cultivation enough to enter into all in which Sidney led the way. The
good tutor, after all his miseries on the journey, was delighted to
write to Lord Walwyn, that, far from being a risk and temptation, this
visit was a school in all that was virtuous and comely.

If the good man had any cause of dissatisfaction, it was with the
Calvinistic tendencies of the Ambassador's household. Walsingham
was always on the Puritanical side of Elizabeth's court, and such an
atmosphere as that of Paris, where the Roman Catholic system was at that
time showing more corruption than it has ever done before or since in
any other place, naturally threw him into sympathy with the Reformed.
The reaction that half a century later filled the Gallican Church with
saintliness had not set in; her ecclesiastics were the tools of a wicked
and bloodthirsty court, who hated virtue as much as schism in the men
whom they persecuted. The Huguenots were for the most part men whose
instincts for truth and virtue had recoiled from the popular system, and
thus it was indeed as if piety and morality were arrayed on one side,
and superstition and debauchery on the other. Mr. Adderley thus
found the tone of the Ambassador's chaplain that of far more complete
fellowship with the Reformed pastors than he himself was disposed to
admit. There were a large number of these gathered at Paris; for the
lull in persecution that had followed the battle of Moncontour had given
hopes of a final accommodation between the two parties, and many had
come up to consult with the numerous lay nobility who had congregated
to witness the King of Navarre's wedding. Among them, Berenger met his
father's old friend Isaac Gardon, who had come to Paris for the purpose
of giving his only surviving son in marriage to the daughter of a
watchmaker to whom he had for many years been betrothed. By him the
youth, with his innocent face and gracious respectful manners, was
watched with delight, as fulfilling the fairest hopes of the poor Baron,
but the old minister would have been sorely disappointed