Hand". In some such colours had his
father, bred under Calvin to the ministry, depicted it: and the young
man, half French, half Vaudois, sought nothing better, set nothing
higher, than to form a part of its life, and eventually to contribute to
its fame. Good intentions and honest hopes tumbled over one another in
his brain as he walked. The ardour of a new life, to be begun this day,
possessed him. He saw all things through the pure atmosphere of his own
happy nature: and if it remained to him to discover how Geneva would
stand the test of a closer intimacy, at this moment, the youth took the
city to his heart with no jot of misgiving. To follow in the steps of
Theodore Beza, a Frenchman like himself and gently bred, to devote
himself, in these surroundings to the Bible and the Sword, and find in
them salvation for himself and help for others--this seemed an end
simple and sufficing: the end too, which all men in Geneva appeared to
him to be pursuing that summer evening.

By-and-by a grave citizen, a psalm-book in his hand, directed him to the
inn in the Bourg du Four; a tall house turning the carved ends of two
steep gables to the street. On either side of the porch a long low
casement suggested the comfort that was to be found within; nor was the
pledge unfulfilled. In a trice the student found himself seated at a
shining table before a simple meal and a flagon of cool white wine with
a sprig of green floating on the surface. His companions were two
merchants of Lyons, a vintner of Dijon, and a taciturn, soberly clad
professor. The four elders talked gravely of the late war, of the
prevalence of drunkenness in Zurich, of a sad case of witchcraft at
Basle, and of the state of trade in Lausanne and the Pays de Vaud; while
the student, listening with respect, contrasted the quietude of this
house, looking on the grey evening street, with the bustle and chatter
and buffoonery of the inns at which he had lain on his way from
Chatillon. He was in a mood to appraise at the highest all about him,
from the demure maid who served them to the cloaked burghers who from
time to time passed the window wrapped in meditation. From a house hard
by the sound of the evening psalms came to his ears. There are moods and
places in which to be good seems of the easiest; to err, a thing
well-nigh impossible.

The professor was the first to rise and retire; on which the two
merchants drew up their seats to the table with an air of relief.