r,
Theodore Beza, was a source of glory to all within the city walls.
Learning, too, was a thing in high repute in that day. The learned
tongues still lived and were passports opening all countries to
scholars. The names of Erasmus and Scaliger were still in the mouths of
men.

"Yes," the youth answered, "and I have the name of a lodging in which I
hope to place myself. But for to-night it is late, and an inn were more
convenient."

"Go then to the 'Bible and Hand,'" the sergeant answered. "It is a
decent house, as are all in Geneva. If you think to find here a
roistering, drinking, swearing tavern, such as you'd find in Dijon----"

"I come to study, not to drink," the young man answered eagerly.

"Well, the 'Bible and Hand,' then! It will answer your purpose well.
Cross the bridge and go straight on. It is in the Bourg du Four."

The youth thanked him with a pleased air, and turning his back on the
gate proceeded briskly towards the heart of the city. Though it was not
Sunday the inhabitants were pouring out from the evening preaching as
plentifully as if it had been the first day of the week; and as he
scanned their grave and thoughtful faces--faces not seldom touched with
sternness or the scars of war--as he passed between the gabled
steep-roofed houses and marked their order and cleanliness, as he saw
above him and above them the two great towers of the cathedral, he felt
a youthful fervour and an enthusiasm not to be comprehended in our age.

To many of us the name and memory of Geneva stand for anything but
freedom. But to the Huguenot of that generation and day, the name of
Geneva stood for freedom; for a fighting aggressive freedom, a full
freedom in the State, a sober measured freedom in the Church. The city
was the outpost, southwards, of the Reformed religion and the Reformed
learning; it sowed its ministers over half Europe, and where they went,
they spread abroad not only its doctrines but its praise and its honour.
If, even to the men of that day there appeared at times a something too
stiff in its attitude, a something too near the Papal in its decrees,
they knew with what foes and against what odds it fought, and how little
consistent with the ferocity of that struggle were the compromises of
life or the courtesies of the lists.

At any rate, in some such colours as these, framed in such a halo,
Claude Mercier saw the Free City as he walked its narrow streets that
evening, seeking the "Bible and