But among these wine-carriers and free folk of the roads there was scarcely one who did not know Jean-aux-Choux. Yet they did not laugh as he entered, but rather greeted him respectfully, as one who plays well his part, though he came in shouting at the top of his voice, "Way for the fool of fools--the fool of three kings--and not so great a fool as any one of them!"
One man came forward, speaking the drawling speech of Burgundy, all liquid "l's" and slurred "r's," and with a clumsy salute took the Jester's beast. Many of the others rose to their feet and made their reverences according to their kind, clumsy or clever. Others whispered quietly, passing round the news of his arrival.
For the fool had come to his own. He was no more Jean-aux-Choux, the King's fool, but Master John Stirling, a Benjamin of the Benjaminites, and pupil of John Calvin himself.
The white-capped man behind the bar opened carefully a little door, and as instantly closed it behind Jean.
He pointed up a narrow stair which turned and was lost to sight in the thickness of the wall.
"You will find them at prayers," he muttered. "He is there."
"Kings are in His hand," responded Jean-aux-Choux, setting a foot on the first worn step of the narrow stair-case; "the Lord of Battles preserve him from the curs that yelp about his feet."
There came to Jean a sound of singing--sweet, far away, wistful, a singing not made for the chanting of choirs or the clamour of organs, but for folk hiding on housetops, in dens and caves of the earth--soft singing, with the enemy deadly and near at hand. The burden of their melody was that thirty-seventh Psalm which once on a time Clement Marot had risked his life to print.
"Wait on the Lord! Meekly thy burden bear; Commit to Him thyself and thine affair! In Him trust thou, and He will bring to pass All that thou wouldst accomplish and compass. Thy loss is gain--such is His equity, Each of His own He guards eternally. This lesson also learn-- He clasps thee closer as the days grow stern."
Jean opened the door. It was a long, black, oak-ceiled room into which he looked. There were perhaps a score of Huguenots present, all standing up, with Marot's little volume of the _Trente Psaumes_ in their hands. A pastor in Geneva gown and bands stood at a table head, upon which a few great folios had been heaped to form a rude pulpit.