"Guise! Guise! The good Guise! Our prince has come, and all will now be well!"
The street below spoke, and from afar, mingling with scattered shots which told the fate of some doomed Swiss, he heard the chorus of the Leaguers' song:
"The Cardinal, and Henry, and Mayenne, Mayenne! We will fight till all be grey-- Put Valois 'neath our feet to-day, Deep in his grave the Bearnais-- Our chief has come--the Balafré!"
Abbé John recovered his place, unseen by the Professor. He was pale, his cloak dusty with the wriggling he had done under the benches. He was different also. He had been a furious Leaguer. He had shouted for Guise. He had come up the stairs to seek for weapons wherewith to fight for that Sole Pillar of Holy Church.
"Well?" said Guy Launay, looking sideways at him.
"Well, what?" growled the Abbé John, most unclerically. He had indeed no right to the title, save that his uncle was a cardinal, and he looked to be one himself some day--that is, if the influence of his family held. But in these times credit was such a brittle article.
"Did you get the weapons?" snapped his friend--"the pistol, the sword-cane? You have been long enough about it. I have worn my pencil to a stub!"
The Abbé John had intended to lie. But somehow, when he thought of the clear dark eyes wet with tears, and the dead Huguenot, within there--somehow he could not.
The son of the ex-provost of the merchants looked at him once, furiously.
"So do I!" said the Abbé John, nodding blandly.
"Well, what is the reason of it?" grumbled the other. "What has Old Blessings-of-Peace got in there--a hidden treasure or a pretty wench? By the milk-pails o' Mary, I will go and see for myself!"
"Stop," said the Abbé John, with sudden heat, "no more spying! I am sick of it. Let us go and get weapons at the Hotel of the Duke of Guise, if you like--but respect the privacy of our master--our good and kind master!"
Guy Launay eyed his companion a moment murkily.
He gritted his teeth viciously, as if he could gladly have bitten a piece out of his arm. He showed large flat teeth when angry, for all the world like a bad-tempered horse.
"Stop and take notes on the comforts of philosophy by yourself," he said; "I am off to do my duty like a man. You have turned soft at the moment of action, like all Spaniards--all the breed are alike, you and your master, the Demon of the South!"