Then came up to their ears the blithe marching song, the time strongly marked:
"The Guises are good men, good men, The Cardinal, and Henry, and Mayenne, Mayenne! And we'll fight till all be grey-- The Valois at our feet to-day, And in his grave the Bearnais-- Our chief has come--the Balafré!"
"Keys of Sainted Peter!" moaned Guy Launay, "I cannot stand this. I am going down, though I have no better weapon than a barrel-stave."
And he hummed, rapping on the inscribed and whittled bench with his fingers, the refrain of the famous League song:
"For we'll fight till all be grey-- The Valois at our feet to-day, In his deep grave the Bearnais-- Our chief has come--the Balafré!"
But Professor Anatole did not hear. He was in the whirl of his exposition of the blessings of universal peace. The Church had always brought a sword, and would to the end. But Philosophy, Divine Philosophy, which was what Solomon meant--peace was within her walls, prosperity, etc.
And by this time the Spaniard, otherwise the Abbé John, was crawling stealthily towards the locked door. Guy Launay, on the contrary, was breathing hard, rustling leaves, taking notes for two, both elbows working. The Master was in the full rush of his discourse. He saw nothing, knew nothing. He had forgotten the robing-room in the affirmation that, "In the midst of turmoil, the truly philosophic may, and often does, preserve the true peace--the truest of all, peace of mind, peace of conscience."
There was a tremendous explosion immediately under the window.
"The King's men blowing up a barricade!" thought the Abbé John, with his hand on the great flat key, but drawing back a little. "If that does not wake him up, nothing will."
But the gentle, even voice went on, triumphing--the periods so familiar to the lecturer ringing out more clearly than ever. "Wars shall cease only when Wisdom, which is God, shall prevail. Philosophy is at one with Religion. The Thousand Years shall come a thousand times over and on the earth shall reign----"
The key gritted in the lock. The Abbé John disappeared behind the heavy curtain which hid the door of the robing-room.
The next moment he found himself in the presence of a man, lying rigidly on the Professor's table, all among the books and papers, and of the fairest young girl the Abbé John had ever seen, gently closing eyes which would never more look out upon the world.