"The Guises have irritated the house of Bourbon," said Theodore after a pause. "They came to an open rupture at Orleans.""Ah!" said Calvin, "you would not believe me, my son, when I told you the last time you started for Nerac that we should end by stirring up war to the death between the two branches of the house of France? Ihave, at least, one court, one king and royal family on my side. My doctrine is producing its effect upon the masses. The burghers, too, understand me; they regard as idolators all who go to Mass, who paint the walls of their churches, and put pictures and statues within them.
Ha! it is far more easy for a people to demolish churches and palaces than to argue the question of justification by faith, or the real presence. Luther was an argufier, but I,--I am an army! He was a reasoner, I am a system. In short, my sons, he was merely a skirmisher, but I am Tarquin! Yes, /my/ faithful shall destroy pictures and pull down churches; they shall make mill-stones of statues to grind the flour of the peoples. There are guilds and corporations in the States-general--I will have nothing there but individuals. Corporations resist; they see clear where the masses are blind. We must join to our doctrine political interests which will consolidate it, and keep together the /materiel/ of my armies. I have satisfied the logic of cautious souls and the minds of thinkers by this bared and naked worship which carries religion into the world of ideas; I have made the peoples understand the advantages of suppressing ceremony. It is for you, Theodore, to enlist their interests; hold to that; go not beyond it. All is said in the way of doctrine; let no one add one iota. Why does Cameron, that little Gascon pastor, presume to write of it?"Calvin, de Beze, and Chaudieu were mounting the steep steps of the upper town in the midst of a crowd, but the crowd paid not the slightest attention to the men who were unchaining the mobs of other cities and preparing them to ravage France.
After this terrible tirade, the three marched on in silence till they entered the little place Saint-Pierre and turned toward the pastor's house. On the second story of that house (never noted, and of which in these days no one is ever told in Geneva, where, it may be remarked, Calvin has no statue) his lodging consisted of three chambers with common pine floors and wainscots, at the end of which were the kitchen and the bedroom of his woman-servant. The entrance, as usually happened in most of the burgher households of Geneva, was through the kitchen, which opened into a little room with two windows, serving as parlor, salon, and dining-room. Calvin's study, where his thought had wrestled with suffering for the last fourteen years, came next, with the bedroom beyond it. Four oaken chairs covered with tapestry and placed around a square table were the sole furniture of the parlor. Astove of white porcelain, standing in one corner of the room, cast out a gentle heat. Panels and a wainscot of pine wood left in its natural state without decoration covered the walls. Thus the nakedness of the place was in keeping with the sober and simple life of the Reformer.
"Well?" said de Beze as they entered, profiting by a few moments when Chaudieu left them to put up the horse at a neighboring inn, "what am I to do? Will you agree to the colloquy?""Of course," replied Calvin. "And it is you, my son, who will fight for us there. Be peremptory, be arbitrary. No one, neither the queen nor the Guises nor I, wants a pacification; it would not suit us at all. I have confidence in Duplessis-Mornay; let him play the leading part. Are we alone?" he added, with a glance of distrust into the kitchen, where two shirts and a few collars were stretched on a line to dry. "Go and shut all the doors. Well," he continued when Theodore had returned, "we must drive the king of Navarre to join the Guises and the Connetable by advising him to break with Queen Catherine de'
Medici. Let us all get the benefit of that poor creature's weakness.
If he turns against the Italian she will, when she sees herself deprived of that support, necessarily unite with the Prince de Conde and Coligny. Perhaps this manoeuvre will so compromise her that she will be forced to remain on our side."Theodore de Beze caught the hem of Calvin's cassock and kissed it.
"Oh! my master," he exclaimed, "how great you are!""Unfortunately, my dear Theodore, I am dying. If I die without seeing you again," he added, sinking his voice and speaking in the ear of his minister of foreign affairs, "remember to strike a great blow by the hand of some one of our martyrs.""Another Minard to be killed?"
"Something better than a mere lawyer."
"A king?"
"Still better!--a man who wants to be a king.""The Duc de Guise!" exclaimed Theodore, with an involuntary gesture.
"Well?" cried Calvin, who thought he saw disappointment or resistance in the gesture, and did not see at the same moment the entrance of Chaudieu. "Have we not the right to strike as we are struck?--yes, to strike in silence and in darkness. May we not return them wound for wound, and death for death? Would the Catholics hesitate to lay traps for us and massacre us? Assuredly not. Let us burn their churches!
Forward, my children! And if you have devoted youths--""I have," said Chaudieu.
"Use them as engines of war! our cause justifies all means. Le Balafre, that horrible soldier, is, like me, more than a man; he is a dynasty, just as I am a system. He is able to annihilate us;therefore, I say, Death to the Guise!"
