n
saw government where Luther saw dogma only. While the stout beer-drinker
and amorous German fought with the devil and flung an inkbottle at his
head, the man from Picardy, a sickly celibate, made plans of campaign,
directed battles, armed princes, and roused whole peoples by sowing
republican doctrines in the hearts of the burghers--recouping his
continual defeats in the field by fresh progress in the mind of the
nations.

The Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise, like Philip the Second
and the Duke of Alba, knew where and when the monarchy was threatened,
and how close the alliance ought to be between Catholicism and Royalty.
Charles the Fifth, drunk with the wine of Charlemagne's cup, believing
too blindly in the strength of his monarchy, and confident of sharing
the world with Suleiman, did not at first feel the blow at his head;
but no sooner had Cardinal Granvelle made him aware of the extent of
the wound than he abdicated. The Guises had but one scheme,--that
of annihilating heresy at a single blow. This blow they were now to
attempt, for the first time, to strike at Amboise; failing there they
tried it again, twelve years later, at the Saint-Bartholomew,--on the
latter occasion in conjunction with Catherine de' Medici, enlightened by
that time by the flames of a twelve years' war, enlightened above all
by the significant word "republic," uttered later and printed by the
writers of the Reformation, but already foreseen (as we have said
before) by Lecamus, that type of the Parisian bourgeoisie.

The two Guises, now on the point of striking a murderous blow at the
heart of the French nobility, in order to separate it once for all from
a religious party whose triumph would be its ruin, still stood together
on the terrace, concerting as to the best means of revealing their
coup-d'Etat to the king, while Catherine was talking with her
counsellors.

"Jeanne d'Albret knew what she was about when she declared herself
protectress of the Huguenots! She has a battering-ram in the
Reformation, and she knows how to use it," said the duke, who fathomed
the deep designs of the Queen of Navarre, one of the great minds of the
century.

"Theodore de Beze is now at Nerac," remarked the cardinal, "after first
going to Geneva to take Calvin's orders."

"What men these burghers know how to find!" exclaimed the duke.

"Ah! we have none on our side of the quality of La Renaudie!" cried the
cardinal. "He is a true Catiline.