here 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. A stove 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 t