convey to Catherine the treaty
which, if discovered, would in all probability cost him his life, the
lad had relied on his nerve, upon chance, upon the powers of his mind,
and confident in such hopes he bravely, nay, audaciously put himself
between those terrible adversaries, the Guises and Catherine. During the
torture he still kept saying to himself: "I shall come out of it! it is
only pain!" But when this second and brutal demand, "Die, we want your
life," was made upon a boy who was still almost helpless, scarcely
recovered from his late torture, and clinging all the more to life
because he had just seen death so near, it was impossible for him to
launch into further illusions.

Christophe answered quietly:--

"What is it now?"

"To fire a pistol courageously, as Stuart did on Minard."

"On whom?"

"The Duc de Guise."

"A murder?"

"A vengeance. Have you forgotten the hundred gentlemen massacred on the
scaffold at Amboise? A child who saw that butchery, the little d'Aubigne
cried out, 'They have slaughtered France!'"

"You should receive the blows of others and give none; that is the
religion of the gospel," said Christophe. "If you imitate the Catholics
in their cruelty, of what good is it to reform the Church?"

"Oh! Christophe, they have made you a lawyer, and now you argue!" said
Chaudieu.

"No, my friend," replied the young man, "but parties are ungrateful;
and you will be, both you and yours, nothing more than puppets of the
Bourbons."

"Christophe, if you could hear Calvin, you would know how we wear them
like gloves! The Bourbons are the gloves, we are the hand."

"Read that," said Christophe, giving Chaudieu Pibrac's letter containing
the answer of the Prince de Conde.

"Oh! my son; you are ambitious, you can no longer make the sacrifice of
yourself!--I pity you!"

With those fine words Chaudieu turned and left him.

Some days after that scene, the Lallier family and the Lecamus family
were gathered together in honor of the formal betrothal of Christophe
and Babette, in the old brown hall, from which Christophe's bed had been
removed; for he was now able to drag himself about and even mount the
stairs without his crutches. It was nine o'clock in the evening and
the company were awaiting Ambroise Pare. The family notary sat before a
table on which lay various contracts. The furrier was selling his house
and business to his head-clerk, who was to pay down forty thousand
francs for the ho