o turn
her companion from black ideas; "perhaps I can help. At least, I have
with me one who, though they name him 'fool,' is yet wiser than all the
men I have met, excepting only my father."

"And they name this marvel--what?" demanded the Princess.

"Jean-aux-Choux--the Fool of the Three Henries."

Mistress Catherine clapped her hands almost girlishly, forgetting her
accustomed dignity.

"I have seen him," she cried; "once he came to Nerac, where he pleased
the Reine Margot greatly. She is a judge of fools!"

"Our Jean is no fool, really," said Claire, "but born of my nation, and
a learned man, very zealous for the Faith."

"I know--I know," said the Princess; "I have heard D'Aubigne say of him,
that folly made the best cloak for unsafe wisdom. As to the design
against the King, it is this. Before the Duke of Guise comes to the
Parliament, the Valois will first invite my brother to a conference--not
here in Blois, but nearer his own lines--at Poitiers, perhaps, or at
Loches. The Queen-Mother, the Medici woman, though sick and old, has
gathered many of her maids-of-honour. She will strive to work upon my
easy brother with fair words and fair faces, in the hope that, like
Judas, he will betray his Master with a kiss!"

"I had not thought there could be in all the world such--women!" said
Claire. "After all, our Scottish way is fairer--and that is foot to foot
and blade to blade!"

"Even the Valois dagger in the back is better," said the Princess; "but
this Italian woman is cunning, like all her fox-brood of Florentine
money-lenders! How shall we foil her? It is useless speaking to my
brother. He would only laugh, and bid me get to my sampler till he had
found a goodman of my own for me to knit hose for!"

"Let me ask counsel of the Doctor of the Sorbonne who is with me,"
Claire urged; "he is very wise, and----"

"A Doctor of the Sorbonne!" cried Mistress Catherine--"impossible! Why,
have they not cursed my brother, excommunicated him? They have even
turned against their own King!"

"Ay, but," said Claire, now eager to do her friend justice, "_my_ Doctor
they have excommunicated also, because he withstood them in full
Senatus. If he went back to Paris just now, they would hang him in his
gown from the windows of his own class-room!"

So in this way Doctor Anatole of the Sorbonne entered into the heretic
councils of the Bearnais. Indeed, his was the idea which came like a
lightning-flash of illumination upo