ctions are set. But, on the other
hand, she goes to mass, and confesses, and does her best to save her
Huguenot lover's body and soul, and obtain the remission of her own sins
by converting him from his heresy. So that, as times went in the year
1572, she was to be reckoned amongst the righteous. The handsome
heretic, in whose present safety and future salvation she takes so
strong an interest, is one Bernard de Mergy, who has come to Paris to
take service with the great chief of his co-religionists, Admiral
Coligny. His brother, George de Mergy, has deserted the creed of Calvin,
and is consequently in high favour at the Louvre, but under the ban of
his father, a stern old Huguenot officer, who will not hear the name of
his renegade son. Bernard, whilst regretting his brother's apostasy,
does not deem it necessary to shun his society. On the road he has been
cajoled or robbed of his ready cash by a pretty gipsy girl, and his
good horse has been stolen by one of the hordes of German lanzknechts,
whom the recent civil war had brought to France. He reaches Paris with
an empty purse, and is not sorry to meet his brother, who welcomes him
kindly, and supplies his wants, but refuses to recant, and attempts to
justify his backsliding. In the course of his defence he gives an
insight into the prevalent corruption of the time, and shows how the
private vices of great political leaders often marred the fortunes of
their party.

"'You were still at school,' said De Mergy, 'learning Latin and Greek,
when I first donned the cuirass, girded the Huguenot's white scarf, and
took share in our civil wars. Your little Prince of Conde, who has led
his party into so many errors, looked after your affairs when his
intrigues left him time. A lady loved me; the prince asked me to resign
her to him; I refused, and he became my mortal enemy. From that hour he
lost no opportunity of mortifying me.

Ce petit prince si joli
Qui toujours baise sa mignonne,

held me up to the fanatics of the party as a monster of libertinism and
irreligion. I had only one mistress; and as to the irreligion,--I let
others do as they like, why attack me?'

"'I thought the prince incapable of such baseness,' said Bernard.

"'He is dead,' replied his brother, 'and you have deified him. 'Tis the
way of the world. He had great qualities; he died like a brave man, and
I have forgiven him. But then he was powerful, and on the part of a poor
gentleman like mysel