“Perchance,” returned the Spaniard.  “We will discuss that point anon.”

“And what doth the pander of the Sybarite within the dusty halls of learning?” ejaculated a scholar of Lemoine.  “What doth the jealous-pated slayer of his wife and unborn child within the reach of free-spoken voices, and mayhap of well-directed blades?  Methinks it were more prudent to tarry within the bowers of his harem, than to hazard his perfumed person among us.”

“Well said,” rejoined the scholar of Cluny—­“down with Rene de Villequier, though he be Governor of Paris.”

“What title hath the Abbe de Brantome to a seat among us?” said the scion of Harcourt:  “faith, he hath a reputation for wit, and scholarship, and gallantry.  But what is that to us?  His place might now be filled by worthier men.”

“And what, in the devil’s name, brings Cosmo Ruggieri hither?” asked the Bernardin.  “What doth the wrinkled old dealer in the black art hope to learn from us?  We are not given to alchemy, and the occult sciences; we practice no hidden mysteries; we brew no philtres; we compound no slow poisons; we vend no waxen images.  What doth he here, I say!  ’Tis a scandal in the rector to permit his presence.  And what if he came under the safeguard, and by the authority of his mistress, Catherine de’ Medicis!  Shall we regard her passport?  Down with the heathen abbe, his abominations have been endured too long; they smell rank in our nostrils.  Think how he ensnared La Mole—­think on his numberless victims.  Who mixed the infernal potion of Charles the Ninth?  Let him answer that.  Down with the infidel—­the Jew—­the sorcerer!  The stake were too good for him.  Down with Ruggieri, I say.”

“Aye, down with the accursed astrologer,” echoed the whole crew.  “He has done abundant mischief in his time.  A day of reckoning has arrived.  Hath he cast his own horoscope?  Did he foresee his own fate?  Ha! ha!”

“And then the poets,” cried another member of the Four Nations—­“a plague on all three.  Would they were elsewhere.  In what does this disputation concern them?  Pierre Ronsard, being an offshoot of this same College of Navarre, hath indubitably a claim upon our consideration.  But he is old, and I marvel that his gout permitted him to hobble so far.  Oh, the mercenary old scribbler!  His late verses halt like himself, yet he lowereth not the price of his masques.  Besides which, he is grown moral, and unsays all his former good things. Mort Dieu! your superannuated bards ever recant the indiscretions of their nonage.  Clement Marot took to psalm-writing in his old age.  As to Baif, his name will scarce outlast the scenery of his ballets, his plays are out of fashion since the Gelosi arrived.  He deserves no place among us.  And Philip Desportes owes all his present preferment to the Vicomte de Joyeuse.  However, he is not altogether devoid of merit—­let him wear his bays, so he trouble us not with his company.  Room for the sophisters of Narbonne, I say.  To the dogs with poetry!”