He who sat in the great chair at the end of the table was indeed rather plump than thin. His white hands, gay with rings, were well cared for; his peevish chin rested on a falling-collar of lace worthy of a Cardinal. But though the Bishop’s Vicar was heard with deference, it was noticeable that when he had ceased to speak his hearers looked to the priest on his left, to Father Pezelay, and waited to hear his opinion before they gave their own. The Father’s energy, indeed, had dominated the Angerins, clerks and townsfolk alike, as it had dominated the Parisian devotes who knew him well. The vigour which hate inspires passes often for solid strength; and he who had seen with his own eyes the things done in Paris spoke with an authority to which the more timid quickly and easily succumbed.
Yet gibbets are ugly things; and Thuriot, the printer, whose pride had been tickled by a summons to the conclave, began to wonder if he had done wisely in coming. Lescot, too, who presently ventured a word.
“But if M. de Tavannes’ order be to do nothing,” he began doubtfully, “you would not, reverend Father, have us resist his Majesty’s will?”
“God forbid, my friend!” Father Pezelay answered with unction. “But his Majesty’s will is to do—to do for the glory of God and the saints and His Holy Church! How? Is that which was lawful at Saumur unlawful here? Is that which was lawful at Tours unlawful here? Is that which the King did in Paris—to the utter extermination of the unbelieving and the purging of that Sacred City—against his will here? Nay, his will is to do—to do as they have done in Paris and in Tours and in Saumur! But his Minister is unfaithful! The woman whom he has taken to his bosom has bewildered him with her charms and her sorceries, and put it in his mind to deny the mission he bears.”
“You are sure, beyond chance of error, that he bears letters to that effect, good Father?” the printer ventured.
“Ask my lord’s Vicar! He knows the letters and the import of them!”
“They are to that effect,” the Archdeacon answered, drumming on the table with his fingers and speaking somewhat sullenly. “I was in the Chancellery, and I saw them. They are duplicates of those sent to Bordeaux.”
“Then the preparations he has made must be against the Huguenots,” Lescot, the ex-Provost, said with a sigh of relief. And Thuriot’s face lightened also. “He must intend to hang one or two of the ringleaders, before he deals with the herd.”
“Think it not!” Father Pezelay cried in his high shrill voice. “I tell you the woman has bewitched him, and he will deny his letters!”
For a moment there was silence. Then, “But dare he do that, reverend Father?” Lescot asked slowly and incredulously. “What? Suppress the King’s letters?”
“There is nothing he will not dare! There is nothing he has not dared!” the priest answered vehemently, the recollection of the scene in the great guard-room of the Louvre, when Tavannes had so skilfully turned the tables on him, instilling venom into his tone. “She who lives with him is the devil’s. She has bewitched him with her spells and her Sabbaths! She bears the mark of the Beast on her bosom, and for her the fire is even now kindling!”