“Well, my dear admiral, so you have really taken upon yourself to present these gentlemen from Geneva?”

“Perhaps you will call it a crime in me,” replied the admiral, jesting, “whereas if you had done it yourself you would make a merit of it.”

“They say that the Sieur Calvin is very ill,” remarked the Cardinal de Lorraine to Theodore de Beze.  “I hope no one suspects us of giving him his broth.”

“Ah! monseigneur; it would be too great a risk,” replied de Beze, maliciously.

The Duc de Guise, who was watching Chaudieu, looked fixedly at his brother and at Birago, who were both taken aback by de Beze’s answer.

“Good God!” remarked the cardinal, “heretics are not diplomatic!”

To avoid embarrassment, the queen, who was announced at this moment, had arranged to remain standing during the audience.  She began by speaking to the Connetable, who had previously remonstrated with her vehemently on the scandal of receiving messengers from Calvin.

“You see, my dear Connetable,” she said, “that I receive them without ceremony.”

“Madame,” said the admiral, approaching the queen, “these are two teachers of the new religion, who have come to an understanding with Calvin, and who have his instructions as to a conference in which the churches of France may be able to settle their differences.”

“This is Monsieur de Beze, to whom my wife is much attached,” said the king of Navarre, coming forward and taking de Beze by the hand.

“And this is Chaudieu,” said the Prince de Conde. “My friend the Duc de Guise knows the soldier,” he added, looking at Le Balafre, “perhaps he will now like to know the minister.”

This gasconade made the whole court laugh, even Catherine.

“Faith!” replied the Duc de Guise, “I am enchanted to see a gars who knows so well how to choose his men and to employ them in their right sphere.  One of your agents,” he said to Chaudieu, “actually endured the extraordinary question without dying and without confessing a single thing.  I call myself brave; but I don’t know that I could have endured it as he did.”

“Hum!” muttered Ambroise, “you did not say a word when I pulled the javelin out of your face at Calais.”

Catherine, standing at the centre of a semicircle of the courtiers and maids of honor, kept silence.  She was observing the two Reformers, trying to penetrate their minds as, with the shrewd, intelligent glance of her black eyes, she studied them.

“One seems to be the scabbard, the other the blade,” whispered Albert de Gondi in her ear.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Catherine at last, unable to restrain a smile, “has your master given you permission to unite in a public conference, at which you will be converted by the arguments of the Fathers of the Church who are the glory of our State?”

“We have no master but the Lord,” said Chaudieu.