“One less!” remarked Calvin, as they passed through the Porte de Rive. “Elizabeth of England will restrain that one for us. Two neighboring queens will soon be at war with each other. One is handsome, the other ugly,--a first cause for irritation; besides, there’s the question of illegitimacy--” He rubbed his hands, and the character of his joy was so evidently ferocious that de Beze shuddered: he saw the sea of blood his master was contemplating. “The Guises have irritated the house of Bourbon,” said Theodore after a pause. “They came to an open rupture at Orleans.” “Ah!” said Calvin, “you would not believe me, my son, when I told you the last time you started for Nerac that we should end by stirring up war to the death between the two branches of the house of France? I have, at least, one court, one king and royal family on my side. My doctrine is producing its effect upon the masses. The burghers, too, understand me; they regard as idolators all who go to Mass, who paint the walls of their churches, and put pictures and statues within them. Ha! it is far more easy for a people to demolish churches and palaces than to argue the question of justification by faith, or the real presence. Luther was an argufier, but I,--I am an army! He was a reasoner, I am a system. In short, my sons, he was merely a skirmisher, but I am Tarquin! Yes, _my_ faithful shall destroy pictures and pull down churches; they shall make mill-stones of statues to grind the flour of the peoples. There are guilds and corporations in the States-general--I will have nothing there but individuals. Corporations resist; they see clear where the masses are blind. We must join to our doctrine political interests which will consolidate it, and keep together the _materiel_ of my armies. I have satisfied the logic of cautious souls and the minds of thinkers by this bared and naked worship which carries religion into the world of ideas; I have made the peoples understand the advantages of suppressing ceremony. It is for you, Theodore, to enlist their interests; hold to that; go not beyond it. All is said in the way of doctrine; let no one add one iota. Why does Cameron, that little Gascon pastor, presume to write of it?” Calvin, de Beze, and Chaudieu were mounting the steep steps of the upper town in the midst of a crowd, but the crowd paid not the slightest attention to the men who were unchaining the mobs of other cities and preparing them to ravage France.