“Hell and furies!” shouted Cromwell, in momentary wrath; “Are the cursed heretics on their track again?” Then bursting into tears, he added, in a subdued tone, “Poor martyred saints of the Most High, ye shall wear a glorious crown, in spite of your persecutors, and your blood shall not redden the Alpine snows in vain! If there is might in human arm, your enemies shall be humbled, and know that the Lord of Hosts will avenge his elect.” Then taking up the paper on which the sovereign seal was not yet fixed, he delivered it to the French ambassador, saying somewhat haughtily, “Take it back to your monarch, and tell him that Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, rejects the treaty, until the King of France, and his prime minister, shall pledge their assistance in succoring the persecuted Protestants of Piedmont! Until such pledge shall be given, our negotiations are ended.” Bordeaux reddened with resentment as he folded the rejected paper. “The war is then inevitable,” he muttered. “Shall I say, sire, that you refuse the treaty?” “Say I will wage war with all Europe but this persecution of Christians shall cease!” “But the King of France can do nothing, my lord,” persisted Bordeaux. “The Duke of Savoy may make laws for his subjects as independently as your highness; and no foreign force can be brought to bear upon them in those mountain wilds.” Cromwell stamped his foot with impatience. “My word has gone forth, and ‘the ships of England shall sail over the Alps,’ sooner than another hair of their heads shall perish! Tell _both your masters_ that this is my decree.” The Frenchman was indignant at this speech of the Lord Protector, for although every Frenchman understood that Mazarin, the prime minister, was the real monarch, they could not endure to have it thus thrown in their teeth, and he angrily asked permission to retire, which was readily granted; and the parliament was soon after adjourned. That same evening young Francois Waldo—for that was the name of the Vaudois youth—sat in the palace of Whitehall, with the Protector and his family; and though but a simple peasant-boy, he looked with a calm indifference upon the courtly splendor that surrounded him; for he had been bred amid the wild magnificence of the snow-capped Alps, and they pictured to his youthful imagination the “everlasting hills,” of which he had early been taught to sing, as he sat with the pious shepherds tending their flocks in the evening starlight.