True enough; but as for his preaching now, I’d rather be led by a fool, I vow, Than a preacher. FRIENDS OF THE WORLD. That’s quite right; Live by the rule of your appetite. THE WORLD. That will I!... Whereupon the World puts on a fool’s dress, and the burlesque ends. It is too true that the world, after the Reformation, put on a fool’s dress in various places, particularly in France. What was the house of Valois but a house of fools? And yet a divine wisdom had then entered the world, and remains in it still, for the healing of nations. From the beginning of 1523, the great principle of protestantism which declares Scripture to be the only source and rule of truth, in opposition to that of Roman Catholicism, which substitutes the authority of the Church, was recognised in Geneva. The ‘text of the Bible’ was publicly declared ‘an irreproachable thing’ and the only remedy for the cure of diseased humanity. And what, at bottom, was this burlesque of the huguenots but a lay sermon on the text: _The law of the Lord converteth the soul_? It is good to observe the date, as it is generally thought that the Reformation did not begin till much later in the city of Calvin. This ‘mystery’ of a new kind did not remain without effect; the evangelicals had taken up their position; the ram, armed with its head of brass, that was to batter and throw down the walls of Rome--the infallible Bible, had appeared. Jean Philippe felt that the piece had not cost him too dear.