In the upper room of the shop of Two Shoes sat a desperate man. The sun did not shine for François d’Aguesseau, and in the little court off the Rue St. Antoine there were no honey-bees to fill the June air with their cheerful hum, and no flowers except the blooming weed that had sprung up between the flagstones. The good woman in the house opposite had a couple of children, who were playing on her doorstep; the sign of the Two Shoes squeaked a little as it swung in the gentle breeze; these were the only sounds, though the busy life of Nîmes was flowing through the thoroughfare at the mouth of the court. But the Huguenot considered none of these things. He sat alone in the cobbler’s house, his elbows leaning on the table before him, his head on his hands. His body was in Nîmes, but his soul was away in Dauphiné. When he closed his eyes he saw the valley of the Durance and the old town of Embrun, where his childish feet had made so many journeys that he might look up in wonder at the Tour Brune or rest in the parvis of the Cathedral,--for his family had not always been Protestants. Then he saw in his vision the château near Embrun where he was born, and the terrace where he and his sister Hélène had played together,--the same Hélène whose body lay exposed at the bazar on Saturday. She was only a woman, but she had died for her religion and he had escaped; through no fault of his, though, for he had been reckless enough of life in his efforts to rescue her. He had tried to move heaven and earth for her, and had not even obtained a hearing in Paris. Fate, the inexorable, had closed every avenue of mercy; the young and innocent woman had languished in the pestilential atmosphere of the Tour de Constance, had died at last to be subjected to degradation after death by her unmerciful jailers. It was over at last, her body had been publicly burned, and there remained no longer any reason for him to linger in Nîmes. His mother, dying of a broken heart over the fates of husband and daughter, had made him solemnly promise to leave France forever. In England he would find relatives, and there too his father had wisely invested a small sum of money against the evil day when they might have to quit Dauphiné. Therefore François was not quite penniless, though the State had comfortably seized all his lands and his goods. But he was, at the moment, without money or means of communicating with his English friends. The Huguenots were closely watched, and it was no light thing to escape. Moreover, he longed to strike a blow for his religion, for liberty, before he left his native land. His promise bound him, yet could he not linger long enough to serve the cause in some way? A strange fascination held him in Nîmes where he had suffered so much; not only did he lack money to pay his way to the sea-coast, but he lacked also the desire to go. Languedoc had been fatal to two of his family, yet he lingered, casting his eyes toward the Cévennes.