"Impossible--quite impossible; he is loose and exceedingly busy outside there! Listen to the shots," said Guy, inclining an ear to the window. _Crack--crack! Bang!_ The windows rattled. "Hurrah for the People's Duke! Down with the King! Death to the Huguenots!--to the Barbets!--to the English! Death! Death! Death!" "Lively down there--I wish we were up and away!" mourned the son of the ex-provost of the merchants, "but without arms and ammunition, what can fellows do?" "As sayeth the Wise Man"--the voice of the Professor of Eloquence began to quicken into its stride--"'all her main roads are pleasant roads; and her very by-paths, her _sentiers_, lead to peace!'" "If we could only get at those pistols and things!" murmured Guy Launay. "I wager you a groat that the old man is mistaken! Oh, just hearken to them outside there, will you? Peace is a chafing-dish. War is the great sport!" "Down with the King! Bring along those chains for the barricade! Students to the rescue!" Then came up to their ears the blithe marching song, the time strongly marked: "The Guises are good men, good men, The Cardinal, and Henry, and Mayenne, Mayenne! And we'll fight till all be grey-- The Valois at our feet to-day, And in his grave the Bearnais-- Our chief has come--the Balafré!" "Keys of Sainted Peter!" moaned Guy Launay, "I cannot stand this. I am going down, though I have no better weapon than a barrel-stave." And he hummed, rapping on the inscribed and whittled bench with his fingers, the refrain of the famous League song: "For we'll fight till all be grey-- The Valois at our feet to-day, In his deep grave the Bearnais-- Our chief has come--the Balafré!" But Professor Anatole did not hear. He was in the whirl of his exposition of the blessings of universal peace. The Church had always brought a sword, and would to the end. But Philosophy, Divine Philosophy, which was what Solomon meant--peace was within her walls, prosperity, etc. And by this time the Spaniard, otherwise the Abbé John, was crawling stealthily towards the locked door. Guy Launay, on the contrary, was breathing hard, rustling leaves, taking notes for two, both elbows working. The Master was in the full rush of his discourse. He saw nothing, knew nothing. He had forgotten the robing-room in the affirmation that, "In the midst of turmoil, the truly philosophic may, and often does, preserve the true peace--the truest of all, peace of mind, peace of conscience." _Bang!_ There was a tremendous explosion immediately under the window. "The King's men blowing up a barricade!" thought the Abbé John, with his hand on the great flat key, but drawing back a little. "If that does not wake him up, nothing will."