"My beloved master," said de Bèze in a caressing tone, taking his hands and kissing them, "Jove thunders, but he can smile." Calvin looked at his disciple with a softened expression. "Do not misunderstand me, my friends," he said. "I understand that the shepherds of nations have terrible burdens to bear," replied Théodore. "You have a world on your shoulders." "I," said Chaudieu, who had become thoughtful under the master's abuse, "have three martyrs on whom we can depend. Stuart, who killed the President, is free----" "That will not do," said Calvin mildly, and smiling, as a great man can smile when fair weather follows a storm on his face, as if he were ashamed of the tempest. "I know men. He who kills one President will not kill a second." "Is it absolutely necessary?" said de Bèze. "What, again?" cried Calvin, his nostrils expanding. "There, go; you will put me in a rage again. You have my decision.--You, Chaudieu, walk in your own path, and keep the Paris flock together. God be with you.--Dinah! Light my friends out." "Will you not allow me to embrace you?" said de Bèze with emotion. "Who can tell what the morrow will bring forth? We may be imprisoned in spite of safe-conducts----" "And yet you want to spare them!" said Calvin, embracing de Bèze. He took Chaudieu's hand, saying: "Mind you, not Huguenots, not Reformers: be Calvinists! Speak only of Calvinism.--Alas! this is not ambition, for I am a dying man!--Only, everything of Luther's must be destroyed, to the very names of Lutheran and Lutheranism." "Indeed, divine man, you deserve such honor!" cried Chaudieu. "Uphold uniformity of creed. Do not allow any further examination or reconstruction. If new sects arise from among us, we are lost." To anticipate events and dismiss Théodore de Bèze, who returned to Paris with Chaudieu, it may be said that Poltrot, who, eighteen months later, fired a pistol at the Duc de Guise, confessed, under torture, that he had been urged to the crime by Théodore de Bèze; however, he retracted his statement at a later stage. Indeed. Bossuet, who weighed all the historical evidence, did not think that the idea of this attempt was due to Théodore de Bèze. Since Bossuet, however, a dissertation of an apparently trivial character, _à propos_ to a famous ballad, enabled a compiler of the eighteenth century to prove that the song sung throughout France by the Huguenots on the death of the Duc de Guise was written by Théodore de Bèze; and, moreover, that the well-known ballad or lament on Malbrouck--the Duke of Marlborough--is plagiarized from Théodore de Bèze.[F] * * * * * On the day when Théodore de Bèze and Chaudieu reached Paris, the Court had returned thither from Reims, where Charles IX. had been crowned. This ceremony, to which Catherine gave unusual splendor, making it the occasion of great festivities, enabled her to gather round her the leaders of every faction.