This sally made everybody laugh, even Catherine. "By my troth," said the Duc de Guise, "I am delighted to see a man who can so well choose a follower, and make use of him in his degree. One of your men," said he to the preacher, "endured, without dying or confessing anything, the extreme of torture; I fancy myself brave, but I do not know that I could endure so well!" "Hm!" observed Ambroise Paré, "you said not a word when I pulled the spear out of your face at Calais." Catherine, in the middle of the semicircle formed right and left of the maids of honor and Court officials, kept silence. While looking at the two famous Reformers, she was trying to penetrate them with her fine, intelligent, black eyes, and study them thoroughly. "One might be the sheath and the other the blade," Albert de Gondi said in her ear. "Well, gentlemen," said Catherine, who could not help smiling, "has your master given you liberty to arrange a public conference where you may convert to the Word of God those modern Fathers of the Church who are the glory of our realm?" "We have no master but the Lord," said Chaudieu. "Well, you acknowledge some authority in the King of France?" said Catherine, smiling, and interrupting the minister. "And a great deal in the Queen," added de Bèze, bowing low. "You will see," she went on, "that the heretics will be my most dutiful subjects." "Oh, madame!" cried Coligny, "what a splendid kingdom we will make for you! Europe reaps great profit from our divisions. It has seen one-half of France set against the other for fifty years past." "Have we come here to hear chants in praise of heretics?" said the Connétable roughly. "No, but to bring them to amendment," answered the Cardinal de Lorraine in a whisper, "and we hope to achieve it by a little gentleness." "Do you know what I should have done in the reign of the King's father?" said Anne de Montmorency. "I should have sent for the Provost to hang those two rascals high and dry on the Louvre gallows." "Well, gentlemen, and who are the learned doctors you will bring into the field?" said the Queen, silencing the Constable with a look. "Duplessis-Mornay and Théodore de Bèze are our leaders," said Chaudieu. "The Court will probably go to the château of Saint-Germain; and as it would not be seemly that this colloquy should take place in the same town, it shall be held in the little town of Poissy," replied Catherine. "Shall we be safe there, madame?" asked Chaudieu. "Oh!" said the Queen, with a sort of simplicity, "you will, no doubt, know what precautions to take. Monsieur the Admiral will make arrangements to that effect with my cousins de Guise and Montmorency." "Fie on it all!" said the Constable; "I will have no part in it." The Queen took Chaudieu a little way apart. "What do you do to your sectarians to give them such a spirit?" said she. "My furrier's son was really sublime." "We have faith," said Chaudieu.