Page:Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886).djvu/119

104 Louvre to Nôtre Dame. When we realise this, we understand the sequel; we understand how little yet, for all its brilliant veneer of culture, France was impregnate with the true modern spirit. The Middle Ages were reared up close behind, and their tremendous shadows fell across that world to darken it.

At Nôtre Dame there was High Mass; thence the procession moved to the Bishop's palace, where, seated on a throne, the King addressed the multitude. In his words, burning, thrilling with mediæval passion, we catch no echo of the familiar speech of the Father of Letters. The debonnair, free-thinking dilettante of the Renaissance has disappeared; the mutilated image of the Virgin has roused in his place the latent fanatic, present ever behind the most modern shows of the double-natured sixteenth century. Louis the Saint or Louis the Cruel might have spoken as he spoke. So easily a strong passion refutes the painful progress of centuries.

The multitude stood in the hall and in the court outside; the King on his raised throne spoke to them, the tears in his eyes. He spoke of the blasphemy and profanation, and of that day's expiation. He denounced the enemies of God and the Church. "And if my own right arm," he cried at last, "were infected with this heretic pestilence, I would cut it off and cast it from me; and if one of my own children were so miserable as to favour it, I would with my own hand sacrifice him to God's justice and my own."

Ominous words for the absent and suspected Queen of Navarre. The Sorbonne, listening, must have triumphed; for those wise magisters did not yet know how volatile were the moods of their brilliant King. For the moment there was no more fiery Catholic than