The blue midland sea, the clear blue of heaven just turning to opal, and the glint of mother-of-pearl coming up with the gloaming! A beach, not flattened out and ribbed by the passage of daily tides, but with the sand and pebbles built steeply up by the lashing waves and the furious wind Euroclydon.

On different planes, far out at sea, were the sails of fishing-boats, set this way and that, for all the world like butterflies in the act of alighting. It was early spring the spring of Roussillon, where it is never winter. Already the purple flowers of the wild Provencal mustard stood out from the white and yellow rocks, on which was perched a little town, flat-roofed and Moorish. Their leaves, grey-green like her own northern seas, of which she had all but lost the memory, drew Claire’s attention. She bit absent-mindedly, and was immediately informed as to the species of the plant, without any previous knowledge of botany.

She kicked a strand of the long binding sea-grass, and then, after looking a moment resentfully at the wild mustard, she threw the plant pettishly away. Our once sedate Claire had begun to allow herself these ébullitions with the Professor. They annoyed the Abbe John so much and it was practice. Also, they made the Professor spoil her. He had never watched from so near the sweet, semi-conscious coquetry of a pretty maid. So now he studied Claire like a newly-found fragment of Demosthenes, of which the Greek text has become a little fragmentary and wilful during the centuries.

“This will serve you better, if you must take to eating grass like an ox,” said the Professor of Eloquence, reaching out his hand and plucking a sprig of sweet alison, which grew everywhere about.

Claire stretched out hers also and took the honey-scented plant, on which the tiny white flowers and the shining fruit were to be found together.

“Buzz-uzz-uzz!” said half-a-dozen indignant bees, following the sprig. For at that dead season of the year, sweet alison was almost their only joy.

“Ugh!” exclaimed Claire, letting it go. She loved none of the sting-accoutred tribe unless it were the big, heavy, lurching bumble-bees, which entered a room with such blundering pomp that you had always time to get out before they made up their mind about you.

The Professor watched her with some pride. For in the quiet of Rousillon Claire had quickly recovered her peace of mind, and with it the light in the eye and the rose-flush on the cheek.

But quite suddenly she put her hands to her face and began to sob.

If it had been the Abbe John, he might have divined the reason, but the Professor was not a man advised upon such matters.

“What is it?” he said, stupidly enough; “are you ill?”

“Oh, no no!” sobbed Claire; “it is so good to be here. It is so peaceful. You are so good to me too good your mother your brothers what have I done to deserve it?”

“Very likely nothing,” said the Professor, meaning to be consoling; “I have always noticed that those who deserve least, are commonly best served!”

“That is not at all a nice thing to say,” cried Claire; “they did not teach you polite speeches at your school or else you have forgotten them at your dull old Sorbonne. Do you call that eloquence?”

“I only profess eloquence,” said Doctor Anatole, with due meekness; “it is not required by any statute that I should also practise it!”

“Well,” said Claire, “I can do without your sweet speeches. I cannot expect a Sorbonnist to have the sugared comfits of a king’s mignon!”

“Who speaks so loud of sugared comfits?” said a voice from the other side of the weather-stained rock, beneath which the Professor and Claire Agnew were sitting looking out over the sea.

A tall shepherd appeared, wrapped in the cloak of the true Pyrenean herdsman, brown ochre striped with red, and fringed with the blue woollen tassels which here took the place of the silver bells of Bearn. A tiny shiver, not of distaste, but caused by some feeling of faint, instinctive aversion, ran through Claire.

Jean-aux-Choux did not notice. His eyes were far out on the sea, where, as in a vision, he seemed to see strange things. His countenance, once twisted and comical, now appeared somehow ennobled. A stern glory, as of an angry ocean seen in the twilight, gloating over the destruction it has wrought during the day, illumined his face. His bent back seemed somehow straighter. And, though he still halted in his gait, he could take the hills in his stride with any man. And none could better “wear the sheep” or call an erring ewe to heel than Jean-aux-Choux. For in these semi-eastern lands the sheep still follow the shepherd and are known of him.

“Who speaks of sugared comfits?” demanded Jean-aux-Choux for the second time.

“I did,” said Claire, a little tremulously. “I only wished I had some, Jean, to while away the time. For this law-learned Professor will say nothing but rude things to me!”

Jean looked from one to the other, to make sure that the girl was jesting. His brow cleared. Then again a gleam of fierce joy passed momently over his face.

“He had comfits in his hand in a silver box,” he said, “jeweller’s work of a cunning artificer. And he entered among us like the Lord of All. But it was given to me to me, Jean-aux-Choux, to bring low the haughty head. ‘Guise, the good Guise!’ Ha! ha! But I sent him to Hattil, the place of an howling for sin he that had thought to walk in Ahara, the sweet savouring meadows!”

“I hated Guise and all his works,” said the Professor, looking at the ex-fool boldly, “yet will I never call his death aught but a murder most foul.”

“It may be it may be,” said Jean-aux-Choux indifferently; “I did my Lord’s work for an unworthy master. I would as soon have set the steel to the throat of Henry of Valois himself. He and that mother of his, now also gone to the Place of Howling to hob-nob with her friend of Guise they planned the killing. I did it. I give thanks! Michaeiah who is like the Lord? Jedaiah the hand of the Lord hath wrought it. Jehoash-Berak the fire of the Lord falls in the thunderbolt! Amen!”

The Professor started to his feet.

“What is that you say? The Queen-Mother dead? And you ?”

He looked at the long dagger Jean-aux-Choux carried at his side, which, every time he shifted his cloak, drew the unwilling gaze of Claire Agnew like a fascination.

“The Mother of Witchcrafts is indeed dead,” said Jean-aux-Choux. “But that the world owes not to me. The hand of God, and not mine, sent her to her own place. Yet I saw in a vision the Woman drunken with the blood of saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.”

Then he, who had once been called the King’s fool, became, as it were, transported. His eyes, directed at something unseen across the blue and sleeping sea, were terrible to behold. Faint greyish flecks of foam appeared on his lips. He cast his cloak on the ground and trod upon it, crying, “Even thus is it to-day with Great Babylon, the mystery, the mother of the abominations of the earth.”

After a moment’s pause he took up his prophecy.

“There was One who came and bade me listen, and I gave him no heed, for he blessed when I would have cursed; he cried ‘Preserve’ when I cried ‘Cut off’; he cried ‘Plant’ when I would have burned up, root and branch. But when I heard that Catherine of the Medici was indeed dead, I shouted for joy; I said, ’She was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and gilded with gold and precious stones and pearls! I saw her glory. But now Babylon the Great is fallen is fallen. And they that worshipped her throw dust on their heads all they that have thriven on the abundance of her pleasures. For in one hour her judgment is come!’”

Then, all in a moment, he came down from the height of his vision. The light of satisfied vengeance faded from his face.

“But I forget I must go to the herd. It is my duty till the God, whose arm of flesh I am, finds fitter work for me to do. Then will I do it. I care not whether the reward be heaven or hell, so that the work be done. The cripple and the fool is not like other men. He is not holden by human laws or codes of honour, nor by the lust of land, nor wealth, nor power, nor the love of woman. He is free free free as Berak, the lightning of God is free to strike where he wills to fall where he is sent!”

The two watched him, and listened, marvelling.

And the Professor muttered to himself, “Before I lecture again, I must read that Genevan book of his. Our poor Vulgate is to that torrent as the waters of Siloah that flow softly!”

The voice of Jean-aux-Choux had ceased. That is, his lips moved without words. But presently he turned to Claire and said, almost in his old tones, “I am a fool. I fright you, that are but a child. I do great wrong. But now I will go to the flock. They await me. I am, you say, a careless shepherd to have left them so long. Not so! I have a dog in a thousand Toah the dart. And, indeed, I myself am no hireling no Iscariot. For your good cousin, Don Raphael Llorient, of Collioure, hath as yet paid me no wages neither gold Ferdinand nor silver Philip of the Indies. A good day to you, Professor! Sleep in peace, little Claire Agnew! For the sake of one Francis, late my master, we will watch over you even I, Berak the lightning, and Toah my dog!”