"Content, too, to live in palaces, and eat from fine linen," said the
Huguenot bitterly, "when the hands of the wicked are heavy upon your
kinsfolk, and there is a breaking of phials, and a pouring forth of
tribulation, and a wailing and a weeping throughout the land."

"What is amiss, then?" asked the young soldier, who was somewhat
mystified by the scriptural language in use among the French Calvinists
of the day.

"Twenty men of Moab have been quartered upon me, with one Dalbert, their
captain, who has long been a scourge to Israel."

"Captain Claude Dalbert, of the Languedoc Dragoons? I have already some
small score to settle with him."

"Ay, and the scattered remnant has also a score against this murderous
dog and self-seeking Ziphite."

"What has he done, then?"

"His men are over my house like moths in a cloth bale. No place is free
from them. He sits in the room which should be mine, his great boots on
my Spanish leather chairs, his pipe in his mouth, his wine-pot at his
elbow, and his talk a hissing and an abomination. He has beaten old
Pierre of the warehouse."

"Ha!"

"And thrust me into the cellar."