"You who are so wise and have seen so many things," said Babette,
timidly, "explain to me what the Reformers really want."

"Yes, tell us that, crony," cried the jeweller. "I knew the late
king's tailor, and I held him to be a man of simple life, without
great talent; he was something like you; a man to whom they'd give the
sacrament without confession; and behold! he plunged to the depths of
this new religion,--he! a man whose two ears were worth all of a
hundred thousand crowns apiece. He must have had secrets to reveal to
induce the king and the Duchesse de Valentinois to be present at his
torture."

"And terrible secrets, too!" said the furrier. "The Reformation, my
friends," he continued in a low voice, "will give back to the
bourgeoisie the estates of the Church. When the ecclesiastical
privileges are suppressed the Reformers intend to ask that the
/vilain/ shall be imposed on nobles as well as on burghers, and they
mean to insist that the king alone shall be above others--if indeed,
they allow the State to have a king."

"Suppress the Throne!" ejaculated Lallier.

"Hey! crony," said Lecamus, "in the Low Countries the burghers govern
themselves with burgomasters of their own, who elect their own
temporary head."

"God bless me, crony; we ought to do these fine things and yet stay
Catholics," cried the jeweller.