was being bred up in Huguenot errors. All that could be done was
to hasten the departure ere the royal mandate could arrive. A
little Norman sailing vessel was moored two evenings after in a
lonely creek on the coast, and into it stepped M. de Ribaumont,
with his Bible, Marot's Psalter, and Calvin's works, Beranger still
tenderly kissing a lock of Follet's mane, and Madame mourning for
the pearls, which her husband deemed too sacred an heirloom to
carry away to a foreign land. Poor little Eustacie, with her
cousin Diane, was in the convent of Bellaise in Anjou. If any one
lamented her absence, it was her father-in-law.




CHAPTER III. THE FAMILY COUNCIL



He counsels a divorce
Shakespeare, KING HENRY VIII.


In the spring of the year 1572, a family council was assembled in
Hurst Walwyn Hall. The scene was a wainscoted oriel chamber closed
off by a screen from the great hall, and fitted on two sides by
presses of books, surmounted the one by a terrestrial, the other by
a celestial globe, the first 'with the addition of the Indies' in
very eccentric geography, the second with enormous stars studding
highly grotesque figures, regarded with great awe by most
beholders.