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This they might have been moved to resist, in earnest, but for the fear of losing their pay, which De Berquin, in order to secure himself against treachery on their part, would certainly have represented as being, not on his person, but somewhere awaiting his call.
On the 5th of August sentence was pronounced, and Louis de Berquin was remanded to appear before the Bishop of Paris, as being charged with heresy, "in which case," says the Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, "he would have been in great danger of being put to death according to law, as he had well deserved."
"Most interesting of lackeys, how might you be useful to me?" inquired De Berquin, continuing his mood of sinister jocularity. How, indeed? I asked myself. Aloud I answered slowly, in order to have the more time to think: "In your present enterprise, monsieur." "The devil! What do you know of my present enterprise?" he asked, quickly.
We do command and most expressly enjoin upon you, this once for all, that you are incontinently to put and deliver the said Berquin into the hands of the said Texier and Charles do Broc, whom we have ordered to conduct him to our castle of the Louvre." The court still objected; a prisoner favored by so high a personage, it was said, would soon be out of such a prison.
We have dwelt in detail upon these two martyrs, Leclerc and Berquin, the wool-carder and the scholarly gentleman, because they are faithful and vivid representatives of the two classes amongst which, in the sixteenth century, the Reformation took root in France.
South-west from Armentières the country is as level as it can be. It is indeed possible to ride from Ypres to Béthune without meeting any hill except the slight ascent from La Clytte. Steenwerck, Erquinghem, Croix du Bac, and, farther west, Merris and Vieux Berquin, have no virtue whatsoever. There is little country flatter and uglier than the country between Bailleul and Béthune.
As long as the possibility of taking La Tournoire was before De Berquin, there was little likelihood that he would seek to molest Mlle. de Varion. In the first place, he could not take her from the vicinity while he himself remained there awaiting the coming of La Tournoire.
"Stop, Gilles!" commanded De Berquin. "Go yonder, while I listen to this amusing knave. Let him talk awhile before he dies." Barbemouche sullenly went over to the side of Francois, and stood there glowering at me. It was a relief to know that his sword-point was no longer at my back. "Now, rascal!" said De Berquin to me. "My present enterprise, and how you can be useful to me in it?"
In France, Berquin was under the stigma of having been condemned to death as a heretic, and was confronted by determined enemies. In so perilous a position his safety depended upon his courting oblivion.
"How dare you even utter the calumny he spoke? Go you and look to the disposal of his body." And I motioned him away with a wrathful gesture. He looked frowningly at mademoiselle and then at me, and went off, with a shrug of his shoulders, to the place where De Berquin lay. I turned to mademoiselle; she stood like a statue, her eyes fixed on the empty air before her.
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