The Convent Bird

Meantime, he proceeded to enjoy the amusements and
advantage of his sojourn at Paris, of which by no means the least was
the society of Philip Sidney, and the charm his brilliant genius
imparted to every pursuit they shared. Books at the University,
fencing and dancing from the best professors, Italian poetry,
French sonnets, Latin epigrams; nothing came amiss to Sidney, the
flower of English youth: and Berenger had taste, intelligence, and
cultivation enough to enter into all in which Sidney led the way.
The good tutor, after all his miseries on the journey, was delighted
to write to Lord Walwyn, that, far from being a risk and temptation,
this visit was a school in all that was virtuous and comely.

If the good man had any cause of dissatisfaction, it was with the
Calvinistic tendencies of the Ambassador's household. Walsingham
was always on the Puritanical side of Elizabeth's court, and such
an atmosphere as that of Paris, where the Roman Catholic system was
at that time showing more corruption than it has ever done before
or since in any other place, naturally threw him into sympathy with
the Reformed.

The reaction that half a century later filled the
Gallican Church with saintliness had not set in; her ecclesiastics
were the tools of a wicked and bloodthirsty court, who hated virtue
as much as schism in the men whom they persecuted. The Huguenots
were for the most part men whose instincts for truth and virtue had
recoiled from the popular system, and thus it was indeed as if
piety and morality were arrayed on one side, and superstition and
debauchery on the other. Mr. Adderley thus found the tone of the
Ambassador's chaplain that of far more complete fellowship with the
Reformed pastors than he himself was disposed to admit. There were
a large number of these gathered at Paris; for the lull in
persecution that had followed the battle of Moncontour had given
hopes of a final accommodation between the two parties, and many
had come up to consult with the numerous lay nobility who had
congregated to witness the King of Navarre's wedding. Among them,
Berenger met his father's old friend Isaac Gardon, who had come to
Paris for the purpose of giving his only surviving son in marriage
to the daughter of a watchmaker to whom he had for many years been
betrothed. By him the youth, with his innocent face and gracious
respectful manners, was watched with delight, as fulfilling the
fairest hopes of the poor Baron, but the old minister would have
been sorely disappointed had he known how little Berenger felt
inclined towards his party.