It would come, said some, from Saumur, where Montsoreau, the Duke of Anjou's Lieutenant-Governor and a Papist, had his quarters.

From Paris, said others, directly from the King.

It might come at any hour now, in the day or in the night; the magistrates, it was whispered, were in continuous session, awaiting its coming.

No wonder that from lofty gable windows, and from dormers set high above the tiles, haggard faces looked northward and eastward, and ears sharpened by fear imagined above the noises of the city the ring of the iron shoes that carried doom.
Doubtless the majority desired--as the majority in France have always desired--peace.

But in the purlieus about the cathedral and in the lanes where the sacristans lived, in convent parlours and college courts, among all whose livelihood the new faith threatened, was a stir as of a hive deranged.