What then?
He had his answer.

Framed in the immensity of sky and earth that lay before him, he saw his loneliness and hers, his insignificance and hers, his helplessness and hers; he, a foreigner, young, without name or reputation, or aught but a strong right hand; she, almost a child, alone or worse than alone, in this great city--one of the weak things which the world's car daily and hourly crushes into the mud, their very cries unheard and unheeded.

Of no more account than the straw which the turbid Rhone, bore one moment on its swirling tide, and the next swallowed from sight beneath its current! They were two--and a mad woman! And against them were Blondel and Basterga and Grio and Louis, and presently all the town of Geneva! All these gloomy, narrow, righteous men, and shrieking, frightened women--frightened lest any drop of the pitch fall on them and destroy them! Love is a marvellous educator.

Almost as clearly as we of a later day, he saw how outbreaks of superstition, such as that which he dreaded, began, and came to a head, and ended.

A chance word at a door, a spiteful rumour or a sick child, the charge, the torture, the widening net of accusation, the fire in the market-place.