Lazarre | Page 2

window. An atmosphere of comfort and thrift filled St.
Bat's. It was the abode of labor and humble prosperity, not an asylum
of poverty. Great worthies, indeed, such as John Milton, and nearer our
own day, Washington Irving, did not disdain to live in St.
Bartholomew's close. The two British matrons, therefore, spoke the
prejudice of the better rather than the baser class.
"The little devils!" said one woman.
"They look innocent," remarked the other. "But these French do make
my back crawl!"
"How long are they going to stay in St. Bat's?"
"The two men with the little girl and the servant intend to sail for
America next week. The lad, and the man that brought him in--as
dangerous looking a foreigner as ever I saw!--are like to prowl out any

time. I saw them go into the smithy, and I went over to ask the smith's
wife about them. She let two upper chambers to the creatures this
morning."
"What ails the lad? He has the look of an idiot."
"Well, then, God knows what ails any of the crazy French! If they all
broke out with boils like the heathen of scripture, it would not surprise
a Christian. As it is, they keep on beheading one another, day after day
and month after month; and the time must come when none of them
will be left--and a satisfaction that will be to respectable folks!"
"First the king, and then the queen," mused one speaker. "And now
news comes that the little prince has died of bad treatment in his prison.
England will not go into mourning for him as it did for his father, King
Louis. What a pretty sight it was, to see every decent body in a bit of
black, and the houses draped, they say, in every town! A comfort it
must have been to the queen of France when she heard of such
Christian respect!"
The women's faces, hard in texture and rubicund as beef and good ale
could make them, leaned silent a moment high above the dim pavement.
St. Bat's little bell struck the three quarters before ten; lightly,
delicately, with always a promise of the great booming which should
follow on the stroke of the hour. Its perfection of sound contrasted with
the smithy clangor of metal in process of welding. A butcher's boy
made his way through the front entrance toward a staircase, his feet
echoing on the flags, carrying exposed a joint of beef on the board upon
his head.
"And how do your foreigners behave themselves, Mrs. Blake?"
inquired the neighbor.
"Like French emmy-grays, to be sure. I told Blake when he would have
them to lodge in the house, that we are a respectable family. But he is
master, and their lordships has money in their purses."
"French lordships!" exclaimed the neighbor. "Whether they calls

themselves counts or markises, what's their nobility worth? Nothing!"
"The Markis de Ferrier," retorted Mrs. Blake, nettled by a liberty taken
with her lodgers which she reserved for herself, "is a gentleman if he is
an emmy-gray, and French. Blake may be master in his own house, but
he knows landed gentry from tinkers--whether they ever comes to their
land again or not."
"Well, then," soothed her gossip, "I was only thinking of them French
that comes over, glad to teach their betters, or even to work with their
hands for a crust."
"Still," said Mrs. Blake, again giving rein to her prejudices, "I shall be
glad to see all French papists out of St. Bat's. For what does scripture
say?--'Touch not the unclean thing!' And that servant-body, instead of
looking after her little missus, galloping out of the close on some
bloody errand!"
"You ought to be thankful, Mrs. Blake, to have her out of the way,
instead of around our children, poisoning their hinfant minds! Thank
God they are playing in the church lane like little Christians, safe from
even that lad and lass yonder!"
A yell of fighting from the little Christians mingled with their hoots at
choir boys gathering for the ten o'clock service in St. Bat's. When Mrs.
Blake and her friend saw this preparation, they withdrew their
dissenting heads from the arcades in order not to countenance what
might go on below.
Minute followed minute, and the little bell struck the four quarters.
Then the great bell boomed out ten;--the bell which had given signal
for lighting the funeral piles of many a martyr, on Smithfield, directly
opposite the church. Organ music pealed; choir boys appeared from
their robing-room beside the entrance, pacing two and two as they
chanted. The celebrant stood in his place at the altar, and antiphonal
music rolled among the arches; pierced by the dagger voice of a woman
in the arcades, who