The Scourge of God: A Romance of Religious Persecution
rooms on that side from the dusts of summer and the snows of winter.
Now, on this July night, convolvuli and roses and honeysuckle twined
about it, dotting the deep green with many a delicate blossom and
emitting sweet perfumes on the air. And above this hedge, between it
and the roof, the doomed man was hanging at this time, clinging to a
rope made of twisted bedclothes, wrenched, doubtless, from the beds of
the upper rooms.
None spoke in all that crowd, no hymn was sung. Save for the sobs of
Buscarlet and the moans of Fleurette, who lay in her sister's arms, no
sound broke the silence--none until, a second later, while all their
eyes were turned up to that frantic figure and while the moon's rays
glistened on their eyeballs, a piercing shriek broke the stillness and
the abbé fell headlong some thirty feet into the hedge, bounding off
from one of the stakes, that supported it at intervals, into the dusty
road; then lay there groaning. The roughly and hastily constructed
rope had given way, and in his fall, as was soon seen, his leg was
broken.
"Spare me!" he moaned--he who had never yet spared one, man, woman, or
child--"spare me!"
At first none answered him, none spoke. Then amid the silence, from
the lips of Pierre Esprit, the chief of the three prophets, the words
fell:
"You are lost--your body in this world, your soul in the next."
"Alas!" he wailed, "even though I have damned myself, will you too do
the same thing by murdering me?"
His words were the signal for his doom.
They rushed at him as he lay there and plunged their knives into his
body, one man exclaiming, "This for my mother, burned at Nîmes,"
another, "This for my father, broken at Anduse"; a third, "This for my
brother, sent to the galley, '_Le Réquin_'"; a fourth, "This for my
sister, Fleurette, lying here."
When his nephew, Le Marquis du Chaila, afterward recovered his body
from where they left it, it was pierced by fifty-two wounds, of which
twenty-four were mortal.
"The beginning has been made," Pierre Esprit exclaimed. "There must be
no backsliding. Henceforth each man's hand to guard each man's life.
Now for the prior of St. Maurice, next for the priest of Frugéres.
While for those who have been rescued from that man's clutches, away
with them to the mountains and safety. Come, let us sing unto the
Lord."
And up the slopes and pastures of the purple hills encircling the
little village rose once more the chant of the army of Jehoshaphat.
Soon none were left in the blood-stained road but the pastor,
Buscarlet, lying where he had fainted, and Martin Ashurst, white to
the lips and endeavouring to arrange the dead man's limbs into
something resembling humanity.
CHAPTER VIII.
AN EXODUS.
In the coming dawn, when the stars had paled and died away, and when
far off, where the Basses Alpes lifted their heads eastward, the gray
light turned into daffodil and told that the day was at hand, Martin
carried the pastor back into his little house.
"Rest," he said, "rest, and endeavour to sleep. I pray Heaven you may
do so, after this night of horror."
"Horror indeed!" Buscarlet said, sinking into the old leather-covered
_fauteuil_ that for years he had sat in so calmly and happily, though
solitary. "Horror undreamed of!" Then, a moment later, he went on: "I
thought--nay, I knew--that they would rise at last and throw off the
hideous yoke under which they bowed. Yet I deemed it would but be to
release those of our religion who suffered, to prevent others from
suffering too; to demand terms, even though only such terms as would
permit us to seek peace in far-away lands; but never dreamed of such
deeds as we have witnessed to-night. Where will it end? And how?"
"There were those who muttered in that crowd," Martin replied, his
face still of a deathly pallor, "that it might not end until they
stood outside Louis' gates--were within them. And there were some who
seemed to know of what they spoke. Some who have been long leagues
away from this lonely valley shut in by these mountains--men who know
that on all sides and on all her frontiers France is sore beset.
Crippled by her fresh war with Spain, the attacks made on her on the
Italian border, also by the Dutch on the Rhine. Fighting as well my
own countrymen in Bavaria and the whole length of the Danube, even to
the borders of Austria."
The mention of his own countrymen by Martin Ashurst seemed to bring
fresh trouble to the unhappy old man, to cause fresh terrors to spring
into his mind; for at those words he started in his chair and regarded
the younger one steadily, though with still upon his face the look of
misery that the events of the last few hours had brought forth.
"Your own countrymen!" he repeated, half-dazed. "Your own countrymen!
Ay, ay, _les Anglais!_ Thank God, it is not known, and never will be
known, that you are either English or Protestant. Baville would not
spare you."
"Baville need not perhaps know that I am an Englishman," Martin
replied calmly. "But one thing he will most assuredly know ere
long, when he begins to make inquiry into the doings of this past
night--namely, that I am a Protestant."
"Know it!" Buscarlet exclaimed, trembling even more than before,
clasping his hands frenziedly as though overcome by a fresh fear. "How
should he know it?"
"I shall announce it. For a certainty, shall not disguise it."
"Martin, Martin," the old man moaned, "are you mad? Do you value your
life so little, desire so much the horrors of the wheel, the flames,
to have your head upon this bridge as others' heads have been, that
you will acknowledge this? Martin, for the love of God, pause. Think
of what such an acknowledgment would mean to you."
"I have thought all through the night, even while I watched that man's
house burned beneath him as he hid on the roof; while I saw him done
to death. And, thus thinking, became resolved. Henceforth no power on
earth, no horror of awful death, of mutilation after death, can make
me disguise, keep back the acknowledgment of the form of faith I
belong to----"
"Alas, alas! it _will_ bring death."
"It may do so. If it does it must be borne. Yet, at the worst, I will
not think it can come to that. I am a Protestant; here, in your own
land, a Huguenot. Yet I am not one of those who slew the abbé. Shall
never imbrue my hands in blood. Ask only to be left in peace."
"Alas," Buscarlet exclaimed again, "that is all that we have
asked--all! Yet you see the end. The woman who dominates Louis allows
no free thought, no religion other than her own; has dragooned
Huguenots into Roman Catholicism since the day the Revocation was
pronounced, has hung and burned and broken those who refuse to change.
How, then, can you hope to escape--you who were among the crowd that
performed last night's work?"
"I took no part in his murder. Would have saved him if I could----"
"That will not save you. Martin, you must flee from here at once.
Escape out of France. Be gone while there is yet time."
"And de Rochebazon! His children's heritage! What of that?"
Even as he uttered the words his determination to remain here at all
costs and in deadly peril seemed to act upon the old man's mind, to
clear his brain so clouded with the awful events of the past night, to
bring back to him the power of speaking and reasoning clearly, for
slowly yet weightily he answered:
"As that heritage has done before, so it must do now. Must wait,
remain in abeyance. This is no time to prosecute your search. No sense
of justice on your part toward a distant kinsman can demand that you
should sacrifice your own life, at the least your liberty. Moreover,
remember, he or his descendants may not be here in Languedoc; may be
leagues away, in remote lands, for aught you know; even in your own
country, the home of the oppressed since James fell."
"They said at Geneva it was beyond all doubt that he who was rightly
the de Rochebazon came here."
"Grant that," the old man replied, calm now in face of the argument he
had to use, must use and drive home. "Grant that--that he came here.
Well, it is nigh half a century ago. Where may he not have gone to in
all that long passage of years? The Huguenots are everywhere--in
England, Germany, Scotland, the Americas, Switzerland, some even on
the far-off shores of the Cape of Good Hope. Why stay here seeking for
what is no better than a shadow, and at the risk of your own life?"
For a moment it seemed as if his argument was about to prevail.
Into Martin Ashurst's face there came a look telling of deep
reflection--reflection that brought with it an acknowledgment of the
force of the other's words. And, observing, Buscarlet pressed his
argument home.
"If alive, de Rochebazon never intends to claim what is his. If dead,
he has died and kept his secret well. While if living he knows not,
possibly, that those who were deemed the Prince and Princess de
Rochebazon have passed away, yet also he knew that for years they
usurped, although unwillingly, the place that was his, the vast
wealth. If you found him at last, even here, could you force him to
take back the heritage he renounced so long ago?"
Still the other answered not. What could he say? On his face was still
the look of perplexity that had been there since first the pastor
spoke. And again the latter went on:
"Moreover, granting even that--that--for his children's sake he would
return to the possession of his own, would emerge from the humble
position he has so long occupied--in France all Huguenots are humble
now, here in these mountains they are doubly so; few gentlemen of
France acknowledge themselves as such; all fear the court too much; if
you found him, if he consented, would he be allowed to return to what
is his proper place and position? You know the Romish Church which now
holds all in its hands that once was the de Rochebazon's. Will _that_
ever disgorge? Would De Maintenon allow it to do so? You have seen
her? Answer."
Even as Buscarlet mentioned that woman's name, Martin started. Yes, he
had seen her, and seeing, knew to what adamant he was opposed. Also he
recalled her words: "You may seek yet you will never find, or, finding
whom you seek, will never prevail." Remembered, too, the look of
confidence that had come into the livid face of the woman before him
and, as he remembered, wavered.
Was it imperative on him to do more than he had already done in
voluntarily renouncing all the wealth his aunt had put aside for him
during years of saving? Was he now to throw his life away in seeking
for a shadow, a chimera? For it was not beyond possibility, it was
indeed most probable, that to such a pass he might come.
At present he had committed no act which even the ruthless Baville, of
whom all in this portion of France spoke with bated breath--the
Intendant of the Province--could seize upon as a pretext for
hostilities to him. He had taken no part in the murder (or was it the
execution?) of the Abbé du Chaila; on the contrary, he had longed to
render help to the unfortunate wretch, though it had been beyond his
power to do so. But--but--if he should remain in the Cévennes, still
seeking for a man who, in sober truth, might for years have lain in
his grave or might be, if still alive, at the other end of the world,
was it certain that he would not perform some act which would place
him in Baville's grasp? And as a Protestant, even though it was never
known that he was an Englishman, and standing, consequently, in
hideous peril in France, what chance would there be of his salvation?
Almost, as he reflected thus, he began to think that, if only for a
time and until these troubles had blown over, he must abandon his
search for the last of the de Rochebazons. This tempest which had