The Scourge of God: A Romance of Religious Persecution

the first stage on the road to Paris. By her side was seated a middle-aged _gouvernante_ or companion, whom Baville had told off to accompany her until she reached Avignon, where she would be safe outside the troubles of Languedoc and where she was to continue her journey under the protection of the Duchess d'Uzès. Above the carriage was piled up her valises and portmanteaux; also upon it were three footmen armed with fusils, all of which were ready to their hands; also a waiting maid who was always in attendance upon Urbaine. To complete her guard, behind the great carriage marched a company of the fusileers of Barre and Pompidon, headed by a mounted officer. Passing the broken and mutilated corpse upon the wheel, Poul pointed to it with his glove and laughed; then, reining back his horse until the dragoons had gone by, he looked in at the great window and remarked to Urbaine: "Mademoiselle perceives the _canaille_ are not always triumphant. As it is with that crushed rat there, so it will be with all. Time! Time! Our vengeance will come." But the girl, after casting one horrified glance at the thing which was shrivelling in the broiling September sun, had shrunk back affrighted into the depths of the great travelling carriage and thrown up her hands before her eyes while the _gouvernante_, addressing Poul, said: "Monsieur le Capitaine, why call our attention to that? It is no pleasing sight even to a devout Catholic, moreover a bitter one when we remember the fearful retaliation that has been exacted. Have you forgotten the Abbé du Chaila, the curé of Frugéres?" "Forgotten!" exclaimed the rough Carcassonnais, "forgotten! _Ventre bleu!_ I have forgotten nothing. Else why am I here? Beautiful as is the freight of this carriage," and he made a rough bow "it needs no Capitaine Poul to command the dragoons who escort it in safety. Any _porte drapeau_, or unfledged lieutenant, could do that. Nay, it is in hopes that we may meet some of these singing, snivel-nosed Calvinists that I ride with you to-day. Oh, for the chance!" "Send him away," whispered Urbaine; "he terrifies me. Would that my father had chosen some other officer." Ere, however, her companion could do as she requested, Poul had turned his wrist and ridden again to the head of his troops, a fierce look of eagerness on his face, a gleam in his coal-black eyes. For from ahead of where the cavalcade had now arrived--a shady part of the road, on one side of which there rose precipitously some rocks crowned with bushes, while on the other was a meadow--he heard a sound which told him his wish was very likely to be granted. A sound of singing, of many voices in unison. Voices uttering words which reached the ears of all, causing the dragoons and fusileers to look to their arms and the women and footmen to turn white with apprehension. A sound of singing that rose and fell upon the soft afternoon air as though somewhere a conventicle was being held. And these the words they sung: Dieu! que Juda connait: Dieu! qu' Israel adore Salem est ta demeure et Sion ton autel! Ton bras de nos tyrans a rompu Tare sonore, La glaive qui dévore Et le combat mortel. "Ha!" called out Poul, his dark face now more suffused with rage than before, "they are near at hand. Swords out, _mes dragons, avancez--en double ligne de Colonne_; here is more garbage for the wheel. _En avance les fusiliers_--the carriage behind. _Tambours battants. En avant!_" And while the women screamed, Urbaine burying her fair head for a moment on the _gouvernante's_ shoulder, the dragoons fell into double line, and the fusileers of Barre and Pompidon, passing swiftly on on either side of the great carriage formed up behind them, their drums beating scornfully. At first they saw no enemy, scarce expected to see any, since all knew by now that these mountaineers fought on the system of those dreaded Indians whom some of this force had already encountered on the shores of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi--namely, by sheltering themselves behind every available tree or rock, or even shrub, from which they fired on their foes with deadly effect. But they heard them. Heard again the solemn hymn they sang in the hour of battle, of death, and of vengeance: Aux éclairs de ta foudre, à sa fumante trombe Le c[oe]ur manque an vaillant, le bras échappé au fort Le char d'airain se brise, et le coursier succombe, Et le guerrier qui tombe S'assoupit dans la mort! Then a moment later they saw their foes, or some of them. Upon the summit of the rock sixty feet above their heads, amid the stunted trees and bushes that grew thereon, they saw appear a strange crowd. Men, tall and swarthy, some old, some almost boys, while there was one of the latter whose fantastic attire--a vest of bleached Holland garnished with silver buttons, _culottes_ of chamois leather, gold-gallooned, ivory-hilted sword, scarlet mantle and black felt hat, with long white ostrich feather--would better have become one of Luxembourg's dandy cavaliers than an _attroupé_ of the mountains. Also three men, venerable-looking, yet fierce and stern, two having beards that flowed over their chests, all of whom joined in the hymn that was being sung by a larger body that was ahead of the place where the Royalist troops were--ahead, yet advancing toward those who had been caught in the snare, advancing singing and firing. And by the side of these three, who were Prophets--_Inspirés_--there stood a girl, black and swarthy, too, a bracelet on her arm and in her hands a musketoon, which she raised and, aiming at the carriage below, fired. With a shriek the _gouvernante_ fell back on to the cushions dead; with another, Urbaine flung her arms about her, moaning, while now, from all around, the sound of firing was heard, and, pealing high, above all else, the voice of Poul, howling orders, yelling curses, laughing defiantly. Yet why he laughed none knew, for already the saddles of the dragoons were being emptied rapidly; the ground was strewn, too, with the bodies of the fusileers of Barre and Pompidon, those who still lived being driven back. Fear paralyzes sometimes; sometimes also inspires with a terrible and desperate courage. It was thus with Urbaine Ducaire at this moment. She screamed and moaned no more, let the poor dead woman's body lie back in the carriage, put out her hand to the door that was farthest away from the rock on which the visible portion of the enemy was, and endeavoured to turn the handle. Yet, ere she did so, she saw a sight that might well have unnerved her, have struck her dead with horror. Upon the rock-side of the vehicle she saw Poul fighting like a demon possessed, or, better, like a doomed brave man. She saw his sabre dart through one fanatic's throat, then through another's breast; she heard his hoarse, triumphant shouts and terrible oaths, also his words of bitter scorn and hatred of the _canaille_ as he thrust at them, then nearly fainted at what she saw next: A lad standing by the side of the girl armed with the musketoon, while still she fired as fast as she could load it--a lad who adjusted a huge stone in a sling, and then, watching his opportunity and whirling the latter round his head, discharged the missile, which crashed with fatal effect full on Poul's forehead. And as the brave, rough soldier, with a cry of hideous, awful agony, fell to the earth, the youth, shouting in his rough _patois_ that the soul of David had descended through countless ages to enter his body, leaped down the crags of the rock, fell upon the unhappy man, and, seizing his sword, began to hack his head off. "I can bear no more," Urbaine murmured, "no more! Pray God the next bullet fired enters my heart! Otherwise I must die of horror." And she sank to the bottom of the carriage, her head on the dead woman's knees, sank back and lay there in a stupor. Whereby she knew not that, even as she did so, across the meadow a man had ridden on a rawboned horse as fast as he could urge it, had gained the road, and, swiftly dismounting amid the rain of bullets and stones from above, had wrenched open the carriage door and lifted her out in his arms. Knew not that in his strength he had tossed her on to the neck of the horse and quickly remounted, having but one hand to use in doing so, and that, amid a storm of more bullets, he had carried her off from where the carnage still raged, while in his ears he heard more than once the cry-- "_Voilà ton Poul!_ He is well trussed. Eat him!" CHAPTER XV. SHELTER AND REFUGE. That night as darkness fell upon the earth, and while, high up in the heavens, the bonfires burned which the _attroupés_ lit regularly on the tops of the Cévennes in the hopes of thereby luring their enemies into their strongholds and fastnesses, Martin spoke to Urbaine, saying: "Mademoiselle, I know not what is to be done. Had the unfortunate horse not been slain by that last bullet we might have got back to safety. To Montpellier or, failing that, to Lunel at least. Now it seems hopeless. You can go no farther and--and I can not leave you alone while I seek assistance, which, even if I did, I should not obtain. There is no assistance for--for those who are not on their side." "I can not understand you, monsieur," Urbaine said quietly. "You are yourself a Protestant, my father told me--nay, did you not so inform me that morning in our garden at Montpellier--yet you trouble to save me from your fr----, those of your faith. I am deeply grateful to you, only I do not comprehend." For a moment his clear eyes rested on her. In the dusk that was now almost night she saw them plainly. Then he answered very quietly: "Is it not enough, mademoiselle, that you are a woman? Must I, because I am a Protestant, have no right to the attributes of a man?" "I--I ask your pardon; forgive me. I would not wound you--you who have saved me. And I thank you. Only, here, in Languedoc, we have learned in the last few weeks to expect no mercy from the Protestants." "Like all who have turned against injustice and cruelty, they are now themselves unjust and cruel. One may respect their turning, even their uprising, yet not their methods." Then for some moments there was silence between them. They were seated, on this warm September night--for six weeks had passed since the murder of the abbé--upon a bank outside a deserted cottage a league or so from where the ambuscade and slaughter of Poul and the soldiers under him had taken place. Above them, all around them, in the little garden, there grew the sweet flowering acacias which are at their best in the valleys that lie between the Loire and the Rhône; the air was thick with their perfume. Also the gourds lay golden on the ground, uncut and ripening to decay. The scarlet beans trailed in rich profusion of colour on their sticks, illuminated, too, by the fireflies that danced around. And from the distance of a pistol-shot off there came the murmur of the arrowy river as it dashed down between its banks to reach the sea. Yet all was desolation here, and death. Death typified by the poor merle that lay forgotten and starved in its wicker cage, left behind when those who once dwelt here had fled a fortnight ago to the mountains at the report that De Broglie's _chevaux-légers_ were devastating the land. They fled leaving behind them, too, the three-months-old calf, and the fowls, and all the simple household creatures, having no time to do aught but shift for themselves and bear away to safety those other harmless living things, the children. "What is to be done I know not," Martin went on. "At any moment they