The Scourge of God: A Romance of Religious Persecution

any moment might engulf them. For now no longer were the dungeons of the cities filled with Protestants moaning for water, food, or air; no longer did Huguenot women offer their jailers the few miserable coins they had about them so that their babes might taste a drop of milk; no longer did men of the Reformed Faith offer their little bags of secreted livres and tournois to their warders, so that thereby they might be allowed to sleep one hour--only one little hour!--without disturbance; without horns being blown at their dungeon doors to awaken them, or blank charges fired from musketoons and fusils with a like intent; without their bodies being pricked and stirred up by point of lance or sword at the moment that a heartbroken slumber fell upon them. A change had come! Some of the jails were emptied now; in the smaller towns and villages they existed no longer. Some of those towns and villages were themselves erased from off the face of the earth. Down from their mountain homes the Camisards had stolen, creeping like phantoms through the night, like panthers on the trail of those whom they track to their doom, like adders gliding through the grass. One by one these men of vengeance mustered outside doomed bourgs or hamlets till all were assembled in a compact mass, sometimes to lay violent and open siege to the places, sometimes to be admitted silently at dead of night, or in early dawn, by those who, disguised, had already stolen in. Then the massacre took place, the jails gave up their victims who were not already dead, the hateful gibbets and the iron-bound wheels helped to light the fires that consumed the villages, and in the morning there was no sign left either of avenger or of victim. Of the former, all had stolen back into their impenetrable fastnesses; of the latter, nothing remained but burning houses and crumbling walls, a church destroyed, an altar shattered, and at its base a slaughtered priest. Even in the greater cities--in Montpellier and Nîmes, Alais and Uzès--the haunting fear, the terror, the horror was there, even though those cities were fortified and garrisoned, full of soldiers and _milices_. Yet of what use were these? Of what use dragoons who had fought in close ranks and knee to knee against William of Orange's own English and Dutch troopers? Of what use infantry who had stood a solid phalanx of steel under Bouflers and Luxembourg? Of what use a homely militia, when the enemy was unseen and intangible--an enemy which crept in man by man through gates and barriers, disguised as peasant and farmer bringing in produce, or sometimes, in bitter mockery of their foes, as Catholic priest or Catholic seigneur? It was not strange that against such a foe as this all Baville's plans were unavailing, all Julien's military knowledge helpless. And the question which every man asked his neighbour was, Would Montrevel, the new field marshal now on his way from Paris with an enormous army, be able to succeed against such crafty and resolute enemies any better than his predecessors had done? Baville asked himself the same question now, as he sat where he had sat a month or two before, on that morning when across the room had fallen the shadow of Urbaine as she came in from the garden, her hands full of freshly gathered, dew-sprinkled flowers--his loved Urbaine. Yet he told himself, even as thus he meditated and doubted, that if force could do it, it should be done. Upon his face as he sat alone in his cabinet there was a look which none could perhaps have interpreted, yet which none could have failed to observe; a look that had brought an appearance of age to his face which his fifty years of life should not have placed there; also a look of deep, fierce determination which, cruel as he had ever been, had not hitherto been perceptible upon his handsome features. On the table before him there lay a great chart of the whole Cévennes district; attached to the chart by a silken string was a paper referring to it; on the back of that chart was written in a bold, sprawling hand, the words, "Mon plan pour la grande battue des attroupés que je projete," and signed "Julien." "Bah," Baville exclaimed, after throwing down these papers angrily, "_sa grande battue! Son plan!_ What will come of it? What? Nothing. These dogs are as slippery as snakes. No battue will surround, entrap them. And--and--even though they, though this swashbuckler, who thinks more of the bouquet of his Celestin or the aroma of his white Frontignan than of our province's safety, should prevail, it will not bring her back to me." And Baville, on whose soul there lay heavy the slaughter of countless innocent women--their only fault their faith--buried his face in his hands and moaned. "Urbaine, Urbaine," he whispered, "_Ma mignonne, ma petite rose blanche_, to think of you in their hands, you whom we have nurtured so soft and warm, you who, I swore to your father, should be my life's charge, the star of my existence! Fool! fool! fool! to ever let you go thus. Though God he knows," he whispered still, "I did it for the best; did it, knowing the dangers that threatened, that were surely coming, that must above all else strike at Baville and his. Deemed I could save you, send you away to peace and safety." And still he sat on there, his head in his hands, while from between his fingers the tears trickled as he muttered still, "Urbaine, Urbaine!" "She is dead," he said after a pause. "She must be dead. Of all, they would not spare her--my lamb. That is enough--to belong to me! O God!" he cried, springing from his chair and clasping his hands above his head, "nothing can give her back to me. Yet one thing thou canst give me: Vengeance! vengeance! vengeance! On him, above all, on that treacherous Huguenot, that viper who, when there was still a chance left, dragged her from the carriage, gave her up to his accursed brethren. Give me that! Place him but once in my hands and I ask no more. Urbaine can never come back, but at least she shall lie in her grave--where is it?"--and he shuddered--"lie in her grave avenged. Why did I ever trust him--kinsman of the de Rochebazons as he is--why not execute him that night at Montvert?" After the rout of Poul's escort and of De Broglie's soldiers in an adjacent place by the Camisards, some half dozen of the dragoons of Hérault had managed to escape from the former slaughter, as well as many more from the latter. As has been said, they fled to Nîmes, where Baville was at the time, bringing with them the full account of what had happened to both detachments, and in their dismay and confusion making the disaster none the less in the telling. Now, among those who had thus escaped was one, a young _porte-guidon_, or cornet, who had by chance ridden also with De Peyre's detachment to Montvert when in attendance on Baville and the abbé's nephew. And there this lad had seen Martin upon the bridge with Buscarlet, had heard something of the conversation which ensued; knew, too, that he had returned to Alais with them. Therefore he was acquainted with Martin's appearance so well that, when the distracted Intendant had demanded from those who had escaped where his child was, he was very well able to inform him. "My God!" Baville exclaimed, sitting in his rooms in the old Roman city, with the lad before him and surrounded by half the councillors of the place, sitting there white to the lips, "you saw it, saw him drag her out of the carriage, ride away with her." "I saw it, your Excellency, beyond all doubt. And had it not been that I dared not take my eyes off these Camisards who were attacking me--one of the villains was armed with a reaping hook--I would have made a stroke to save mademoiselle; have hamstrung his horse, run him through. But, your Excellency sees," and he pointed to his hand, a mass of rags and bandages, "two fingers are gone; cut off as I wrested the brutal weapon from the man." "Which road did he take?--yet, why ask?" Baville had said. "Which road would he go but one--that toward their accursed mountain dens? And he--he was of their faith." A moment later he interrogated the young dragoon again. "Can you by no chance be mistaken about this man? Think, I beseech you! Of all, she could have fallen into no worse hands than his." "It is impossible, your Excellency. It is the man who sat on the bridge with the curé when we rode into Montvert--the man who returned to Alais with us. Also, I have spoken with him in Montpellier when your Excellency made him welcome at the Intendancy." Beneath his lips Baville muttered a bitter imprecation as the young officer recalled this fact. It was, he saw now, a fatal error to have committed. Yet--yet he had done it of set purpose, for a reason. No, he would dwell no more on that. And now weeks had passed since Urbaine's disappearance. She must be dead, he and his wife had told each other a thousand times by night and day. "Every hope is gone," he said to her more than once, "every hope. She was mine--known to a hundred mountain refugees from Montpellier to be ours. They would not spare her. There is nothing left but vengeance, if he, that kinsman of the de Rochebazons, ever falls into our hands, as he must, as he must. They can not triumph forever. Can not win in the end." Madame l'Intendante came in to him now as he sat in his room, a gentle, handsome woman on whose face the grief she felt within was very plainly apparent; came in, and, touching his forehead softly with her hand, sat down by his side. "Nicole," she said, "a thought has come to me that--that--my God that I should have to say it!--if Urbaine is still alive, might lead to her rescue." "A thought!" he exclaimed, his face brightening. "A thought! What thought? Yet what can a thousand thoughts avail? She is Baville's. That dooms her." "_Mon mari_, suppose--only suppose--they have not slain her--nay, deny me not," as her husband made an impatient movement, "suppose they have not slain her yet. Remember, she would be a great hostage, and they, these rebels, boast they seek not warfare, but only peace--concessions; offer to lay down their arms if--if--all they ask for their unhappy, mistaken religion is granted." "Well," Baville replied, yet looking eagerly at her, "well, what then?" "To bring about a truce, obtain those concessions. They may have spared her life, if only for a time, if only for a time," she repeated, sobbing now. "Even though they have done so," her husband replied, "concessions are impossible, though I myself desired them. Julien is maddened at his total failure; he will grant none. Montrevel comes full of pride at gaining his long-desired _bâton_. It is not to make peace, grant concessions, that he is on his way. Rather to cause more slaughter, extermination. And for _her_--there," and his eyes wandered toward the direction where, hundreds of leagues away, Paris and the great white palace of Versailles lay, "will she grant any?" Madame l'Intendante knew well enough to whom he referred--to _la femme funeste et terrible_--and shook her head sadly, while Baville continued: "She bars all, blocks all, Alice," and he lowered his voice instinctively. "Alice, it is she who has lit this torch of rebellion through all Languedoc. Chamillart writes me that Louis has known nothing until now of what has been happening. She has kept him in ignorance until forced by my demand for a great army and the services of Montrevel to tell him." "My God! What duplicity!" "It is true. She holds him in the hollow of her hand, winds him round her finger as a child winds a silken thread. Will she grant concessions, do you think?" "But, Nicole, listen. If she, Urbaine, lives, there may be still time.