The Scourge of God: A Romance of Religious Persecution
the wheel or the flames or the gibbet--there." And he pointed down the
street toward where the bridge was on which Fleuville's body had been
hanged.
"Never! Never!" Martin exclaimed, touching the old man's arm. "Never,
while I have a sword by my side." Then added, a moment later:
"My friend, I must declare myself. While all are so brave, all going
to, or risking, their doom, I am but a craven hound to wear a mask.
To-morrow I announce--or rather denounce--myself as a Protestant. My
aunt died ere I could tell the secret which would have caused her to
curse me instead of leaving me her heir. Here, I will shelter myself
under that secret no more. To-morrow I see this abbé in his own house,
to-morrow I defy him to do his worst on me as on others. I proclaim
myself."
"No, no, no!" the old pastor cried, springing at him, placing his hand
upon his lips to prevent further words from being heard or from
penetrating outside. "No, no! In God's name, no! I forbid you. If you
do that, how will you ever find de Beauvilliers--de Rochebazon, as he
is if alive--or, he being dead, find his children? I forbid you," he
reiterated again and again in his agitation. "I forbid you."
"Forbid me? Force me to live a coward in my own esteem? To see those
of my own faith slaughtered like oxen in the shambles and stand by, a
poltroon, afraid to declare myself?"
"I forbid you. Not yet, at least. Remember, too, you are an
Englishman, of France's deepest, most hated foes; your doom is doubly
threatening. Yet, oh, oh, my son," he exclaimed in a broken voice,
"how I love, how I reverence you! Brave man, brave, honest Protestant,
I love--my God!" he exclaimed, changing his tone suddenly, desisting
in his speech, "My God! what is that?"
Desisted, turning a stricken, blanched face upon the younger man, who
had reached for his sword and sash and was already donning them, while
he whispered through white lips, "It has come! It has come! The storm
has burst," while even as he spoke he fell on his knees by the table,
and sinking his head into his hands, commenced to pray long and
silently.
Prayed long and silently, while from outside the bourg--yet advancing,
approaching nearer every moment--there came a deep sound. At first a
hum, then, next, a clearer, more definite noise, and next, they being
distinguishable, the words of a hymn sung by many voices.
Upon the soft night air, so calm and peaceful a moment earlier, those
words rolled, the cadence falling and rising until it seemed as though
it must reach the mountain tops o'erhanging the village. Rolled up and
swelled, and sunk and rose again, telling how the Lord set ambushments
against the children of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, who came against
Judah; telling how, when they had made an end of one of their
particular foes, each helped to destroy another.
Again the pastor moaned: "They have risen. They have risen. God help
us all!"
"Who?" asked Martin. "Who? Our own faith? The Protestants? The
Camisards? Risen at last."
"At last! At last!" the old man said, glancing up from his prayers.
And he began to pray aloud to God to avert the horrors of battle and
murder and sudden death.
The tramp of many men came nearer. Past the foot of the garden those
men went, a compact mass; in their hands and belts, and borne also
upon their shoulders, swords, old halberds, musketoons and pistols, in
some cases scythes and reaping hooks. And ahead of all marched three
gaunt, weird men, the inspired ones, the prophets of the Cevennes, of
the Camisards.
"Keep all within doors," a deep-toned voice exclaimed from out the
throng, "on pain of death. Disturb not the children of God, his
persecuted ones. No harm is meant to those who interfere not. Keep
within doors, also appear not at the windows. All will thereby be
well."
And again the psalm uprose, though now there were some who shouted:
"To the vile abbé's! To the murderer's! To the house on the bridge!
On! On! The soldiers first, the abbé next! On! On! To avenge the
Lord!"
Then from farther ahead there rang the report of musketry, and one man
fell dead pell-mell among the moving crowd, and was left lying in the
white dust of the roadway, as from the window Martin could well see.
But still the others shouted: "On! On! God's will be done!"
And again the pastor lifted his hands from where he knelt and cried
aloud, "From battle, murder, and sudden death, good Lord deliver us."
CHAPTER V.
'TWIXT THEN AND NOW.
When Martin Ashurst bent over her who had borne for over forty years
the title of Princesse de Rochebazon, and saw that, at last, the light
had gone out of her eyes forever, he recognised how her dying words
had changed his whole existence. Not only was he no more the heir to
the wealth she had put by for him--his honour never halted for one
moment in telling him that, or in dictating the renouncement of every
sol that was hers--but also there had arisen before him a task which,
his honour again speaking clear and trumpet-tongued, he must devote
his life to fulfilling. He had to find the true Prince de Rochebazon,
or, which was more likely, if he ever succeeded in his search at all,
to find that man's children and put before them a plain account of all
the wealth which was theirs, even though they should not be induced to
accept it.
That if he could discover the missing de Rochebazon, even though he
were still alive, he would find him willing to reclaim what was his,
he doubted. A man who could for more than forty years renounce one of
the most brilliant positions in France because of his religious
convictions was not very likely now to alter those convictions, he
knew. Also Martin Ashurst's acquaintance with the land over which the
Grand Monarque reigned was amply sufficient to tell him that here, and
under the all-powerful domination of the self-righteous De Maintenon,
Louis would never allow a hated Protestant to step into the wealth and
titles of so Romish a family as that of the de Rochebazons. Between
these two stumbling blocks, therefore--the Protestantism of the lost
man on one side, and the bigotry of the arbiter of France on the
other--it was scarcely to be hoped that even though he should find him
whom he sought, he should succeed in his endeavour to restore to that
man what was his.
Yet, because he was honest and straightforward, he swore to at least
make the attempt.
Regaining his own room, in which the lights had been placed--even with
the mistress and last ruler of the great house lying dead in it, the
major domo had deemed it fit that waxen candles should blaze from
girandoles in every passage and room of the hotel, and that naught
should be omitted which testified to its sumptuousness and
magnificence--he recollected that he was still grasping in his hand
the packet which the dying woman had directed that hand to, for he had
forgotten almost that he had received it from her, so agitated was he
during her last moments; now that it recalled its presence to him, he
determined that he would as soon as might be discover what it
contained.
But first he knew that there were other things to be done: Orders to
be given that due proclamation of her death should be made; that,
above all, the heads of her Church should at once be communicated
with, since the monk now praying by her side would not, he was aware,
quit the house, even though he had to leave the body while it was
prepared for the grave; that a courier should be sent to Marly, where
the king was; that the seals should be put on everything.
There was much to do still ere he could open that packet which might
tell him all--or nothing.
Yet by midnight, before the great bell struck the hour from St.
Eustache, as much was done as possible. Aurora, Princesse de
Rochebazon, lay, not in her coffin; that, with its emblazonments
and silver feet and coronets at its corners, as well as the great
silver plaque telling of all the rank and honours and titles she had
borne--unrighteously, if her own dying words were true--could not be
prepared hurriedly. Instead, upon her bed, now transformed into a
temporary bier, as the great room in which she had died had been
transformed into a _Chapelle Ardente_. Also the courier was gone, the
Church apprised of the death of its open-handed benefactress; already
the Abbé Le Tellier (confessor to the king and all the royal family,
and titulary bishop and coadjutor of Reims) was here, he having
arrived from St. Cloud as fast as his _chaise roulante_ could bring
him; also the place swarmed with priests--Theatines, Dominicans,
Benedictines, and Augustines; the seals, too, were on doors and
coffers and bureaux.
Likewise, Samuel Bernard, _traitant_ and banker to the _haut monde_,
had paid a visit and been closeted for an hour with the clergy. For
the Church was the principal inheritor of the de Rochebazon wealth,
and the time had come for it to grasp its heritage.
Yet now, at midnight, the great house was at last quiet; the monks
prayed in silence in the room where the dead woman lay; the Suisse sat
behind the high closed gates refreshing himself with the flask of
yellow muscadine which the butler had brought him, and discussing with
that functionary what _legs_ each were like to get; some women
servants who had loved their dead mistress wept in their beds.
All was still at last.
Martin opened the packet in that silence--he had dismissed his own
servant an hour before--and inspected its contents.
They were not numerous--half a dozen letters and a lock of hair,
golden, fair as the ripening cornfield, long, and with a curl to it.
But, except that and the letters, nothing else. Whose hair it was that
had thus been preserved in a piece of satin Martin never knew, yet
perhaps could guess.
The letters lay one above the other in the order they had been
written. The first and uppermost had the upper portion of it torn
away, possibly by accident, or perhaps, instead, by the recipient who,
it may be, was not desirous that the place whence it was dated should
be known. At least such, Martin Ashurst fancied, might be the case.
The paper it was written on was yellow with age, the ink faded, yet
the words still clear and distinct, the writing firm. Because the top
of the sheet was torn away some of the first lines of the
communication were themselves missing, therefore the letter ran thus:
"... her fault upon me. _Soit!_ I bow to what you say. Yet, if
disinheritance of all that should be mine is your determination, my
place in the world you can never disinherit me from; I myself alone
can renounce that. The pity is great that you have it not also in your
power to deprive me of the qualities of mind and heart which you have
transmitted to me. Yet I pray God that I may find in myself the
strength to do so, to cast away from me the pride of race, the fierce
cruelty of heart, the intolerance of all that is not within my own
circle of vision. Also your power of hating another for the fault
committed, not by himself, but an unhappy mother--a mother driven to
sin by coldness from him who should have reverenced her; the victim of
a gloomy, morose nature, of a self-esteem that would be absurd even in
the king himself, of a pride that might rival the pride of Lucifer.
"To reproach you, however, for sins which I may myself have inherited
from you--since even you do not deny me as your son--would be useless.
Therefore it is better for me to write at once that I do not oppose
the disinheritance with which you threaten me. Nay, rather, I go hand
in hand with you, only, also, I go to a greater extent. You tell me
that if I embrace the Reformed Faith no sol or denier of the de
Rochebazon wealth shall ever be mine, that I shall enjoy a barren
title. This you can not force me to do. I will support no title