“My lips were sealed, I think, by his
To words of truth and uprightness.”
E. B. BROWNING.
“MY friends, I implore of you to withdraw. The king’s men are here in great numbers. Only too much blood has been shed already. I am in peace; and entirely resigned to the will of God.
“(Signed) MAJAL-DÉSUBAS.”
These were the words René read when he opened the pastor’s note. Stunned and bewildered, he repeated, “‘Implore of you to withdraw!’ Impossible! ‘The king’s men here in great numbers.’ Ours are greater a hundredfold! ‘Too much blood shed already.’ Not for him! I cannot bear that message―I will not!”
A fierce temptation swept over him like a whirlwind. He would keep silence, and destroy that fatal paper. M. Majal should yet be saved.
He seized the note to tear it. The concluding words met his eye and stayed his hand. “In peace. Entirely resigned to the will of God.” The will of God! Dare he resist that?
He threw himself on the snowy ground, and fought his battle out alone. “I cannot do it, and seal his death warrant with my own hand!” he cried aloud in his anguish.
But the touch of Majal’s lips yet lingered upon his. He saw his look; he heard his words, “I do trust you unto death.” In his sore need he “cried to the Strong for strength.” And not in vain. God helped him, and he was faithful to the pastor’s trust that day. Fearing to allow himself time for thought, he sprang to his feet and hurried into the midst of the excited multitude that thronged all the approaches to the little town.
The crowd had multiplied fourfold since the previous day, and fresh bands were still arriving. All had arms, of some kind. Here and there was an antique sword that, like René’s, had done service in the Camisard war; a pistol, a matchlock, or a pike. But scythes, reaping hooks, and stout staves shod with iron, were far more numerous; and there was many a specimen of the primitive weapon with which David slew Goliath, still formidable as ever in a skillful hand. Everywhere the wintry sun shone upon stern, determined faces; the hardy mountaineers were burning to rescue their pastor and to revenge their brethren.
It was a terrible experiment René had to make―to weigh the power of the pastor’s word against the value of the pastor’s life. That word was so powerful! But then, that life was so precious!
He had not courage to confront Desjours and tell his tale to him. He saw him moving to and fro amongst the new arrivals, exhorting and encouraging them, examining their arms―almost drilling them. Whom should he accost in the first instance? How should he gain a hearing? Had he been permitted even a minute’s unwitnessed intercourse with Majal, the pastor would have told him what to do, in whom to confide. But, in the presence of Davèze, this would have been dangerous. It had been necessary to leave the messenger to his own discretion; to trust him entirely; and it was the thought that Majal had so trusted him that nerved him for his task.
While he paused in perplexity, deliberating upon the course he ought to take, he recognized―to his great surprise and comfort―a familiar face. Making his way through the crowd, he stood in the presence of M. Jean Roux, the pastor who had baptized, catechized, and instructed him.
He was a man of middle age, with a florid countenance, very dark eyes, and a peculiarly quick lively manner. Engaged in earnest consultation with him was a young man whom René knew at once to be a pastor, though he wore the dress of a peasant. He was small in stature, lean and emaciated, with a long, thin, sunburnt face, regular features, black hair, and black eyes full of fire and intelligence. He seemed to be urging some course of action, with great energy, upon M. Roux, when René drew near.
“M. le Pasteur,” said he, “I have something to tell you.”
“What brings you here, René Plans?” the pastor inquired, hastily. “This is no place―no work for you. Go home; take care of your orphan sister, and keep out of mischief.”
But as he looked on the boy’s face, he could not but notice its altered expression. Though it bore the trace of recent tears, it was determined, manly, full of quiet resolution. “M. le Pasteur,” he said, “I was taken prisoner yesterday in the town. Last night I spent in the dungeon; and this morning I saw him.”
As he said this, the dark eyes of the younger pastor flashed such a keen look of inquiry upon him that he was well-nigh disconcerted. “And how was that permitted?” he asked, almost sharply.
“It was M. le Commandant himself brought me to him, and was present all the time,” René answered. “He had his own reasons for granting the favor,” he added, bitterly; “as you will say, messieurs, when you read this;” and he put Majal’s note into the hand of M. Roux.
Both bent over it; and for a time both were silent. The young pastor spoke at last. “God be thanked; He has made a way of escape for us,” he said. “But our noble, heroic brother—” Unable to add more, he turned away his face, and wept.
“Thank God! we are all saved now!” Roux ejaculated, fervently. He then addressed a few brief questions to René, who, in answer, related what had passed between him and the captive.
“Come, M. Rabaut,” he said, almost impatiently. “Let us make use of the help God has sent us in our need. There is not a moment to spare. All is lost if our people enter the town and break the peace again.”
René, in his heart, almost hated the pastors. He thought, with a bitter, jealous pang, of him whom they were so calmly leaving to die, while they profited by his self-sacrifice. “They care only for themselves,” he said, “and he cared only for them and for us all.”
He was cruelly unjust to them. If they accepted the sacrifice easily and naturally, it was because they so well understood him who made it. In his place, they might have done as he did. With them, as with him, the highest acts of heroism were common everyday duties.
“None will doubt that the note is Majal’s,” said Rabaut, the fire of his dark eyes softening into tenderness. “All his modest, calm simplicity is there. His words burn only when he speaks for his Lord.”
Roux was already on his way to the scene of action. Rabaut, about to follow his eager companion, paused a moment, struck by the sorrow in the face of Majal’s young messenger.
“And you, in whom he confided thus―you love him well?” he said.
“Who does not?” cried René. “Yet we must abandon him―must leave him to that death! It is terrible―heartbreaking!”
“It matters little whether thy heart and mine are broken,” the pastor of the Desert quietly rejoined; “but it matters much, for thee and me, whether we be found doing the will of God, who liveth and abideth forever.”
“It is hard that he should bear the cross for us all!”
“Would you not gladly bear it for him, if you might?”
“Ah! would I not? Ten thousand times, if I could, and many―many there would be to envy me, and dispute the glory and the joy!”
“Then read his heart by your own. Do not grudge him the glory and the joy of bearing that cross for One he loves more than you understand, and who loves him more than he understands, even now.”
Having said thus, he turned away, and was soon in the midst of the excited crowd. Well did he, and Pasteur Roux, and others who joined them later, fulfill their mournful but noble task. The captive’s note was passed from hand to hand, and the prayers of his brethren added to his that no man’s blood should be shed for him that day. “Leave him,” they urged with all the fervor of their eloquence― “in the hands of his God. There he desires to be, and there it is well with him.”
With there, and many more like words, “scarce restrained they the people.” The storm clouds, charged with electric fluid, hung their threatening masses heavily in air, and ever and anon the low mutterings of the thunder were heard; but the lightnings did not leap forth, or the rain sweep down in a devastating torrent.
The peace was kept, and the sword, half drawn, restored to its sheath; because the captive pastor, “a martyr to mercy as well as to truth,” calmly and firmly put aside a deliverance to be bought only with the blood of his people. Nor was the work his alone. Each one of the pastors who interposed to restrain the excited multitude, did so with his Life in his hand. Over him also hung the terrible doom from which he forbade his flock to rescue his heroic brother. They were no ordinary men who acted such a part; and who even, with noble frankness and humility, wrote to the Commandant of Vernoux in excuse for what had already happened: “We are very sorry, but we could not prevent it, as we were then at a distance. We will do all that depends upon us to provide that none of our people shall appear in arms henceforward.” Such were the men whom the laves of their country doomed to the gibbet.
One of the youngest of their company wrote, shortly afterward, to an agent of the government: “I am not ignorant to what I expose myself; I look upon myself as a victim devoted to death. But though I am aware of the precautions taken to arrest me, you shall never see me make use of violent means to preserve my life.” These were the words of Paul Rabaut, the most illustrious and distinguished pastor of the Desert church, and for many years, in fact though not in name, captain of the devoted band. The representative men of “the Church under the cross” were, for the earlier years of the eighteenth century, Antoine Court; for the later, Paul Rabaut. Both could truly say, with the great apostle, “Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat.”
Out of the latent skepticism and the “nil admirari” spirit of the present day has arisen a theory on the subject of martyrs, which finds too easy acceptance even with some who should be better informed. We are told they suffered, not for their religious opinions, but as rebels against the governments under which they lived. The assertion is plausible; but history refutes it with ten thousand voices. The witness of the primitive church, which ever “rendered unto Caesar the things which were Cesar’s,” and which no persecution provoked to any act of vindictive violence, ought to be sufficient. But the latest, in order of time, confirm the testimony of the earliest. The long and noble line of martyred Pastors of the Desert (not completed until the eve of our own generation) rises up before us to proclaim that it was for the Faith they held and preached, and for that alone, that they―men of peace, loyal subjects, friends of order―laid down their lives.