“No longer stoops that captive’s brow,
His form erect in majesty;
His pale check lighted with the glow
Of one who sees deliverance nigh.”
THE pastors were energetic and eloquent; their power over the hearts of the people was almost unbounded. Yet the work they had now undertaken taxed their resources to the uttermost. They had to hold back an armed exasperated multitude, hourly increased by fresh arrivals, as a hound in leash is held by his master’s hand from springing on his prey.
They could control the excited crowds; but they could not disperse them. All their influence did not avail to send them back to their homes and their ordinary avocations. They still lingered around Vernoux, and thronged the highways leading southwards; not now to rescue their hero, only to see him once more, and to bless and pray for him on his way to death.
René Plans remained, with Jean Desjours and Étienne Lorin. Philippe Desjours, who was severely wounded, had been taken home. Amongst the slain was the old man whose lips had been the first to murmur, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” He had his wish, and more. He died, if not with the pastor, for him and before him.
The calm and prudent Jacques Brissac volunteered to to return to Trou, that he might allay the anxieties of his parents and Jeannette, who would be sure to hear confused and exaggerated reports of the late events. Before they parted, René confided to him a plan upon which he had set his heart, and in which his assistance and that of Jeannette would be useful.
Jacques warmly approved it. “It is an excellent thought,” he said. “You may depend on our help, René. You see how soon God has shown you what to do with your father’s house.”
A much larger force than M. de Davèze had at command was necessary to remove the captive, with safety, from Vernoux. He sent an express to Montpellier for fresh troops, and waited anxiously for their arrival; so did the multitude outside the town, who knew it would be the signal for their pastor to begin his mournful journey. This interval René spent chiefly in the society of Desjours and Lorin.
Lorin was sorrowful, but resigned. “God is good,” he said; “and it is the will of God.” The strong, simple faith of these sons of the Desert leaned much for support upon that “will of God,” by which they understood the everlasting and immutable purpose of Him whom they loved to call “the Eternal.” They were not fatalist; but they were Predestinarians, of the school of Calvin. To the Divine decrees, whether these required the sacrifice of their pastor’s life or of their own, no reply was possible, except, “It is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him good.”
Desjours was far from sharing the resignation of his older and calmer friend. He was, in Scripture phraseology, a man “bitter of soul.” He heaped execrations upon the heads of the persecutors; he blamed every one—René, for bearing the message; the pastors for listening to it; Majal even, for sending it. He was a genuine child of the south, fierce and fiery like the southern sun. His strong undisciplined nature was capable of much good, but of much evil also. Good and evil had contended for him, and the evil had well-nigh gained the victory, and marred his whole life, when, in God’s providence, the Word, and the man who preached it, together found entrance to his heart old things passed away, and all things became new. He never learned to discriminate between the message and the messenger. His “soul was knit” to Majal, his equal in age, though immeasurably his superior in all else; his love for him was a passion, partaking of the tenderness of a brother and the grateful reverence of a spiritual son. The serene and lofty nature exercised an absolute sway over the ardent, turbulent one. And now, when left without Majal, Desjours was like a ship without compass and without anchor.
Nor did he, in his bitter sorrow, find more comfort in looking up than in looking around. His soul for a time forgot its resting place, and no ray of hope and trust struggled through the chill mist that enwrapped him. Even René, whose own faith was often weak, pitied his deep dejection, and sought to soothe him.
Days passed by; long, weary days to all; for there was nothing left to do. At last the soldiers came. Eager crowds thronged the highway that led from Vernoux to Privas, in silent, anxious expectation of that for which they had waited. René and Desjours had secured a good position, and were standing together, when Étienne Lorin (who had spent the previous night in the town with his brother) came up to them, and, with a face of grave concern, beckoned Desjours apart. René followed.
“My friend,” said Lorin, in a low voice, and with a hasty glance around for fear of listeners, “you are in great danger. Fly! Lose not an hour! Find shelter where you may; only put ten good leagues between yourself and the town ere nightfall.”
“Why? What is the matter?” asked Desjours, without apparent emotion.
“Enough, and to spare,” Lorin answered. “A warrant is out for your apprehension, as the leader of the disorderly crowd that forced their way into the town; and a price of a thousand livres is set upon your head!”
“Oh! is that all?” said Desjours, with a bitter laugh. “I am very much obliged to the magistrates, and entirely at their disposal.”
His words jarred upon the ear of René, who was in a tender, reverent mood, as one about to take part in some solemn sacrament. And Lorin said, “Truly, I sometimes think you are beside yourself, Jean Desjours.”
“Why so, Père Lorin? What better could befall me than to be taken now? They would send me to Montpellier. Fifty long leagues, side by side with him! Only think of that! After such joy, they are welcome to hang me.”
“Hush!” said Lorin. “Are these words for a Christian man to speak? Is your life your own, to fling away, or were you bought with a price, Jean Desjours? Was M. Majal crucified for you? You are a worse idolater than the poor ignorant Catholics. Never Papist put saint or Virgin more plainly in Christ’s place than you are putting him. And true words were those he once spoke to us: ‘The cruelest wrong you can do the thing you love―be it husband, wife, or child―is to make an idol thereof. It hurts less to be scorned and hated than to be worshipped.’ Is it because you think enough has not been done to break his heart that you must needs add another victim to the rest? Have mercy, if not on him, at least on us, whose honor he has to maintain, by a calm and dauntless bearing to the end.” This was a long speech for Lorin, and he stopped suddenly, as if half-ashamed of his earnestness. But a moment afterward he resumed, sadly, “Not that you alone are to blame, Jean Desjours. We have all needed the rebuke, ‘Who is Paul, and who is Apollos?’ Perhaps that is why God has laid his hand on our noblest and best-beloved.”
“Quick! quick!” cried a boy, running towards them. “Here they are! Here come the soldiers!”
René darted off at full speed. Desjours would have done so too, but Lorin held him back.
“For God’s sake, be prudent!” he said. “Deny yourself a useless, perilous pleasure. You will see his face again. You know it?―do you not?”
“Let me go, I must see him, though I die for it!”
He shook off the detaining hand, and, followed by Lorin, hastened towards the highway.
From the early morning, every window in the long main street of the little town had been filled with gazers to see the captives pass. There were several. Two or three of the companions of Étienne Gourdol had been arrested, with a few of the most daring of those who had forced their way into the town, demanding their pastor with threats and menaces. Everyone hoped their punishment would not be heavy. Such a hope could not be entertained for the sorrow-stricken Meniet, whose frank and joyous cheerfulness had given way to a deep melancholy. Torn from a happy home, from wife and children tenderly beloved, and all the comforts of social and domestic life, no prospect lay before him for the rest of his days but hard and bitter bondage―the lot of a slave, the oar and the lash.
Meniet deserved compassion; and he would have had more that day, but for him who walked beside him. Death is a mighty king; and in his presence none refuse their reverence. All looked longest on the face of him who was doomed to die. He was younger than most of those who looked, yet soon to be older than any in the land where “they reckon not by months and years.” Mothers held their children up to see him; women wept, and men whispered each to other, “How calm he looks! and yet he is going to suffering and to death.”
But for him the worst was over. The cup of bitterness had been borne to his lips when he saw himself the desolator of his sister’s home―the bearer of death and destruction to those that loved him. In Meniet’s speechless anguish; in the faces of those five who lay dead at his feet in the Bois de Brousse; in the wailing and lamentation with which the Sabbath day’s massacre had filled many a hut and hamlet that he knew, there was torture keener than that of the rack and the pulley. Sorrow for the sorrow of those simple mountaineers, whose passionate love for him had cost them so dear, had been the cloud that darkened his prison hours, ―and the only one. Yet even in that sorrow he was not alone. He who wept over the sufferings of Jerusalem―He who had compassion on the multitude, because they were as sheep having no shepherd―spoke to his heart, and said, “I, even I, will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick.” Thus in the lonely prison He comforted His servant. He did not send an angel, as of old; He did not send His word, or His promise only―He came. In the dungeon’s gloom He drew near, with His prevailing “Weep not―Fear not; for I am with thee!” No frost of pain, even of pain for others, could withstand the sunshine of His presence and His smile turned full upon His suffering child.
As Majal passed through the town Bate, and came in view of the sorrowful crowds that lined the road, he had but one thought―how to comfort them “with the comfort wherewith he himself had been comforted of God.” Sometimes the compassion of the guards permitted the captive’s friends to draw near, to bid him farewell―even to touch his hand. But now this would be far too dangerous; nor did Majal desire it. It would be terrible to risk a repetition of Gourdol’s experiment.
He little guessed what comfort was given by the radiant calm of his looks; for he “knew not that his face shone.” But he had one way of reaching his friends. Clear and sweet rose the voice whose tones they loved, chanting his well-remembered favorite psalm:
“The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want;
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green. He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.”
Nor were Meniet and the other prisoners lacking in faith and courage. As the holy strain continued, their voices mingled with the pastor’s. And willingly would the friendly band, who pressed as near as the bayonets of the guard would allow them, have joined in the last song he and they might sing together upon earth, but they could not―for tears.
At length all had passed. The solemn chant died away with those words of strong confidence:
“Goodness and mercy all my life
Shall surely follow me;
And in God’s house for evermore
My dwelling-place shall be.”
Soon nothing was visible, except a cloud of dust, and a gleam of steel, becoming every moment more distant.
“It is over,” Lorin said. “We shall see his face on earth no more!”
Still they lingered. Desjours had veiled his eyes with his hand and was weeping silently. Lorin gently touched him. “Come away, my friend,” he whispered. “Remember this place is not safe for you!”
Desjours acquiesced, with a gentleness and humility new to him. “I will go,” he said. “God forgive me―a sinful man! I did not believe till now that the great Shepherd could keep His sheep.”
They walked on in silence.
“Have you thought whither you will go?” Lorin asked Desjours at last. “For the present,” he added, “I think you had better come home with me.”
“I thank you, Père Lorin; but I cannot do that. I have made my plan; and a good one, as I think. I shall go to Philippe, who lies at home ill of his wound. The last place in all the world anyone would dream of finding me, yet the safest place in all the world for me.”
“And you dare trust him, even with your life? Of all the men I have ever known, you are the strangest, Jean Desjours.”
“You may well say that. I trust my brother, though he wronged me sorely. Yet to this hour I did not trust my Saviour, who never wronged any, with His own faithful servant.”
“Are you glad you waited for this day?” Lorin asked, turning to René.
“I shall never forget his look,” he answered softly. “I think God has fulfilled to him, even now, that promise made to the risen and glorified―he sees His face, and His name is in his forehead.”