“Oh, weep not o’er thy children’s tomb—
Oh, Rachael, weep not so!
The bud is cropped by martyrdom,
The flower in Heaven will blow.”
—HEBER.
ELENE DE FRESSINIERES took her first steps upon the world’s wide stage in the rôle of a cherished and petted only child. French parents are remarkable for devotion to their offspring, and the Huguenots, in this as in other ways, were emphatically French. She was still a child, however, when she shed her first tears of real sorrow over the grave of her beloved and loving mother. But the years that followed, though they could never be just like those that had gone before, had yet in them a wonderful joy and sweetness, for she became the daily companion and pupil of a man of cultivated intellect, who had thought much, felt much, suffered something also. Her young soul, naturally intelligent and receptive, gave itself utterly into the hands of her father. All the passionate love of which she was capable expended itself upon him. So it was that too soon, and with no bright, irresponsible girlhood between to break the transition, the child became a woman, grave and thoughtful—strong to plan, to act, and to suffer.
The coming of her young step-mother brought, for a little while, a lighter element into her life. The new Madame de Fressinieres was full of good nature, full of vivacity, and even of frank and innocent gaiety. As her father had conformed outwardly to the Church of Rome, she had grown up unshadowed by the cloud of terror that brooded over most Huguenot homes. The quiet, serious girl began to learn the art of laughter from the light-hearted matron, who was not so much older than herself in years, and decidedly younger in character.
But it was the birth of her little stepbrother that shook Elene, for the time, entirely out of the folds of her too serious life. She went into ecstasies of delight over the baby. She would leave even her beloved books to nurse and caress him; and to be allowed to do any little service for him was amongst her greatest joys. Anyone who saw her with “le petit Alphonse” in her arms could easily believe that under other training she might have grown into a merry-hearted maiden. And no one could doubt that she certainly would be—nay, that she was already—a very beautiful girl.
This certainty, which to most parents would have been a source of pride and pleasure, only planted a fresh thorn in the dying pillow of M. de Fressinieres. With a skill absolutely diabolical, every possession of a Protestant—from his wife and his children to the wine in his cellar and the fruit in his garden—was now transformed into an instrument of torture. The more precious or the more beautiful they happened to be, the more power had the pitiless hands of his foes to wring his heartstrings by their loss or their destruction.
Yet M. de Fressinieres died in peace, his wife and daughter at his side, his attached and faithful servants around him. Hitherto, nothing worse than fines, or “amendes,” had come upon him and his. The persecution was very unequal in its pressure, depending much upon local circumstances. The king’s edicts indeed were absolute and universal; but the mode of their execution, in the various parts of his enormous kingdom and through the complicated machinery of his government, admitted of great variety. By means of a large expenditure of money, and some interest in high quarters, de Fressinieres had arranged that, after his death, his wife and children should be removed to the residence of his father-in-law in the neighborhood of Montauban, where he thought they would be in greater safety than in the Vivarais. For this accordingly they prepared themselves as soon as they could. The young widow, prostrated by grief, was able to take very little part in the preparations, but Elene, young though she was, showed great practical ability and a singularly mature judgment.
Her father’s death, the second sorrow of her life, was by far the greater, because it was the woman’s sorrow and not the child’s. But it was the fire that burned into the fine and delicate porcelain of her nature the pattern his skillful hand had previously depicted there.
The day before they set out upon their journey, she had an experience which stamped itself forever on her mind.
Baby’s nurse, who was at least a nominal Catholic (the Huguenots being forbidden to have servants of their own Faith), said to her young mistress, “What a mercy our dear master—God rest his soul!—was able to manage M. le Perfet, and the cure too! For our baby was not baptized a Catholic any more than poor Elise Lunelle’s; and I fear there has been bad work there.”
“Hast heard anything?” asked Elene, alarmed. She knew that soldiers had been quartered on the Lunelles, who were tenants of her father’s and zealous Protestants; her heart had ached, and her prayers had gone up for them constantly, but she had not been able hitherto to hear anything about them. No one from the château had dared to approach their house.
“The soldiers are gone, ma’amselle. One of the stable boys brought word of that. And they have taken M. Lunelle away with them.”
“To prison?” said Elene, horrified.
“Ay—that may not be the worst, though!”
“What else—what worse?”
“Indeed, ma’amselle, I don’t rightly know. Best not to think of it. We are going away now, and cannot help or hinder.”
“Not help! Oh but, Manon, we must! Who knows but Elise may be sick, dying even? Who knows what they may have done to her? I must go!”
“Ma’amselle is not wise. And I—I am an old fool, that is all. But I cannot let ma’amselle go away with this trouble on her heart. So this is what I will do. I will ask leave to go to the shoemaker and get my old shoes, which the rascal has never sent home, though he knows I want them for the journey. The Lunelle metairie (farm) is almost on the way. I will take ma’amselle there, and come back for her when I get the shoes.”
That afternoon the plan was carried out. Manon left Elene at the gate of the comfortable farmhouse, which stood amidst its smiling, well-cultivated fields.
The house door was open, and a little boy of seven or eight, who was standing at it, ran to her, and clung to her dress, crying bitterly. “Oh, ma’amselle,” he sobbed, “come to mother—she is dying. And they have taken father away. Come—come to mother.”
Elene laid a soothing, protecting touch on little Mathieu’s head.
“Yes, my poor child, I come,” she said, and went in, passing from the bright sunshine without to the comparative darkness of the great kitchen, a place hitherto associated in her mind with happy childish visits, feasts upon cakes and apples, and other good things. As usual in such houses, the best bedstead was there, in an alcove; and on it lay Elise Lunelle, moaning and shivering.
Elene knelt down beside her, and gently taking the fevered hand in hers, tried to speak words of comfort.
“God will take care of M. Lunelle,” she said. “You know He is with him.” Then, thinking His words better than her own, she softly repeated comforting texts of Scripture. “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee.” “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” “I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him.” But Elise was as one that heard not; save indeed that she drew her hand out of Elene’s, and turned her face away, while the weary, brokenhearted moaning went on still.
At last, in despair, Elene thought of the baby. Surely the sight of him would rouse her. And the babe himself must be needing her care.
“Where is little Maurice” she said to Mathieu. “Tell me, and I will bring him to the mother.”
The child answered by a dismal cry; while at the word Elise sat up suddenly, her eyes wild and wandering, her arms flung out with a gesture of despair. “Maurice is dead!” she wailed. “Little Maurice is dead! I killed him! I!”
Elene thought she had lost her senses. “Dear Elise,” she said, “you are sick, and sick people think strange things that are not true. You could never have hurt darling little Maurice. Never, never! You would have died yourself first. If he is gone, it is God who has taken him.”
“No! I—I myself! And it took so long—oh, God, it took so long! He cried—he cried—I hear him crying still. I will hear him till I die.”
“Mathieu, what has happened? Tell me, if thou canst,” said Elene, quivering with horror.
“I don’t know,” the boy faltered. “When the soldiers came, father sent me away to the Brente’s” (their nearest neighbors), “but I ran back the next day to see mother, for I wanted her so. Father saw me coming to the door. He ran out, caught me up in his arms, carried me to the loft, and shut me in there, bidding me not to come out for my life. I heard a noise below as of fighting. Voices too, strange voices, and father’s and mother’s, as if praying. And through it all, baby crying—crying. Then all was still except for that crying. At last I fell asleep and knew no more.
“Father’s voice woke me: he called me, and I came. He was standing amongst the soldiers, his face all changed and white, his hands tied behind him. On that table” (he pointed to it) “there was something—covered with a cloth. My father said to the soldiers—it was not like his own voice but someone else’s ‘Before you take me away, in God’s name let me bury my child!’ Then I knew that it was Maurice, and that he was dead.
“They would not let him; but one of them took the baby up, and went out. I know no more, only that father said to me, ‘Mathieu, take care of thy mother. We shall meet soon in God’s Heaven.’ Then they went away. They were taking him to the galleys, they said, for resisting the soldiers of the king.”
The story, more than once interrupted by sobs, was followed by a fit of childish weeping. Elise, as she listened, had come to herself enough to speak coherently. “They bound me here,” she said, “to the bedpost. They took baby from me, and laid him on that table. They said I should not touch him till I said the words they bade me. My husband fought them desperately—like a madman—but they overpowered him. Baby cried, and cried, and cried—”
“Oh, poor Elise, how did you ever bear it?”
“I did not bear it. It has killed me. But I could not deny my Lord. There! there! don’t you hear baby crying?”
“Dear Elise, baby’s crying is over now. Little Maurice will never cry again. He is rejoicing now—with Christ in Heaven.”
But the tortured soul could not receive that comfort.
Still, through all that was said to her, she “heard baby crying.” She would hear him till she died.
When Manon came back and heard the dreadful story she cursed the soldiers. Had she had learning enough she might have said of them, as did the Catholic duke, St. Simon, “They are propagating the faith of Christ by the methods of Diocletian.” Only, the Pagan persecutor’s methods were less ingenious in their cruelty: it did not occur to them to keep mothers bound and helpless within sight of their nurslings, until the little ones died slowly for want of the nourishment they were forcibly prevented from giving them.
Elene absolutely refused to leave Elise alone. Manon hastened back to the château, and returned, bringing with her an elderly man-servant, to take her young mistress home. “Mademoiselle will have the goodness to tell madame,” she said, “that Mariette (the nursemaid) will take the best of care of le petit for the night, and I will be back by daybreak. Ma foi! Madame is a mother herself—and so am I.”
Stunned and cold with horror, Elene returned, and delivered the message. Then she took from a chest a suit of baby clothing, soft and warm, which had been daintily wrought by her own hands as a parting gift for little Maurice. Over this at last a few tears did fall—not many. She took it to the chamber where the trunks stood ready, packed for the journey. Opening one of them, she found the place where a full suit of the clothes ordinarily worn by a peasant girl lay carefully folded together. This suit her father had procured for her, and advised her always to keep at hand; “for,” said he, “in these sad times you know not when or how you may need a safe disguise.” With the peasant girl’s cloak and bodice and petticoat she put the clothes little Maurice would never wear. As she did so, a strange, strong look came into her gentle face. “Perhaps God’s work for me is to save baby, and baby’s mother, from that,” she said in her heart, “If so, with His help, I will.”
Next day, without let or hindrance, the party went on their way. They reached Mauzac in safety, and settled down under the roof of the weak, kindly old baron, the father of Madame de Fressinieres. Elene considered him her grandfather “by courtesy,” and always addressed him as such, while he, on his part, soon became very fond of his new granddaughter.