He prayed, and from a happy place
God’s glory smote him on the face! “
Tennyson
On the following evening, Lyne accosted Norbert, who was lingering fascinated about the cathedral.
Beckoning him to walk on with him towards his home, he said —
“It has been a terrible day for the De Marsacs. The stern old father is broken down at last, and would give all his wealth to save his son from the fire. He and the blind gentleman have both been with the poor lad, the father imploring him with tears to recant, the brother trying between whiles to speak a word of comfort, though beyond all comfort himself. For you I have been able as yet to do nothing, but I have got Master Calvin’s letter safe into the hands of Poquelin, and he will contrive to pass it on before he is taken away.”
One more day of weary watching passed; but on Tuesday morning Master Lyne called Norbert, and asked if he would mind changing clothes with his apprentice.
“I would change clothes with the hangman to get my will,” said Norbert.
“Then will it please you to go with Renaud, who will give you the things, and hold his tongue about it afterward?”
So Norbert went; to reappear shortly in a blouse, and bareheaded. Jean Lyne put into his hand a large basket, full of food and wine.
“Alms for the poor prisoners,” he said; “you carry them for me;” and they set off together to the prison, Norbert walking modestly behind his master. It was not a long walk. They soon came to the gloomy gateway; and Norbert, as in a dream, saw Master Lyne ring the bell, and heard him tell the porter that answered it that he wanted to see Master Rondel. The porter opened the wicket with apparent readiness. A head-jailer is still a man; and, like other men, he has his friends, who naturally visit him sometimes. Master Jean Lyne was well-known to all the officials, and, with his companion, might have passed in unquestioned. But he himself said lightly, with a smile and a glance at the basket, “Don’t forget your duty, Jacques;” so the porter, for form’s sake, thrust his hand among the loaves and the flasks, drew it out again, and uttered the magic word, “Passez!” with an air of authority and satisfaction, increased perhaps by the pleasant sensation of something which had been slipped into his palm.
Master Lyne and Norbert crossed the courtyard, and knocked at a small private door. Here too the merchant was well-known, and ushered without question into a comfortable parlor. Norbert, in spite of his anxiety, noticed that there were pictures on the walls, a Virgin and Child, St. John the Baptist with the infant Christ, St. Jerome in the Desert. While he was looking at these the head-jailer entered, a small, spare, nervous-looking man, quite different from what Norbert expected. He and Master Lyne greeted like old friends, and fell at once into a conversation Norbert did not understand, only that it seemed to be about merchandise and money. He picked up a hazy idea that Rondel was in some sort a partner of Master Lyne’s, and had a share in his profits. But as, in his assumed character, he stood at a respectful distance, he did not hear very distinctly, and had no care to listen. At last, however, his wandering attention came back with a bound. Master Lyne was saying —
“That wherein you can particularly oblige me, the which I shall not fail to remember, is by permitting this young man to see, and to hold a few minutes” conversation with his friend, M. Louis de Marsac.”
“You know, Maître Jean, that I can refuse you nothing in reason — nor some things, it may be, a little out of reason. Your lad shall speak with the poor young gentleman, but to see him, ah!” he shrugged his shoulders expressively. “I do not go there myself. It is not necessary to the due discharge of my office, and there are some things which, to a man of sensibility — ” Here he looked up, and his eyes rested, it may have been by chance, on the picture of the infant Christ. ‘Tis a pity those friends of yours do not see their way to a recantation,” he said. Then he sounded a silver whistle that hung at his girdle, and presently a warder appeared, who took possession of Norbert.
He was brought first to a large public room, where a number of prisoners, some of them in fetters, and nearly all with the stamp of habitual criminal” on their brazen faces and “foreheads villainously low,” lounged, gambled, fought and swore. They would speedily have torn the basket out of Norbert’s hand but for the protection of the warder, who summoned one that seemed to exercise some kind of authority over the rest.
“Here, sir,” he said to Norbert, “give this man anything you please, and he will share it with the rest.”
Norbert, glad to escape, gave him three bottles of wine and some bread and meat out of his basket, adding some small coins; then he turned to the warder.
“You were to bring me all secret,” he whispered.
Now Norbert had not only seen the secret, or underground dungeon, in the Eveche, but much to his disgust had once occupied it for four and twenty hours the longest hours in his life. He thought, therefore, that he knew “the horror of great darkness” as well as anyone. But when, after having groped, or slipped, or stumbled down long flights of steep, winding, broken stairs, he was guided into an empty room, or rather hole, he thought it was a lower deep than he had ever reached before. In the dim light of the warder’s torch, he saw nothing, at first, but a filthy floor and a section of clammy wall, though when he looked up higher, something like bars betrayed the presence of a narrow window, looking doubtless into a fosse, or ditch. The cell seemed empty.
“Ah,” said the warder, “I forgot. The prisoner who was here has been removed; for there is a hole in the corner, through which it was found that he could communicate with the cell underneath.”
“Underneath?” repeated Norbert, with a shiver.
“Of course. As I understood, it is M. Louis de Marsac you want to see, not the other gentleman of the name, who is better off, being put in a good room, out of favor to his father. Come on. And take care of the rats.”
The warning was not unneeded, for Norbert’s legs were in some peril. Not without furious kicking and stamping did he follow the warder out in safety. Then he had to descend more broken, winding stairs, leading down, as he thought, to the very bowels of the earth. He seemed to be no longer breathing air, but damp — the very chill of death, tainted with the foulness of corruption.
But all things have an end, so at last he heard the warder say, quite cheerfully, Here we are.” There was the grating sound of a heavy key, and the groan of reluctance with which, after much pressure, it consented to turn. Then the door opened, and the warder bade him enter. The torchlight showed him a figure that sat or crouched on the floor; then torchlight and figure vanished together, as the warder shut the door and stationed himself outside. He had promised that the friends should converse alone, and he was a man of his word.
“Louis!” Norbert faltered, “Louis!”
“Whose-whose voice is that?” the tones were thin and weak, but the voice, unmistakably, was Louis de Marsac’s.
“Louis, I am Norbert de Caulaincourt, thy friend.” First, in the darkness, a thin cold hand sought his, then two wasted arms stole around him, and the friends were locked in a close embrace.
There was a moment of tense, throbbing silence, then a sound. Louis de Marsac, the steadfast, the dauntless confessor, who feared neither sword nor dungeon, neither rack nor flame, was sobbing on the neck of his friend.
What could Norbert do but weep with him, even as David and Jonathan of old, until David “exceeded “?
Here Louis was the first to recover. “I did not know I was so weak,” he said. ‘Tis a strange greeting to give thee. Dear Norbert, how tamest thou here?”
“I came to Lyons as Master Calvin’s messenger, with the letter which-Master Lyne says you had it?”
“Ay, it was read to me, and I have written to him. Think of that, Norbert!”
His voice now was quite natural, and even cheerful. Save for its weakness and the “echo of the dungeon stone” in it, he might have been talking as of old, at Geneva, in the schools or on the Plain-palais.
“They let me have a light sometimes, while I eat, and Master Lyne had sent me paper and pen and ink concealed in a loaf of bread; so I wrote this, which I will give thee when thou goest. Master Calvin’s words go down to the depths of the heart. But that which is in mine I cannot write, even to him. More and more do words seem poor to me as I lie here, and think how soon I shall be where they are not wanted, since we shall know and be known without them. But you can tell him, when you return, that I-that I-thank him in dying for many good things, and most of all for sending me here.”
“Oh, Louis! You mean that you forgive him.”
“No, no. Not forgiveness. Do men forgive those who give them thrones and crowns?”
“A crown in very deed, of thorns,” said Norbert, thinking only of the sharp pain, not of the sacred memory.
“And a communion sweet, secret, unutterable, with Him who wore that crown for me.”
“What does it mean, Louis? What does it all mean? I cannot understand!” cried Norbert, in a passion of perplexed, admiring wonder. “You, so young, so full of life, with so much to love and live for, you give all up without a murmur. You endure all things, you expect death itself, and such a death — yet you not only look for joy hereafter, which a man can understand, but you seem to have some joy here and now which outweighs all — ” An exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
“Yes. When the battle is fought and the victory won. But here, but now — Here. Now. For I have with me what makes the glory, its very heart and center — Himself.”
Norbert was silent, in great awe; as if he too felt a Presence in that dungeon.
“I have come to love the darkness of this place,” Louis went on. It is a veil that He puts on, lest the glory should overpower me. He dwells in the thick darkness, though He is the Light, because it is but slowly, by degrees, that we can learn to bear the sight of Him without it. Though I cannot see you, yet your hand touches me, and I know that you are there. So with Him.”
“Have you never a doubt at all, nor a fear?” Norbert asked.
“Never a doubt of Him. Doubts of myself I have had sometimes, and fears. Oh, I have been through the flood on foot, and it was deep. But even there He was with me, and did not let me go. The bitterest thing of all-Norbert, you know all my heart. You remember the words we spake ere we parted in Geneva.”
“I do. Louis, I have something to tell thee.”
“Speak then, for I long to hear.” Days there had been when Louis de Marsac could not have uttered the name dearest to his heart without yearning and agonizing pain, almost too great to be borne. Now that was passed forever. Now the sound was sweet to him, so sweet that he used oftentimes to say it aloud over and over again. “It is of Gabrielle Berthelier,” he said softly, with a voice that lingered lovingly on the name. “For her also God has given me peace. He will accept and bless her sacrifice — as mine. Yea, more than mine, since it is greater.”
“Louis, I have a message from her, and a token.”
“Ah!” said Louis, with a ring of genuine gladness in his voice.
“Here is the token.” Norbert put into his hands the little ivory tablet. He knew it by the feel, and remembered.
“Thou canst not see what she wrote upon it,” said Norbert. “It is this, jusqu”à aurore; and the words she said were these, “Tell him God is with him, and he will soon be with God, in His joy and glory.”“
“True heart!” Louis murmured. “Brave, true heart!” Tears once more were perilously near. But they passed, as if dried up with sunshine. He was done with tears forever. “Tell her He that has comforted me will comfort her also. She will have the stronger consolation, because she has the greater need, and the harder part. But God knows all about that, and He will make no mistakes by-and-by, when He comes to adjudge the crowns and the palms.”
There was a moment’s silence, yet both felt the moments were too precious to be spent even in such silences. Norbert said —
“Is there anything I can do for thee, Louis?”
“When you go back to Geneva, tell them how it is with me. If you can stay here to the end, I shall be glad; for the sense of human nearness and human fellowship is sweet. But if not, regard it not. Nor will I. For One is with me always. I have no fear the Guide will leave me ere I am through the river.” He paused a moment, then added, And tell her that she has part in every thought, as in every deed of mine. That I take that love with me where I go; and since I can never perish, that which is a very part of me cannot perish — must go on forever. Tell her not to sorrow overmuch, for this is but a passage, not an ending. And tell — but our time is past, and I have still a thousand things to say.”
For now the door opened, and the torch flashed in. “Gentlemen,” said the warder, “the time is up. And you cannot but say I gave you good measure.”
Norbert took hastily out of his basket the things he had brought for Louis, who, as he did so, slipped his letter for Calvin unperceived into his hand. Then the friends embraced, clinging to each other as the drowning cling to a spar for life.
“So much to say,” Louis murmured. “A thousand greetings from me, and love — love to — no, I must name no names, lest some dear ones should be left unsaid.”
“We shall meet again,” said Norbert.
“Yes,” said Louis. “Here or elsewhere.”