“He works his work, I mine.” —
TENNYSON.
No one would have called Ami Berthelier a particularly fortunate man. Yet in his death he was more fortunate than many of the great and famous of earth. Such do not always leave behind them those to whom the world will never be the same again. To Claudine and to Marguerite the old Huguenot was the very center of all things; and if to Gabrielle he could not be just that, he was not the less, but even the more, intensely beloved. It was some consolation that all Geneva shared their sorrow, and paid every token of respect and affection to the citizen she had learned so late to respect and love. So great was the crowd that followed him to his resting-place in the Plain-palais, that Marguerite averred Master Calvin himself could not have a finer funeral.
“If it had been his,” sighed poor Claudine, “how much better for us!”
“Ay, damoiselle; but not for Geneva. Nor for the Church, nor for the world, as the dear master himself would have been the first to say.”
Amongst the numerous visits of consolation paid to the mourners, they were honored with one from the uncrowned King of Geneva himself. He brought Gabrielle a very real comfort, in the brief note written by Louis de Marsac in his dungeon, which he put into her hand, saying, “I believe you have the right to read it.”
At the first words a thrill passed through her: “I could not tell you, sir and brother — ” Gabrielle looked up into the strong, worn face that was bending over her compassionately. So Louis called him “brother” No more a great gulf between them, no more son and father, no more young, unknown student and great, renowned master! Nay, even now, as she read, the young had outstripped the old, and was older than he in eternity! After a time she went on. “The words were there: I could not tell you, sir and brother, the great comfort I received from the letters which you sent to my brother Denis Poquelin, who found means of passing them to one of our brethren who was in an underground cell above me, and read them to me, inasmuch as I can see nothing in my dungeon. I pray you therefore to persevere in aiding us always with the like consolation, which moves us to weep and pray.”
“They weep no more now,” said Calvin, “and if still they pray, it is as the souls under the altar, of whom we read in the Apocalypse.” Something more he added, which, like much else in those days, passed over the mind of Gabrielle, and left no trace. But her thoughts came back, when he called that which happened at Lyons for himself also a most crushing sorrow. “Yet,” he added, “I would not now desire to be free from all that sorrow at the price of not having known Louis de Marsac. To the end of my days his memory will be ever sacred unto me, and I am persuaded that it will be also sweet and comforting.” Then he spoke of the newer sorrow, giving thanks that her adopted father had been left with them until he could declare himself in the sight of all a member of the body of Christ. “There can be no doubt,” he said, “that Christ will bind together both them and us in the same inseparable society, and in the incomparable participation of His own glory.”
Then, with a kindly, almost a tender, “God bless thee, my child,” the great man departed; leaving in Gabrielle’s mind a glad wonder that he and Louis were brethren “now, that to him also the fate of Louis was a crushing sorrow,” and yet that this sorrow was a thing he would by no means forego. Evidently he too understood the “open secret,” that secret, so strange and yet so dear to those who love and mourn, that our deepest sorrows are at the same time our most precious treasures.
It was well that she had strong consolation, for as the days went on she needed it. “The angels” that at first had borne her messages of comfort, went away from her into heaven.” Or, more truly, at first she followed those she loved into that heaven itself, and the door by which they entered seemed still to stand ajar. But afterward “the door was shut,” and she was left on the other side — alone.
Yet not quite alone. That is what loving hearts need seldom be, in a world where there is so much need for love. Still, it happened to her as it does to many a woman; the lot is a very common one. She saw her dearest ones depart without her, while they left behind them others, dear indeed, and loved with faithful household love, but far less — oh, how far less! — than those who “were not.” We all know when the sun has set, though the moon may be at the full, and there are many stars.
Henceforward Gabrielle Berthelier was the faithful, loving guardian of two frail and failing lives. Claudine was stricken to the earth by the loss of her brother, and Marguerite’s stronger soul suffered even more deeply. A terrible added trial, to one of her temperament, was the sense of weakness and helplessness. The broken limb knit again, but she was never able to do more than move slowly and feebly about the house. After various efforts, ending in misery to herself and discomfort to everyone else, she was at last convinced that there was no more active work for her, that henceforward she must sit by the hearth, and spin. It is true that while she twirled her distaff she favored Gabrielle with much good advice, with which often the young girl could have willingly dispensed.
In those gloomy days the friendship of the De Caulaincourts was a great solace to Gabrielle. But, after a time, the father resumed those evangelistic excursions into Savoy which had so nearly cost him his life; whilst the son, entering upon the work to which he had vowed himself, became the messenger of Calvin to the persecuted Churches in France, Belgium, and Italy.
Gabrielle had another friend who, once domiciled in Geneva, never left it again. It was natural that the cousin of Louis de Marsac should be an object of interest to her, if only because he had so much to tell her of those last days in Lyons. And since to this interest was added compassion for a great infirmity, it was not surprising that a strong bond should spring up between them.
Gabrielle, it is true, had little time for the cultivation of friendship; but she would not have been the child of Geneva she was if she had not made time, even by rising early and late taking rest, for attendance on the numerous religious services which were the very breath of the new Genevan life. It was at once a pleasure and a charity to bring M. Ambrose to these; and the rather as Grillet, otherwise invaluable, failed to develop a taste for sermons. He was not particular, he said, about keeping the old Faith; what was good enough for M. Ambrose was good enough for him, and he did not doubt he could make his salvation very well after Master Calvin’s fashion. Still, he did not see the need of such a fuss, and of working harder at prayers and preaching than one used to do at Mass and Confession. But, on the other hand, he was more than willing to repay the damoiselle’s kindnesses to his master by doing little services for her, such as fetching her provisions from the market. To this, however, Gabrielle soon objected, as she used to find in her basket on these occasions rare flowers and costly fruit which she certainly had not purchased. But declining the services of Grillet did not stop the arrival of these tributes; he only brought them more openly to the house in the Rue Cornavin, with the most respectful homage of M. Ambrose de Marsac.” These luxuries Gabrielle shared with the poor and sick; to whom she was a welcome visitor, Whenever she could snatch an hour from the pressing duties of home.
Her part in the general life of the city was now so small, that she scarcely recognized the fact that Geneva had reached the very zenith of her glory. After the final defeat of the Libertines there was peace. The theocracy, with Calvin as prime minister, and interpreter of the will of the unseen Monarch, had triumphed: scarce a tongue was heard to move against it. Henceforward every citizen was bound to live as in, the sight of God Himself. With moral rectitude, and piety almost unexampled in history, came a wonderful development of intellectual activity. Four and twenty printing presses poured the writings of Calvin and other Reformers in a continuous stream into every country of Europe; and in return, every Catholic country sent into Geneva its fugitives and exiles for the Faith, whilst the Protestant communities, who did not need it as a refuge, prized it as a school, sending hither their sons for an excellent secular education, and a theological training which, if austere and narrow, was still as profound and lofty as the thought of the age could reach.
Norbert de Caulaincourt, when he happened to be in Geneva, Which was not often, or for long together, was glad enough, as he grew older, to frequent the school he had despised in his boyhood. But then, there is such a difference between what we must do and what we would like to do! Moreover, the genial and enlightened Dr. Theodore Beza was now the Rector of the Academy, and there was that in his lectures which drew intelligent and inquiring youth around him.
Norbert shot up very suddenly from boy to man. Until his seventeenth year even his physical development had been tardy, while his boyish heedlessness and recklessness were a care to his father, and a trial to his pastors and masters. But the crowded events of a few brief months — from that day in early spring when he heard of his father’s arrest, to the August morning when he stood in the square at Lyons and saw Louis de Marsac die — had ripened him suddenly into manhood. The boy’s restlessness was transformed into a man’s energy; the boy’s headlong passion for adventure into the man’s resolute daring. Mind and body kept pace together. Ere those about him knew, or he himself took account of the change, it was a stalwart youth, with the down of manhood on his lip, who brought Master Calvin news of the Churches. But there was one thing in which, boy or man, he never changed at all.
Usually, when at home — that is to say in Geneva — he saw little of Gabrielle. For a while he positively avoided her; not strong enough to see her face, to touch her hand, knowing all the time that she belonged still to his dead friend. He told himself, sometimes, that he was willing it should be so; but that did not help him. No whit the less did he thrill through and through with the pain of hopeless longing, and the agonizing sense of that which might have been.
“It is not that I would wrong Louis in heaven,” he said, “any more than I would have wronged him on earth. But still — I had better keep away, until I can think and act like a wise man, not like a fool.”
At length, however, impelled by the claims of gratitude and friendship, he broke his resolution. Once more it was springtide in Geneva, the fifth since that well-remembered season of the elder De Caulaincourt’s captivity. Norbert had just returned over the mountains from a very dangerous journey into Italy. He reported himself to Calvin; and then, after visiting the Antoine Calvin, and finding that his father was absent, he went to see Sister Claudine and Gabrielle Berthelier.
The first thing he heard on entering was the sound of a lute. Sister Claudine sat in their usual living room, busy with her embroidery, Marguerite was spinning, and Gabrielle making a blouse for a poor child, whilst Ambrose de Marsac discoursed sweet music upon the richer and sweeter instrument for which he had discarded his mandolin.
Norbert greeted them all, and was greeted in return with equal indeed with greater warmth; for an unexplained something, perhaps it was the presence of Ambrose, had given him a kind of chill. They talked first of his mission to Italy, and the progress of the Gospel there; but after some time spent in this way, Norbert plucked up courage to ask Gabrielle if she would come and breathe the air with him this fine afternoon; he had something to say to her.
Gabrielle acquiesced very readily. Was he not an accredited messenger of the Church? What he had to say no doubt referred to its concerns, or to the fate of some of its confessors; no selfish interest could have part in it. And in truth it had not.
“Where would you like to go?” Norbert asked, as they passed out.
She answered promptly. “To the New College. I hear it is quite finished now, and I want to see it.”
“So do I.”
As they trod the familiar streets on their way to the Rue Verdaine, Norbert resumed, “Gabrielle, I am in a strait, wherein I think none but you can help me. Have you a mind to do it?”
With an utter simplicity and absence of self-consciousness which made her mood a great contrast to his own, Gabrielle answered, “Dear Norbert, I will do anything I can for you, as indeed I ought.”
“You remember how generously the young Count of Lormayeur dealt with me when I was in his power, and expecting nothing but death?”
“Yes; and the peril was for my sake. Norbert, I should be ungrateful indeed if I forgot.”
“Nay, Gabrielle, you should forget all, save the young count and his kindness. Now he is really Count of Lormayeur, for his father died a year ago. But he is still occupied about the duke’s affairs, who has sent him on some errand to Turin — and there, to my surprise, I chanced to meet him. He recognized me — and with any other I should have felt alarmed, but I knew well I might trust him, and need fear no betrayal. We had a long talk; and he confided to me the great anxiety in which he is about the lady he loves, and meant to espouse as soon as the duke will let him go home and attend to his own affairs. She used to live with an old kinsman, a certain Sieur de Mayne, in the wild district which belongs to Mont Blanc. But the old man being dead, she could not stay, and has had to take refuge with another kinsman, M. Claude de Senanclair.”
“M. de Senanclair! But he lives within our Franchises, and besides, is a zealous Protestant, and a great friend of Master Calvin.”
“That is so; and the very reason I want your help. There came with her an attached old waiting woman, like your Marguerite; but, whether spent with the fatigues of the journey or from some other cause, she took ill immediately upon their coming, and is dead. Now this young lady is alone amongst strangers, and has written to the count a very mournful letter, saying she will pine away and die, and such other things as, I suppose, ladies say when they are sorrowful.”
“But M. de Senanclair is a good man; surely he would be kind to her.”
“As kind as he knows how, seeing he is a man,” said Norbert, with a slight smile. “But she needs a woman — not a serving woman, of whom are plenty there, but one who understands — who knows the heart of a young maiden — and who can talk to her and comfort her.”
“Norbert, what is it you want me to do?”
“I want you to go to her, to speak to her heart, to be to her as a sister might.”
“It was on Gabrielle’s lips to say, I think you are asking a good deal;” but she only said, “And why should I do this work, Norbert?”
Norbert hesitated. He did not choose to say, “Because to him who loves her I owe my life; “as that would seem to be setting up a claim for himself. At last he said, Because Count Victor behaved so well to us.”
“But would M. de Cenanclair be willing to receive me into his house?”
“Most willing. I went there yesterday, ere coming to the town. I saw him, and the damoiselle also. In truth, he is perplexed by his guest, and knows not how to order matters for her comfort, seeing there is no lady in his household. He bade me say that any gentlewoman of my friends would be very welcome at Senanclair.”
Gabrielle thought rapidly. She would be glad, very glad, to do this thing for Norbert. There was always in the depths of her heart an unacknowledged feeling that she had not been grateful enough for all he had done for her. Moreover, during his absences from Geneva, she had certainly missed him.
“If it would please you, Norbert,” she said.
“It would please me very much,” he answered frankly. “Still, you must not do it if it troubles you. Perhaps, indeed, you cannot leave your aunt and Marguerite.”
“That might be managed. Bénoȋte is very useful now; and I have a friend who might come for a little while. Besides, there are the Calvins, next door. They would do all they could.”
“Ambrose de Marsac also seems to be very attentive,” said Norbert, with just a faint suspicion of displeasure in his tone. He would have been comforted, had he known that he was furnishing Gabrielle with a strong reason for a temporary absence from the town.
“Now you have come, Norbert,” she answered, rather hurriedly, “you may perchance be able to find him some occupation, in which, without hindrance from his blindness, he may serve God and man. As it is, he has nothing to do but to go to the Preaching or the Cercle, to visit his friends, and to play upon that lute of his, which sometimes, when one chances to be busy — But at best ‘tis a sad life, and we who have the gift of sight, which he is denied, should not grudge our efforts to cheer and console him.”
“True,” thought Norbert; “but he seems to want a good deal of consolation, especially from Gabrielle.” He said aloud, Then, “Gabrielle, I may hope you will go to Senanclair? With all my heart I thank you. I was bound to serve Count Victor in all ways I could; and now he will know I am not ungrateful. But here we are at the college. Ah, it is quite finished! A noble work! God bless it, and our Geneva!”
They stood still, looking with great admiration at the new building, in their eyes beautiful and glorious, though perhaps in ours only commonplace and gloomy. The space around, with its great trees, was silent and deserted, save for one dark, solitary figure, also standing motionless, and as if absorbed in thought. There was no mistaking that figure. Norbert and Gabrielle drew near with reverence, and saluted Master John Calvin. He looked old and frail; his dark hair and beard were whitening fast, and he leaned heavily on his staff. He had scarce seen more than fifty years; but into those years what toil of mind and body, what anxieties and sufferings had been crowded! If time be indeed the life of the soul, they might well have counted for centuries.
HE returned the salutation with a word of blessing: after which he favored them with a very scrutinizing look from his keen and piercing black eyes.
“I had rather see her walking with Ambrose de Marsac,” was his thought. “A young messenger of the Churche: should not be entangling himself in the affairs of this life.”
John Calvin was not too entirely absorbed in the care of all the Churches to feel a personal interest in the life-story of every Genevan. It was scarcely in accordance with the ideas of the time that a young and beautiful maiden should live so long unwedded, and with no better guardianship than that of two old women. And close at hand was a good man and true, an earnest professor of the Reformed Faith, only longing to undertake that guardianship. True, there was one drawback: a grievous physical infirmity. But on the other hand were ample means, noble birth, and many graces of mind and person. Moreover, Gabrielle was known to be zealous of good works, and here was a good work ready to her hand. She might make a darkened life happy and useful.
Hints of the post of usefulness thus awaiting her occupation, had come from other quarters to the ears of Gabrielle herself; nor could she misunderstand, though she tried hard to do so, the tone and bearing of Ambrose de Marsac. These things made her the more willing to grant the request of Norbert de Caulaincourt, and go to Senanclair.