“One still strong man in a blatant land.”
On the next Sunday morning, which was the first in September, the great bell Clemence “was tolling forth its summons to the early service in the cathedral church of St. Peter. It was to be, on this occasion, the most solemn and sacred service of the Christian Church — the administration of the Holy Supper. All the street leading to the cathedral were thronged with worshippers, or at least with those who were seeking the house of prayer. Upon this special day — a day to be much remembered in Geneva — these crowds presented a more gay and varied appearance than they were wont to do. There were plenty of sober citizens in dark garments of serge or cloth, bareheaded apprentice lads, boys in blouses, and servant girls with “half-girdles” of silver, horned head-dresses well starched, and stout leather shoes. But there were others of a very different kind, few in comparison, yet abundantly conspicuous in their pomp and glory of apparel, their velvet mantles and plumed bonnets, and the swords that hung by their sides. Some were escorting dames whose silks and laces glared defiance to the sumptuary laws of the city. As they passed along, many a face. frowned darkly upon them, and many a voice was heard to murmur, perhaps in the solemn words of Scripture, unflattering forecasts of the doom awaiting godless libertines “in the next world. There were allusions to the bravery of tinkling ornaments,” to cauls” and “round tires like the moon,” which if not particularly apposite, at least relieved the minds of the speakers. At all events, the compliments were repaid with interest; gibes and jeers, scornful glances and flouting words being lavished by the Libertines upon the regenerate, “the mortified,” the saints.”
One boyish face, however, looked upon them kindly, one young heart rejoiced in the bravery of their apparel, and the stir and brightness they brought into the gloomy streets. Norbert de Caulaincourt had been only six days in the town, yet already he had come to the conclusion that the lines had fallen unto him in very unpleasant places. Not that he repented casting in his lot with his father — not that he would utter, to him, one word of complaint — no, wild horses should not drag it from him! But, to begin the tale of his sorrows, the bookbinder, Master Antoine Calvin, who lived in the Rue Cornavin, next door to the Bertheliers, had opened his house to them, offering them bread and shelter in God’s name. Very good of the bookbinder, no doubt; Norbert thought vaguely that he must be making merit “thereby, and expecting some reward in the next world. But for him, Norbert de Caulaincourt, and for his father — a gentleman of France, a prince amongst these bourgeois, this canaille — to sit at meat with the tradesman, his wife and his sons, the elder working at their father’s caitiff trade, seemed a hardship and a degradation. It is true the refugees were treated as honored guests; the boys of the family helped the apprentice to serve, and used towards their young French companion a courtesy slightly tinged with awe, but this scarcely softened his scorn.
Moreover, he had begun to go to school, and the sentiment with which his masters and his schoolfellows inspired him, though far removed from scorn, was scarcely less unpleasant. He could not deny that these petits bourgeois of his own age and younger, knew a great deal more of their humanities than he did. But that was like to be remedied soon enough, though with no choice of his own. At first he tried upon his teachers, whom he regarded as greatly his inferiors, the carelessness just touched with insolence that had served his purpose with some of his previous instructors. But he learned very quickly that he must alter his bearing, if he wished to avoid the intolerable indignity of receiving public chastisement the next Saturday afternoon.
“But I am a noble of France,” said he to the kindly lad who warned him, an exile like himself.
“So am I,” returned Louis de Marsac; “but if we were both sons of France — the children of the king — it would make no difference.”
Therefore, that Sunday morning, as he walked to church by his father’s side, his young soul was bitter within him. He felt like a bird in a cage too small for it, and a very ugly cage moreover. Even the sight of Master Berthelier passing by with his pretty daughter (as he supposed her), holding his hand, and Marguerite following them in her Sunday best, scarcely proved consolatory, though he capped to them duly. “It is all so triste here,” he said to himself, with a sigh he could not repress.
“What is it, my son?” De Caulaincourt asked, coming down with difficulty from the solemn rapture with which he was anticipating the Holy Feast, to him so rare a privilege, and one only enjoyed hitherto at the risk of his life.
“Nothing, father — but, oh, look! Yonder goes a brave gentleman, appareled like those at home!” and Norbert bestowed upon the handsome young Libertine, who swaggered by them in silk and velvet, the most friendly glance the poor gentleman had been favored with that day.
At last he stood with his father in the great cathedral church. They were early, yet already it seemed nearly full. The congregation looked uneasy, restless, as if expecting or foreboding something. Norbert had scant respect for the mixed crowd of citizens about him, and presently relieved his mind by giving a shrewd thrust in the ribs to a stalwart apprentice who, he thought, was jostling his father unnecessarily. The youth might have returned the compliment had not a man beside them stretched out a warning hand.
“Remember,” he said, “this is the house of God.”
“Who could have thought it?” retorted Norbert, looking round contemptuously on the plain interior, stripped of everything savoring of Romish superstition. “Ma foi! if these be Genevan courtesies —
His unfinished sentence was smothered in the cloak of a stout old woman, who came violently against him. And now everyone about him was pushing or being pushed, jostling his neighbor, or trying to give way to him when there was no way to give. “So this is the house of God!” thought Norbert — “something extraordinary must be happening, though.”
Next, he recognized in the press one of the fine gentlemen in gay apparel. Some gold lace on his velvet cloak caught in the buckle of the apprentice’s leather belt, and the lad roughly pulled himself loose, tearing the costly garment. The gentleman pushed on unheeding, but a bystander said quite loud, “Stand close, friends! Keep them out! “No blow was struck, no hand was raised, but the people closed in firmly and stood still — a solid wall of human flesh and muscle, resisting what seemed to be a forcible intrusion.
Norbert’s blood boiled. All his sympathy was with the intruders. What right had any one to keep them out — if they were such fools as to want to come in? If fine gentlemen chose to go to church — and such a church too whose business was it but their own? Finding himself close to the velvet cloak, he joined himself to its wearer, and pushed right heartily with him.
He soon saw there were many gentlemen, and they were gaining their point and forcing their way up the church in a solid body, in spite of silent, determined opposition. He had quite lost sight of his father, so he went on with the rest, who came to a stand — it cannot be called a standstill — when they succeeded at last in placing themselves conspicuously in front of what he called the altar.”
But was it an altar? All Norbert’s wondering eyes could see was a fair, white linen cloth, covering something, he knew not what. He had never witnessed an administration of the Lord’s Supper amongst the Reformed. The very strangeness and simplicity of the thing gave him a faint, far-away touch of awe, presently dispelled by the muttered remark of a Libertine near him, “I think we have conquered the saints this time.”
“They are at the foot of the wall without a ladder,” said another, more loudly.
“Hush!” interposed a third. “If we have the best of it, let us play fair, and give the black coats a hearing.”
Then Norbert became aware that the service was proceeding. A minister was droning something from a desk, whether reading, prayer, or exhortation, he neither knew nor cared. Only it was interminably long. But what followed aroused even him. A psalm of Clement Marot”s, sung by the great congregation, made the old church ring again. Norbert joined; he knew these psalms, which were often sung in France, even by Catholics. Then came more reading and praying, quite incomprehensible to one who did not care to comprehend; then another psalm, during which a dark-robed, slender figure entered the pulpit. “It is Master John Calvin!” said Norbert to himself. “The brother of our host, good Master Bookbinder! And not so well-favored. Just a dark man, thin and pale, with a meager, wasted visage, black hair, pointed beard, long nose, and eyes that go through you like a sword.”
The congregation, as one man, disposed itself to listen. Even the Libertines, after a buzz like that of a swarm of flies disturbed at a feast, fell into a sort of protesting stillness, as if forced to hear what they hated. The spell was upon Norbert too; he had to hear. Those cold, clear, unimpassioned words came from a depth of conviction, from a depth of feeling even, deeper than the founts of passion. So steel is cold, but the utmost heat of the furnace has gone to the making of it. Each word was the fittest for the purpose the language could supply, and set in its place like a stone in a mosaic. Norbert, without knowing this, felt its power. Caring nothing for the subject, which was the right reception of the Lord’s Supper, and telling himself it did not concern him in the least, still he could not withdraw his attention.
He tried to shake off the impression, and to think of other things. He tried to look about him. Which of those finely-dressed gentlemen might be Master Philibert Berthelier, the leader of the Libertines, and the kinsman of their next-door neighbor, the lame man with the pretty daughter! “Sacre!” How angry they all look, and how determined! See them clapping their hands on their swords! If “twere not a church, there would be hot work here. Ay, and perhaps there will, for one can scarce call this a church.”
Here the forceful voice caught him again, and held him in a giant’s grasp. It was calm, rather low even, yet it filled every inch of the great building.
“I will guide myself by my Master’s rule,” said John Calvin, “which to me is clear and well known. As we are now about to receive the Holy Supper of our Lord, if any one who has been debarred by the Consistory shall approach this table, though it cost my life, I will show myself such as I ought to be.”
Words of solemn prayer followed. Then the preacher calmly descended the pulpit stairs, came forward, and took his stand at the Table of the Lord. Reverently he lifted up the white napkin and uncovered the bread and wine; a strange sight to Norbert, accustomed to receive a wafer and adore a chalice he never dreamed of tasting. With deep solemnity Calvin blessed the elements, then stood calmly waiting.
There was a sudden sound, a clash, a tramp of feet. The armed Libertines strode forward, each right hand extended to take the bread, each left hand resting on the sword.
“They have it!” Nobert had almost said. But he choked back the word, awe-struck. Over the bread and wine two hands were stretched — defending hands — frail and weak as a sick woman’s or a dying child”s. But there was no weakness in the voice that rang through the crowded church: “These hands you may crush, these arms you may sever, this life you may take, but you shall never force me to give holy things to the unholy, and dishonor the Table of my Lord!”
Profound and awful was the silence that fell upon the angry crowd. Norbert held his breath as he watched, fascinated, the lowering faces of the Libertines. Their right hands fell, they glanced doubtfully at each other. At last, to his astonishment, and probably to their own also, those strong men armed turned silently away, and walked slowly down the church. Quietly the people made way for them. They were gone.
Then, as if nothing had happened, Master Calvin prayed, followed by another minister; and afterward the people came up reverently, and each, standing in his place, ate a morsel of break and drank a little wine. That was all Norbert saw; but he felt something there which he saw not — the presence and the power of God.
Later, father and son stood together in their sleeping-room, their only place for private converse within doors. De Caulaincourt looked anxious.
“I am grieved for thee, my son,” he said.
“Why so, father?” Norbert asked, looking up from the boot he was unlacing.
“Thou knowest that at Gourgolles I never laid my commands upon thee. I let thee worship with thy stepmother. But here it is different. Thou hast said, “Thy God shall be my God.”“
“I hold to that, father, because I hold to thee. Though I confess I like the old ways better.”
“I would have thee love this way, not because it is mine, but because it is the right way. And thereunto I thought thou wouldest be moved, through God’s grace, by the solemn service of to-day, by our prayers and preaching, and our reverent and solemn order, especially in the receiving of the Lord’s Supper. But God has not seen fit to grant my desire. What thou hast seen to — day — I say it with grief and shame — was more fit for a field of battle than for the house of God.”
Norbert stood straight up before his father, and looked at him with kindling eyes.
“Father,” he said, “I have seen a field of battle to-day. And I have seen the best man win. You starveling black-coat with the long face may preach what he likes, and, indeed, I scarce understood a word he said, but he has the right, for he stands to it, and makes all men mind him, because he is a man and a brave one. “But, father,” he added after a pause, have the kindness, I pray of thee, to speak naught of this to the household. Those froward companions, the bookbinder’s lads, would be past all bearing with conceit, did they know I was driven to say so much in praise of their uncle, whom they worship as a king.”
“He will be King of Geneva, ere all is done,” returned De Caulaincourt. “But I will respect thy confidence, my son,” he added with a smile.
“Here is a sample of God’s ways, and a rebuke to my faithless heart,” he thought afterward. The very thing I feared would revolt my wayward boy has touched him in the right place. “God grant me sometimes — somewhere — to see my whole desire for him fulfilled!”