Done and Dared in Old France

IT may be asked, by some thoughtful reader, how much is truth and how much fiction in this record of things “Done and Dared in Old France.” A few words will give the answer. All general statements respecting the condition of the country, and the persecutions that accompanied and followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, may be accepted as absolutely true. So are all particular instances of suffering or of heroism, although, for the purposes of the story, fictitious names are used—generally, though not always. Peter Bayle, the well-known philosopher, and his martyr brother Jacob, were real persons; so were Henri Portal the peasant preacher, and M. de Rignac the Devil-worshipper. The “conversion” of the Protestant gentlemen of Montauban also took place just as recorded.

The noble figure of Claude Brousson is entirely historic. No touch of fiction has been added, save the one scene in the camping-ground of the robbers. In the scene on the canal boat details have been necessarily elaborated, but the incident itself is a fact. His story is one of those which must be left as God has written them for us in the lives of His servants.

Chapter 1: In a Forest of Old France

THE woodland ways, dim and gloomy even in the summer sunshine, were dark with the shades of night and cold with the breath of autumn. Oak and elm and chestnut tossed their discrowned heads in the rising wind, but underneath them all was still, save for the occasional hoot of an owl, or the scuttle among the fallen leaves of some wild creature that sought its lair.

One human form, one human step alone broke the solitude. With flying feet and panting breath, a young boy rushed along in mortal terror. At first, he followed a rough and broken footpath, but soon losing all trace of it he plunged through brake and brushwood, over gnarled roots, under overhanging boughs—anywhere, anyhow—away into the deep heart of the wood.

He was a mere child, though strong and active for his age. He went on bravely, until, stumbling over some obstacle, he fell face forward on the ground. Then first he knew he was tired—tired even to death. He could not go a step farther to save his life. Yet go he must. Death would be better for him than to be found there. And found he would be if anyone had seen him enter the wood. He might even be tracked with bloodhounds—he had heard of it. And hark! Was that sound the distant baying of a dog? No—more likely the howl of a wolf. That thought was a fresh terror. He seemed to see through the darkness the glaring eyes of the savage beast as it stole upon him—he felt the clutch at his throat. Fright brought back his exhausted strength. In a moment he was on his feet again, and off—like an arrow from the bow.

It could not last. His footsteps lagged, he limped painfully, swayed from side to side, leant for support against the giant stem of an old chestnut tree. He was not only exceedingly weary, but desperately hungry. And night was coming fast. Hot from his race he felt no cold, but he did feel two or three light flakes of snow as they fell on his burning brow. What would become of him, alone at midnight in the depths of the forest?

As the fear of pursuit grew fainter, and no bay of dog or howl of wolf broke the stillness, other fears more fantastic seized upon his soul. He was the child of a land of legend and folklore, which peopled the dim recesses of the forest with monstrous and terrible forms. He wept in childish terror, and then in childish trust he prayed: “Noter Pere, Toi qui es aux cieux, aie pitie de moi, pauvre enfant.” If he had only said, “Vous qui etes aux cieux,” he need not have been fleeing in fear through the forest. His prayer ended, he went aimlessly a few steps farther. They brought him to a more open space, where he could better look around him. Thence he saw a faint light glimmering through the trees. Could it be the lantern of his pursuers? But it did not look like that. It flickered, yet did not move. It came no nearer, went no farther off. Faint and weary, frightened and hungry as he was, it drew him on irresistibly.

His progress was slow, yet it did not take him long to reach the light. He saw that it came from the unglazed window of a rude hut—within which he might see human faces, hear human voices again. He might get food, warmth, shelter. He knocked very gently, as one half afraid. No answer. He knocked again, and louder.

Still no answer. Should he go away? That would be foolish—cowardly; and this little lad was no coward. Yet once more he knocked, and this time with all his might.

At last the door opened, showing in the firelight a little old woman with a wisp of gray hair, and the most wrinkled, battered face he had ever seen.

“Qui va?” she asked, sharply.

“I am cold and hungry and tired,” the boy faltered; “I am lost in the wood. Please you, mademoiselle, let me come in and warm myself.” (Mademoiselle was then the term of courtesy for women of all ages, if not noble, whether married or single.)

“Shut the door, Jeanne,” cried a man’s rough voice behind her.

She cried something back angrily, which brought as angry a reply. She retorted, with the door still in her hand. Then she opened it a little wider, with a grudging “Well, come in an’ thou wilt” to the stranger.

Even this invitation was thankfully accepted. The boy stood in the warm glow of a clear wood fire, over which hung a large pot, giving forth a most appetizing odor.

A man, as tall as his wife was under-sized, and with a scowl on his coarse, ugly features, was standing by the fire, and a little girl crouched beside him, playing with a dog. The boy noticed that she had golden hair.

“Who art thou, and what brings thee here?” asked the man in a surly voice.

“A poor boy, who has lost his way. Please—oh, please—let me stay!”

“I suppose thou hast a name, like other folk. What is it?”

He hesitated, and said at last in a bewildered way, “Philippe-Montel.”

At the name of Philippe the little girl looked up quickly. The man went on: “Where dost come from?” “The village.”

“A child like thee! And at this hour! Why, in heaven’s name?” It was not heaven that he invoked. It must be understood that both his speech and his wife’s were adorned with sundry flowers of rhetoric of a species which does not bear transplanting.

“I ran away—I was afraid—” Here at last, overcome by fear, by sorrow and by loneliness, the boy burst into a passion of tears.

“Stop that!” cried the man, not quite unkindly.

The woman came nearer, and looked at him from head to foot. “Hast any money?” she asked.

The boy put his hand in his pocket, took out a piece of silver, and laid it on the table.

“Is that all? Speak the truth, or I’ll make thee.” The difficulty was to speak at all. At last he sobbed out, “I have no more. Guillaume kept the money.”

“I suppose he robbed thee, and then took himself off.” The boy’s voice came back to him in his eagerness to defend a true friend, who could speak for himself—ah, never more! “Oh, no, no! Guillaume would have laid down his life for me. But he was taken ill at the inn, and died yesterday. Then I ran away.”

“Little fool! An’ if run thou must, why not first put thine hand in the wallet of this Guillaume, and take with thee that which a dead man has no use for?”

“I never thought,” said the boy.

The woman took up the coin. “At all events,” she said to her husband, “this will pay for his supper, and a lie down before the fire.” It had not escaped her small, keen, dark eyes that the boy’s clothing, though plain, was good and almost new.

Jean Darcheau nodded; so she gave “Philippe” a stool beside the fire, and left him to himself for a while, during which his sobs grew quieter, and at last ceased altogether. The warmth and the sense of safety and protection soothed him unawares; and what hungry boy could help enjoying the savory smell which came from the pot over the fire? He watched with interest the proceedings of the old woman as she removed it, and poured its contents—a rich broth with substantial pieces of meat in it—into a large wooden bowl, beside which she placed thick slices of black bread, cut from an enormous loaf shaped like a cart wheel. “Come, Philippe,” she said, “bring thy stool.”

Nothing loth, the boy obeyed, and took his place at the rough table, beside the little girl. The dog stood between them, in evident enjoyment of the “pleasures of hope.”

Hungry as he was, the boy did not touch the food without first bowing his head, and saying some words to himself, although without making the sign of the cross. Then he looked longingly at the great bowl, the contents of which were rapidly disappearing under the onslaught of three large wooden spoons. The old woman saw his difficulty. “Art blind, boy?” she snapped. “Dost not see that spoon beside thee? Work away!” Hunger conquering disgust, he dipped his spoon in with the rest, and found the result so satisfactory that he needed no further urging.

“How dost like thy supper?” she asked at last, in a kinder tone.

“I like it well,” the boy said, emphatically. “It is delicious. And,” he added, as a climax of commendation, “so well salted.”

His hosts exchanged glances half amused, half suspicious. Salt in those days was a very costly luxury. In many parts of the country it cost a poor family as much as all the rest of their food put together.

Food and warmth were fast doing their work upon the frame and senses of ten years old. Philippe, as he called himself, was first conscious of a vague surprise that such poor people should have such good things to eat—then of an impression that he was still at the inn—that Guillaume was not dead, but getting better—until finally he felt suddenly that he was falling, and clutched at the table to save himself.

“Come,” said the woman briefly. She threw down an old gray cloak before the fire, added a bundle of rags for a pillow, and his bed was made. Never was bed more welcome to a weary traveler, not even that famous feather bed which it cost a certain Mayor of Bristol the exorbitant sum of one penny to sleep upon, causing him to observe that though it was very dear the comfort was quite worth it. In the midst of his murmured evening prayer the boy’s mind had slipped off into dreams of home—a home as different from this as if it belonged to another world. Then came oblivion—blank, utter and profound.

At last consciousness returned from the unplumbed depths of slumber, called back by the howl of a dog and the cry of a child. The boy’s first impression was terror—he was in the wood again and the dogs were after him. He started up, but there were no trees above his head. There was a fire beside him, now almost dead, and bright moonlight pouring in at the windows. Gradually everything came back to him. But through everything he heard the dog’s howl of pain and the child’s pitiful crying—voices too, rough and angry, drowning the one weak, pleading voice. He had scarcely heard a word from the little girl they called Babette, yet he knew the voice was hers. They were misusing her. Then they should do it no longer! All aglow with the ardor of protection, and of championship, the little knight-errant of ten years old sprang to his feet, and rushed forth to the rescue, following the direction of the voices.

The threatening of snow had passed away, and the open space behind the hut lay clear in the moonlight. A man in a queer dress, something like a soldier’s, stood in the midst, belaboring with a stout stick the struggling, howling dog. The dog’s master, instead of interfering to protect him, held the creature, and Babette was held also, not too gently, by the strong arms of her mother.

“What are you beating that dog for?” cried the boy, bounding in among them. “What has he done?”

“Eh, who’s that?” said the man with the stick, letting it fall to the ground.

“Little wretch, how camest thou here?” cried the dog’s master in a rage; “I’ll shake the life out of thee.”

He seized the boy by the shoulder as if to do it, letting go the dog, who darted into the wood and was lost to sight. “What is it all about? Who is he?” asked the other man, whom they called “Gabelou.” The woman said something in a low voice. “No matter,” returned the Gabelou aloud. “He’s not one of us. He’s a foreigner. He has seen too much. There’s but one thing to do. Darcheau, knock him on the head.” “That’s sudden,” said Jean Darcheau, the owner of the hut. “After all, what does he know?”

“Perhaps a little too much,” growled the Gabelou. “We use children to outwit the gens d’armes. Why not they, to spy upon us? Let’s look at the little rascal.”

He took the boy roughly from Darcheau and looked at him from head to foot. “Thou art no peasant’s son,” he said at last. Then to Darcheau: “Make an end of him, comrade. ‘Tis safer so. The dead tell no tales. What art afraid of, man? Who ever comes here? And his clothes alone will pay for thy trouble.”

“‘Tweer a hanging matter,” Darcheau muttered.

“An’ it were? We may swing any day for the morsel of salt we sell our neighbors, for their good and our own. We may as well swing for something better while we are about it. Bring the ax, old man—I’ll do it myself. And with one stroke. No need to mangle the poor little wretch.”

The boy was sure his last hour had come. He was whiter than the moonlight, he trembled all over, his very teeth were chattering. Yet he did not cry, or beg for mercy. He came of a race that knew how to die, and had been early taught that he might have to put his knowledge to the proof. He looked up to the stern face of the Gabelou. “If you are going to kill me,” he said, trying hard to steady his voice, “let me pray first to the good God.”

“The good God never comes into these parts,” said the Gabelou, with a laugh. “But say thy prayers, child, an’ thou wilt.”

“Stop!” cried the old woman suddenly, seizing the Gabelou by the arm, while Babette ran to her father and clasped his knees.

“Oh, father, don’t let him be killed!” she pleaded.

“Listen, his name is Philippe. Like brother’s.”

Jeanne Darcheau’s plea for mercy was more convincing.

“You men are fools,” she said. “You cannot see what is under your noses. When good luck comes in at the door, you pitch it out through the window. ‘Tis the good God, as this boy calls Him—or the devil, for aught I know—who has sent him ready to our hands, in the room of poor Philippe. And I warrant me he will be worth a vast deal more. He looks quick enough—”

“To hang us all, I dare say,” said the Gabelou. “I tell you he’s no peasant’s son. I hate his kind, and they hate us.”

“Don’t be too hard,” said Darcheau. “And, after all, we want a boy. Babette there is too young and weak, even if she had the sense for it. But with a smart lad like that, and Jacquot well trained, we could run the business properly.”

“He must have a good pair of heels to have got as far into the forest as this,” Jeanne Darcheau threw in. “But if he should try to betray us,” said the Gabelou, with a significant look at the boy.

“Then we kill him—sure,” Jeanne added, coolly.

“Sure as tomorrow’s sun,” agreed Darcheau.

“Now let’s see what he is fit for,” said the Gabelou.

“Stand there, boy, and answer me. Speak truth, or I kill thee. What is thy name?”

“Philippe Montel.”

“Already thou liest. That is not thy name.”

The boy raised his head proudly. “My father never lies,” he said. “And he told me that was to be my name as long as we were in France.”

“So thou wert leaving France? I begin to see daylight. With whom? With thy father?”

“Oh, no!”

“Then with a guide? Who was he?”

“Guillaume Montel, our steward.”

The Gabelou thought a moment; then he said, not unkindly: “Look here, boy! Thou didst ask leave to say thy prayers. Down on thy knees and do it! Say an ‘Ave’ too for the good of us all, since we are not much in the way of praying.”

But the boy stood motionless, and his white lips murmured “No.”

“Ah, I thought so. Though here in Auvergne we are not troubled with such cattle, I know thou art a Huguenot from Languedoc, trying to get out of the country against the king’s edicts.”

The boy flung himself on his knees in an agony of terror. “Oh, monsieur,” he cried, “don’t—don’t give me up to the cure! Don’t, I pray you, for God’s sake! Kill me rather with your ax.”

“What ails thee at the cure? Not that I know any good of him, for a spy and a sneak that he is, ever wanting to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. But that he devours small boys like a wolf have I never heard. What would he do to thee?”

“Send me to the Jesuits’ school. The people said it at the inn.”

“Then he shall not get thee. ‘Tweer pity to make a monk or a priest of a bold little lad like thee. Stand up now; show thyself a lad of mettle, and thou shalt be safe with us. Peste! We are in the same boat, after a fashion. Thy folk will not have the king’s religion, ours will not have the king’s salt. And if the religion be but half as dear a bargain as the salt, perhaps they are in the right of it.”

The boy stood up and looked in the face of his questioner, bewildered, yet relieved. “Then you will not give me up?” he said.

“Truly not, if thou art faithful. But if thou goest about to betray us, say thy prayers first—in French or in Latin as thou wilt—for I promise thee a short shrift after. But I think thou wilt be a good comrade.”

“I will try,” said the boy, frankly, in the glad rebound from a terrible fear, and without the least notion to what he was pledging himself.

“First you must give me your true name. Then you must take the oath.”

“What am I to say?

“Put thy hand in mine and say after me ‘I swear’—but stop—thy name first—thy name?”

The boy hesitated.

“Speak at once, boy. And the truth, mind, else thou goest to the cure.”

With a flushed face and kindling eyes, though his lips trembled still, the boy said boldly, “Gaspard Charles Louis de Montausier.”

A laugh from the Gabelou and the two Darcheaus drowned the last syllables. It was no pleasant laugh, but a jarring sound, half bitter, half scornful, and wholly unmirthful.

“What a mouthful of names for one poor little rat!” sneered Darcheau.

“And only one pair of hands among them all!” said Jeanne.

“Well,” pursued the Gabelou, “the child did not christen himself—if, being a Huguenot, he was christened at all. And as hereabout there are none of those people, he must have come from Languedoc—probably from the Cevennes or the Vivarais. All the safer for us. Come, Gaspard, and the other three or four of you, take your oath, if you don’t want to say your last prayer. We can’t wait, or we shall lose the moon. Here, thy hand in mine. Say after me—”

Bewildered, frightened, and almost exhausted by all he had undergone, the boy obeyed, and repeated after the Gabelou a string of words one-tenth of which he did not understand. They belonged mostly to that tongue of many climes and ages called “Thieves’ Latin,” and contained frightful curses, which all unwittingly he called down on his own innocent head, should he prove false to his new comrades.

“That is done,” said the Gabelou. “Now art thou a true faux saunier. Come, friends, let’s go in, and Jeanne will give us all a cup of her good red wine—the boy too, to wet his oath. But what are we to call him? Gaspard?”

“Too long,” growled Darcheau.

“Then Philippe, which he gave us first.”

“No, I don’t choose that,” said Darcheau, with an unexpected touch of feeling.

“How would Gap do?” asked the Gabelou. “What dost say thyself, boy?”

“I don’t care,” he answered, with a weary, broken look on his childish face. “Call me what you please.”

Chapter 2: The Edicts of Louis the Magnificent

“In hope to merit Heaven by making Earth a Hell.”

—BYRON.

THESE things happened early in the last decade of the seventeenth century, a very few years after the formal Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, though very many since every one of its stipulations had been openly and grossly violated. In what position the Revocation placed the Protestant subjects of Louis the Magnificent a few words will show—in part.

All exercise of the Protestant religion, public or private, was strictly forbidden, the penalty for attending an assembly for worship being at first death—those taken in the act to be stabbed, shot, or hanged on the nearest trees. Afterward, as it proved impossible to massacre hundreds at once, it was changed to the galleys for men, perpetual imprisonment for women and children, and confiscation of goods for all.

Protestant marriages were declared invalid, and their children incapable of inheriting the property of their parents. In fact all Protestants were outlawed; every profession, and nearly every trade and calling, was forbidden to them, including that of domestic service, even amongst their own people. In the Edict of Revocation their pastors were commanded to quit the country immediately, and any remaining, or returning, were liable to the horrible punishment of the wheel.

Their children they were forced to send to school to the Jesuits or other religious orders, to be instructed in the faith their parents abhorred. And if the parents continued obstinate in their heresy, the children, from the age of five, or afterward of seven, were liable to be torn from them, and conveyed to convents or other Catholic institutions to be “converted” from their parents’ faith (though still maintained and educated at their parents’ expense), and finally to inherit their parents’ property—if they survived. “But,” it has been truly said, “this enactment often proved the death-blow both of children and parents.”

To crown these legislative cruelties came the nameless—the unutterable—horrors of the Dragonnades. Men dare not tell what men dare do, and have done, upon God’s earth and beneath God’s Heaven. But no one who knows what accursed seed was sown in France during those awful years can wonder at the harvest of dragons’ teeth that sprang up in a later age, when the blind fury of the Revolution swept throne and altar away together. Yet, be it remembered, it was not the community so cruelly wronged which wrought the terrible retribution.

Amongst the innocent victims of the Revolution, which is the most pathetic figure of all? Is it not the child-king, the king who was never crowned, save perhaps with the crown of martyrdom, earned by his long agony in the gloomy prison of the Temple? Upon Louis XVII., “the little captive king,” we seem to see avenged the untold agonies of those thousands of Huguenot children who were torn from their parents by order of the monster whose heir and descendant he was.

But, thank God, the story does not end here. The world is not governed by Louis XIV. or by such as he. No! The Judge of the whole earth, who shall do right, is his diametrical opposite, as light is the opposite of darkness. It is He who, in the days of His flesh, loved the little children, suffered them to come to Him, and would let no man forbid them. And neither the little children of the Huguenots, nor the little son of Saint Louis, could the hate or the cruelty of men avail to keep from those sheltering Arms. It only sent them to take refuge there.

It will be asked—Why did not the community upon which such terrible sufferings fell take refuge in wholesale expatriation? For the best of all reasons—they could not. The tyrant, who with one hand dealt the torturing blows, with the other held his victims fast in a grip of iron. The Protestants were forbidden to leave the country. Every port, every frontier was carefully guarded, every ship that left the coast was rigorously examined. At one time even the holds of these ships were fumigated with a deadly vapor, lest any Huguenot “stowaway” might perchance have found refuge there. Those who were caught attempting to escape received condign punishment—the galleys for the men, perpetual imprisonment for the women and children. Their guides, whether Catholics or Protestants, were doomed to the gibbet.

Towards the close of his reign Louis issued an edict in which he stated that it was quite evident there were now no more Protestants in France, since they would not have been allowed to remain there! Not allowed to remain, and not allowed to go! What, then, was to become of them?

Still, as everyone knows, hundreds—nay, thousands—nay, hundreds of thousands—did go. They and their descendants have made their presence felt, and felt for good, in every land that gave them shelter. Let us quote upon this subject the thrilling words of a recent novelist, describing the old French Church in a little American town: “Of these three houses of God that one which holds the most precious flame, the purest light, is the one which treasures the holy fire that came from France.... It was for liberty of soul, to lift their ardent and exalted prayer to God as their own conscience bade them, and not as any man directed, that these French colonists sought the New World. No Puritan splendor of independence and indomitable courage outshines theirs. They preached a word as burning as any that Plymouth or Salem ever heard. They were but a handful, and yet so fecund was their marvelous zeal that they became the spiritual leaven of the whole community.... There they stand, a beautiful beacon, shining upon the coasts of our early history.”

No doubt a great part of this exodus had preceded the definite Act of Revocation and the barring of the gates against the fugitives. But also a great part followed it—for what will a man not give for his life, and the lives of those dear to him? Almost incredible were the dangers braved, the expedients resorted to by the fugitives. Many volumes of romance—if true romance be truest truth, as it surely is—might be filled with these thrilling narratives.

One incident may illustrate what was dared and also what was feared. A little group of exiles, including a boy of thirteen, had been taken on board a Dutch ship. The ship was chased by corsairs, but escaped. Somewhat later it was threatened by a French man-of-war. Great was the alarm and dejection of the exiles; which surprised the captain, as they had shown themselves firm and courageous in the recent danger from the corsairs. He found that these peaceful, blameless citizens dreaded the tender mercies of their own king, whom they had never wronged, infinitely more than the cruelties of Turk or pirate. “Console yourselves,” said the brave captain, when he heard their story; “I will fight as long as I can; and if we are overpowered, I will run the vessel on the rocks, or set fire to the powder, and destroy it. You shall never be taken alive—I promise it.” And they were satisfied.

The father of Gaspard—a Protestant gentleman of the Vivarais—had been forced to wait long with his family for the chance of escape. Meanwhile, for his eldest son, the danger became acute. The authorities were very anxious to get into their hands the heirs of noble and wealthy Protestants, that they might be brought up in the Romish faith, and eventually inherit the property of their parents. An intimation that a company of soldiers (dragoons they are usually called, though soldiers of all arms were employed) was about to be quartered upon him, brought matters to a crisis. He hurriedly dispatched the boy under the care of his trusted steward, who he thought might be able to pass him out of the country. But Guillaume Montel had fallen ill on the way and died—most unfortunately for his charge—in a neighborhood wholly Catholic. The people of the inn where he died had no other idea than to give the child up to the cure, who would send him to the nearest Jesuit or monastery school. But the child himself, having overheard them speak of it, and dreading it with all his soul, tried, as we have seen, to make his escape.

He was now among Catholic peasants—how far were they better off? The courtiers of Louis the Magnificent, who called him the “Roi Soleil,” and basked in the light of his smiles, certainly reveled in sensual pleasure and extravagant luxury; but the “dim common populations,” the men and women who toiled and suffered, who tilled the soil, and carried on the handicrafts that ministered to the needs and appetites of the rich—what was their condition? That, too, let the Revolution answer. Truly, if earth had not “armed in madness” then, we are tempted to say Heaven must have fallen.

Chapter 3: "Gap"

“The pungent grains of titillating dust.”—Porz.

“BUT, mademoiselle, I don’t understand,” said Gaspard next morning to Jeanne Darcheau.

“Thou art not to understand, but to obey.”

“But, unless I understand—”

“The devil fly away with thy understanding! Listen, child, and mark every word. Thou hast first to learn, so well that thou couldst go through them blindfold, the tracks that lead through the forest and the no man’s land beyond it. Mind that well, thy life depends on it—belike the life of others, worth more.”

“When I have learned all that, what am I to do?”

“Thou wilt be told where to go, and what to bring back with thee. An’ thou art quick and trusty, no harm will come to thee, but plenty of good food, and by and by perhaps broad pieces of silver to jingle in thy pouch.”

Gaspard’s eyes sparkled. A good sleep and a good breakfast had repaired his shattered forces. And there was an air of mystery and adventure about this new business that drew him unawares. “Who will teach me?” he asked; “the man who lives here?”

“Darcheau is naught for the walking. He used to tramp it with the best, but the gens d’armes caught him one time and he was put on the rack, and since then besides, children are safer—children and dogs. Philippe was doing right well, but he must needs go off a-fooling to fairs and shows, and to see the world. He went into Languedoc, and was caught and dragged off to prison. Most like he is dead long ago of fever and starvation.”

“Was Philippe your grandchild, like Babette?”

“Grandchild, forsooth! I am their mother, though it is little enough good I have got out of either.”

“But you look so old, much older than my grandmother at home,” said Gaspard, with the superfluous candor of childhood.

“I can well believe it. I suppose thy lady grandmother was not starved and beaten from her childhood up. Nor had she to work all summer scorching in the sun, nor to freeze all winter for lack of a spark of fire, or a rag to cover her.”

Gaspard looked at her, his eyes wide with amazement. Truly he had come into a new strange world. She went on: “Babette used to go out with Philippe. She knows the ways well enough, if she were not too lazy for anything. Still, she can teach thee. And thou canst teach Jacquot.”

“The dog? Why did that man you call Gabelou beat him so cruelly last night?”

“That was to train him. Didst see the man’s dress? ‘Tis that worn by the man that gathers the tax. Dost think that after last night a knowing dog like Jacquot would come within arm’s length of anyone dressed like that?”

“Not with his will. But what can a dog do?”

“When he is well trained, many’s the good bag he will bring us, slung round his neck.”

“Of what?” asked Gaspard, innocently.

With a cunning smile on her evil face, the old woman went to a recess in the wall, bringing back in her dirty hand something white, which she offered to Gaspard as if it had been sugar.

He took a pinch daintily, between his finger and thumb, and tasted it.

“That salt has never come from the king’s factory—nor paid the Gabelle,” she said.

“What is that?” asked Gaspard.

“The salt tax, boy. Where wast reared not to know that? Well, now thou knowest. Gabelous are men that collect the Gabelle, so we train our dogs by getting a man in the dress they wear to thrash them into running for their lives at the very sight of it. Then they serve us well. And if thou dost as much, we will do well by thee. Plenty of food, and of the best, while the village brats are starving on their soup, as they call it, which means a handful of meal or a few hard rye crusts with hot water poured over them. Then, as for clothes, let me see”—her hard, bead-like eyes surveyed him critically— “thou must keep that fine suit of thine for best.”

“For best?” Had not Gaspard, when his father bade him put it on for his hurried journey with Guillaume, thought it a mean disguise, almost a degradation? But Jeanne enlightened him still further as to the meaning of one’s “best.”

“By good luck,” she said, “Philippe was taken in his worst, for he was begging his way. I will give his better ones to thee and put thine away. How old art thou?”

“Ten, in August.”

“So young! Philippe was no bigger at thirteen.”

She brought the clothing, but Gaspard eyed it with angry disdain. “‘Tis not fit to wear,” he said. “‘Tis in holes, and not clean.”

“Thou’lt be glad enough to wear it by and by,” she growled. But, just now, she did not press her point.

Gaspard submitted passively to the conditions of his new life. Hard and distasteful though they were, he saw no way of escape from them. To run away would be to perish in the forest, or, far worse, to fall into the hands of the cure. Therefore he stayed, and, childlike, “did what he was told.” In reality he was half stunned, and wholly bewildered. A few days later he received some further enlightenment on the “clothes philosophy” of Jeanne Darcheau, which was not exactly Carlyle’s. Little Babette, being very cold, came too near the fire and singed her ragged petticoat. Jeanne let loose a torrent of abuse upon her, and she began to cry.

Gaspard took her part. “She had done no harm,” he said.

“She has burned her coat to tinder; as if coats grew on the bushes.”

“Coat, indeed!” returned Gaspard. “‘Tis nothing but a bundle of holes, tied together with rags.”

A smart box on the ear repaid this sally. Much more hurt in his pride than in his person, Gaspard cried out, “Dost dare to strike me?”

“Another word and Darcheau shall give thee a thrashing. Here he comes, by good luck.”

“Oh, Gap, run away, do!” Babette pleaded, in evident terror of her father. He obeyed, though more from regard to her pleadings than from fear, which anger overmastered for the time.

He ran a little way into the wood, threw himself down on his face, and, his anger changing to a passion of grief, wept long and bitterly. Perhaps for the first time the thought of his old home, and of all he had left behind him there, swept over him in full force. Upon this young child’s soul there had fallen the sorrow that is old as the ages, and yet comes to each sufferer as if he was the first in the world to feel it. His father and mother; Cyril, his little brother; his stately yet loving grandmother—he saw them all together, as assuredly in this world he would never see them more. No, never more, never, never! He could not go home; and even if he could, would home be there to go to? He did not know. He only knew that his father had told him the dragoons were coming. And the dragoons did horrible things. By this time, his father and his mother might be dead—dead and gone to Heaven. He wished he could die too. It would be better than staying on in this hateful place. But he could not die, nor could he run away. Horror seized his soul at the thought of it, for would he not be sure to fall into the hands of the cure, and be sent to the Jesuit school? No, he must stay where he was, and do what he was told. But it was a horrible place! The speech and manners of the Darcheaus, the coarseness, the dirt, the disorder of their surroundings, filled the soul of the delicately nurtured child with infinite disgust. What was even worse, he felt vaguely that he was with “bad” people, who did “bad” things, and would make him “bad” too. Then he would never—not even when he died—see his father and mother again, nor see the face of the dear Lord and Saviour.

There was no help for him, no hope in Heaven or on earth! “Oh, God,” he cried, “have pity on me—poor, lonely, miserable child; only be good to me, and let me die.”

There was a light pattering of feet on the fallen leaves about him, now crisp with frost. Something warm touched his face—licked it. It was Jacquot who had come to him, and seeing something was the matter, was offering consolation after his fashion. Gaspard got up, put both his arms round the neck of the dog, and rained hot tears on his rough yellow coat. But those tears were not like the last ones; there was healing in them. “Poor Jacquot, I love thee,” he said. “And perhaps,” he added as an afterthought, “I love Babette just a little too.”

After this, the days as they passed on became more tolerable to him. The elastic heart of childhood began to recover its tone, and the impressionable brain of childhood to adapt itself to circumstances. A child generally takes his surroundings for granted, as part of the necessary order of things. Once out of the hut and the presence of the Darcheaus, he was happy enough. He liked Babette and Jacquot, and he absolutely delighted in the forest. Had anyone who knew him in his father’s stately dwelling seen him a few months later, he would never have recognized the heir of the Montausiers, the little “Gentleman of France,” in the bare-headed, bare-legged peasant boy, with his coarse, torn blouse and wooden sabots. Still he looked healthy, and his voice rang out cheerily enough, as he chatted with Babette, who trotted by his side, Jacquot following them obediently Gap’s bright, restless eyes were everywhere—on the ground, in the branches, through the vista of stems. Presently he ceased talking, and began to sing to himself, perhaps unconsciously, a psalm of Clement Marot’s

“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.”

Then suddenly breaking off— “Ah, there’s a squirrel! Dost see him? At the foot of yon tree?”

“Oh, yes. Philippe used to catch them. Then we had squirrel pie.” The reminiscence was not pathetic or sentimental, yet Babette sighed. Philippe was the one thing that poor, starved little heart had ever found to love.

“But we don’t want to kill them, pretty little things!” said Gap. “I should like to kill bears and wolves, though.”

“There are none about here. But please, Gap, don’t sing. No one is likely to hear it, but we can never tell, for sure. What was it thou didst sing?”

“A psalm about the good God being our Shepherd, and we His sheep.”

“I don’t understand.”

Gap exerted his powers of description, as he often had to do for Babette. Her ignorance, even of the most simple things, was a constant surprise to him. She had rarely been beyond the bounds of the forest, and she had never even seen a book. Almost all she knew of religion was to cross herself, and to mutter a few unintelligible words ere she lay down at night. Gap had discovered by this time that he ran no danger here of anyone trying to convert him. Babette’s small, ignorant soul held very few ideas, but those few were fixed in it like clasps of steel. They had all something or other to do with Philippe. She interrupted Gap’s childish eloquence about the shepherd and the sheep by saying, “Philippe will have seen a great deal when he comes back.”

“Dost think he will come back?”

“I know he will.”

“Thy father and mother do not think it.”

“No, they say he is dead. So does Gabelou. But I know better. A peddler came here one day, and said he had seen him, a long way from this at a place called Mende, in Languedoc, and that the gens d’armes had taken him, and said he was to be sent to Montpellier. Didst ever hear of Montpellier”

“Oh, yes, often. But why did they take thy brothel up?”

“Indeed, I don’t know—except it were for smuggling the salt, or just because the gens d’armes are bad cruel people, always trying to hurt us. Poor Philippe was doing no harm, I’m sure. He only wanted to see the world. But the peddler told me Montpellier is a great, beautiful place, the biggest in all the world.”

“I think there are some bigger—such as Paris and Marseilles.”

“But Montpellier is full of great houses,” Babette protested. “As many as there are leaves on the trees, so the peddler said. Churches too, and bridges, and prisons. Philippe is in prison—poor Philippe. Gap, this is what I would do if I could. I would walk all the way to Montpellier, I would go to the house of the great man who is over the prisons there, kneel down to him on my knees, and ask him to let Philippe come home. I think perhaps he would. For Philippe is only a little boy, scarce bigger than thou.”

“Thou art much smaller thyself—far too small to walk to Montpellier. I am sure it is hundreds of miles away,” said Gap, who did not quite relish being classed with little boys.

By this time he knew perfectly well what trade he had sworn to follow. The Darcheaus were retailers of contraband salt, who received it from the smugglers and sold it in their immediate neighborhood. These smugglers, often brigands also, brought it through the country from the seashore, where the faux sauniers carried on their illicit manufacture.

If the cruelty and injustice of a law could ever excuse its infraction, it was so in this case. Few more odious forms of oppression have been ever invented than the “Gabelle,” or “Gift,” as this ruthlessly extorted tax was called. It was a sword with two edges, at once an impost and a monopoly. The king reserved to himself, or to those to whom he leased it, the sole right of manufacturing the salt used in his dominions. Then, adding the duty, he sold it to his subjects, at a price that would have been prohibitive if salt were not an absolute necessity of life. That under these circumstances the smugglers’ trade should flourish, goes without saying. But there was yet another device of tyranny. The king’s salt was forced upon his subjects, an estimate being made of how much each family ought to consume, and the head of the family obliged to pay for it, whether he had it or no. At the same time vigorous search was made for unlicensed salt, and terrible penalties were inflicted wherever it was found. Sometimes the very salt that had been forced upon a household by the king’s agents was seized as contraband by the Gabelous, and the owners punished accordingly.

To add to the confusion, different laws prevailed in different provinces of France. Some had “La Grande Gabelle,” others only “La Petite Gabelle,” a much lighter burden. A few happy provinces enjoyed entire immunity from the tax. In these the terror of its imposition was so great that in one place, in the exempted province of Brittany, a public-spirited cure, who put a clock upon the church tower for the convenience of his parishioners, nearly caused a dangerous riot. Someone had whispered to the ignorant villagers, who knew neither the name nor the use of the thing, that it was the dreaded and detested Gabelle.

Chapter 4: Gap or Gaspard?

“A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.”

—TENNYSON.

AT this time Gaspard had not wholly forgotten the past. It was rather that he led two lives, and sharp indeed was the contrast between them. For most of the day, especially for the many hours spent in his beloved wood, he was just “Gap,” the little smuggler, already learning to be proud of his cleverness in finding the forest tracks, of his agility, his daring, and what an English boy would have called his “pluck.” But at intervals, at first very frequent, he “came to himself,” and was once more Gaspard de Montausier. His father and mother, his little brother Cyril—all the pure, beautiful, stately surroundings of his home—were about him again. These moods used to come over him, for the most part very suddenly, when he looked up at the starry sky, or when familiar Scripture words, or snatches of the dear old Huguenot Psalms, floated unbidden across his memory. But however they began, they were sure to end in a burst of passionate weeping, and a clutch on the heartstrings which the child was not able to endure. So he learned to avoid them when he could, and when he could not, to dismiss them as quickly as possible.

He generally succeeded during the day, but— “In the dead unhappy night when the rain was on the roof,” or when all was still and silent, it was not so easy. Then, as he lay in a corner on his heap of straw, all the happy beautiful past, all its contrast with the hideous present, used to sweep over him. Many a night he sobbed himself to sleep, only trying to weep quietly, lest the Darcheaus should hear him.

But even kindly sleep brought him no deliverance. Or rather, indeed, it brought him, for the time, a deliverance so complete that the waking from it seemed intolerable. Such wakings were the bitterest moments of his life.

One night there came to him a particularly vivid dream. As usual he was at home, in his father’s château of Rochambeau, in the Vivarais. The great hall was adorned with flowers and lit up brightly for the corning meal; the table was laid, and silver dishes and crystal goblets were gleaming on the snowy damask. There were guests; he was allowed to stay up to supper, and he wore his favorite suit of blue Lyons velvet, with collar, cuffs, and jabot of choicest lace. His little sword was by his side, and being somewhat loose in the scabbard, clinked as he walked. This vexed him, for he feared his father’s guests Monsieur le Baron de Fressinieres, Madame la Baronne, and Mademoiselle Elene, their daughter would think him awkward, and call him “un petit hobereau.”

No, they did not seem to notice. His father gave his hand to Madame la Baronne, the Baron gave his to his mother; then he himself, with his most careful and elaborate bow, offered his escort to his favorite playfellow, the Demoiselle Elene. How beautiful she looked in her little frock of white brocade, trimmed with costly lace! But at that moment he observed with dismay a great black mark upon the hand he was giving her. He was sure he got it lighting the fire for Babette.

Luckily she did not see it, but put her hand confidingly into his: His father was speaking; he heard every word quite plainly: “See those children of ours, m’amie?” “Yes,” said another voice, his mother’s; “do they not make a pretty pair? God bless them!” Then in an instant all were gone—father, mother, friends, the lights, the supper, the goodly hall. Instead was the smuggler’s hut, the first gray light of early morning, and Darcheau beside him, shaking him roughly by the shoulder. But the last words heard in his dream lingered with him yet. They had really been spoken in his hearing, and a touch of childish vanity had stamped them on his brain. “She said those very words, I know she did,” unconsciously he cried aloud.

“Hold thy tongue, boy, and get up!” said Darcheau, angrily but not loudly, for Jeanne and Babette were still asleep, and he did not want to rouse them.

Gap, not yet wholly Gap, started to his feet. “What for?” he asked, bewildered.

“To go to the village and sell the salt. Gabelou has not come for it as usual—curse him! Thou must go to him, see if there is anything wrong, and, anyhow, get rid of the salt.”

Gap, since his coming to the forest, had never gone to the village. He turned and looked Darcheau in the face. “I can’t go there,” he said.

“Why not? Thou knowest the way. ‘Tis none too far. And I will tell thee whom to go to about the salt.”

“I can’t go there. The cure would see me. Or someone would tell him.”

Darcheau swore there was no danger, and told him roughly that go he must.

“I will not,” said Gaspard de Montausier, the spirit of his dream upon him still.

The answer was a volley of oaths, and a threat to break every bone in his body.

“Do, an’ thou wilt,” said Gaspard. “Better that than go to the cure.”

He spoke in ignorance, but he soon knew better. He was a brave boy, taught to scorn moans and whinings, and he bit his lips until they bled. But presently a cry rang through the hut that waked Jeanne and Babette from their sleep. Babette sprang from her place at the foot of the bed, and rushed to the rescue—to be pushed roughly aside. Jeanne merely sat up, her gray hair streaming over her bare and skinny shoulders. “Hold, there!” she cried. “What has Gap been about?”

“Refused to go to the village, the little wretch! What dost say to it now, beast?” he asked, with another blow.

“Throw that stick away, Jean,” his wife commanded. “Gap, go thou and gather sticks for the fire. Go with him, Babette.”

Left alone with her husband, Jeanne gave him, not too gently, the benefit of her superior intelligence. “Thou numskull!” she began; “the devil, whom thou servest, hast sent thee the gift of a good steel knife. But, forsooth, thou must needs cut down a tree with it, and because it will not serve, thou wouldst break it. Dost not see we have got a boy of quite other stuff than the common-faith, than ourselves either, for that matter? Bend him thou canst not, break him thou mayest, but to thine own loss. Rather speak him fair, give him his way, and see if he does not double our gains for us by-and-by.”

“But we must make him obey,” said Darcheau, with some reason. “What good in a knife, if it cuts your fingers?”

“‘Tis a fool’s knife that does that. He shall obey. But not go to the village till he likes it. We must humor him if we want to keep him.”

Jeanne’s woman wit had discovered Gap’s value sooner than her husband’s slower brain. But by-and-by he felt it also. Both were surprised, and even puzzled, to find the boy absolutely truthful. Neither had ever met such a person before. They were sometimes tempted to think him a fool, but his general shrewdness forbade the idea.

He was not asked again to go to the village; but he was encouraged to explore every part of the forest, and even to venture into the waste lands beyond it.

Time passed on. Late one evening, a low peculiar knock came to the door of the hut. “Gabelou at last,” said Gap to himself; but he was mistaken. “Tardif,” said Jeanne, looking at Darcheau. “Let him in,” said the man.

A thickset, stoutly built man of middle height, with dark, strongly marked features, hairy face and very bright black eyes, came in, mumbling a gruff salutation. The Darcheaus, who were just going to supper, made room for him at the table, and Jeanne produced in his honor a bottle of wine from her secret store.

Tardif drew from beneath his cloak a large and heavy bag. “There it is,” he said. “Why, in the devil’s name, did you not send for it?”

“Whom have we got to send since we lost Philippe?” growled Darcheau. “Yonder young shaver is not up to his business yet. And though ‘twas easy enough while you camped in the wood, now you are farther off we did not dare to risk it. But we mean to try him soon.”

“This is what you must do,” said Tardif, with a keen look at Gaspard; “send him back with me tonight. I will show him the way to our den, and give him a lesson or two besides. You may take your oath that what he does not learn from me in the line of our business is not worth the knowing. Sacre! I like the boy’s looks. What art called, youngster?”

“Here they call me Gap.”

“Art an orphan?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“A queer story, but mayhap a true one. Well, boy, if thou wouldst be made a man of, Gilles Tardif is willing to help.”

“Thank you,” said Gap; but he spoke doubtfully, for amongst the pieces of sinister knowledge he was gaining in his new life was the true character of the men from whom the Darcheaus received the contraband salt. He knew they were not smugglers only, but robbers, outlaws—men of daring and desperate character, concerned in many a deed of violence. Such bands found easy shelter in the forests, and the barren and mountainous districts of the country. The peasantry were usually in sympathy with them; they had nothing to lose, and were not likely to regret the occasional spoiling of those who spoiled them without mercy. Moreover, smuggling was a capital offense, and when a man knows he has already earned the gibbet he naturally wishes to earn it handsomely. Gaspard had come by this time to think very little of breaking the law by selling cheap salt to poor people, but he still retained a profound respect for the ten commandments, and the eighth began to ring uncomfortably in his ears as he listened to Tardif.

Still, he did listen. As they sat over the wine of Jeanne’s providing, Tardif told tale after tale of wild adventures and hairbreadth escapes, and Gap heard all with attention that soon grew to eagerness. One of the tales was of the robbing with violence, upon the king’s highway, of a certain Baron de Sausanne, of whom he had heard his father speak as a determined enemy and persecutor of the Huguenots.

“Was he frightened?” he asked. “Did he beg for mercy?”

“Ay, did he,” Tardif answered, with a relish. “However, we had no wish to kill him, nor his scum of servants either, who were as frightened as he. Why not? Why, because that would make it a case if we were caught—not for the gibbet, but for the wheel, which is what no man wants, not even the bravest.”

Gaspard did not know what he meant, so he held his peace.

At last Tardif came to business. “Well,” he said, “I must be on the road. Darcheau, out with the cash.”

At a sign from her husband Jeanne produced a dirty leather bag, out of the contents of which the salt was to be paid for. Much bargaining followed, garnished with plenty of bad language and mutual abuse, although the parties seemed no worse friends after it than they were before. And in the end it appeared as if Tardif got what he wanted. He turned to Gaspard, who was by this time almost asleep. “Come along,” he said, “if thou art the lad for a tramp through the forest, and a merry meeting with good fellows after.”

“Ay, go with him,” Darcheau agreed, for he knew this was a valuable part of the young smuggler training.

“Put on thy cloak, an’ thou hast one,” said Tardit “And, Mother Darcheau, give the lad a draft of that good wine of thine, to keep out the cold.”

So Gaspard went out with Tardif into the darkness—perhaps in more senses than one.

Chapter 5: Gap's Adventure

“His honor rooted in dishonor stood.”—TENNYSON.

AUTUMN, the third autumn after the coming of Gar. reigned in the wild wood, and her reign was full of glory “Purple and gold and crimson like the curtains of God’s Tabernacle” shone the fading, or rather the kindling, leaves. Though autumn flowers had displaced those of summer, still the long grass had its store, and of more than one kind. A stiff breeze was blowing, bringing showers of leaves about the feet of Gap. He strode on quickly, with Jacquot at his heels, whistling a tune, but stopping every minute to note something of the forest, some track of wild creature or rustle of bird in the leaves. The tune was not that of Psalm or hymn, but of some drinking song that he had learned from Tardif. His voice was clear and melodious, but he kept it low, not only from the habit of caution drilled into him, but because there had been recent signs of renewed activity on the part of the Gabelous (the genuine, not the sham ones). They, with the militia, or gens d’armes, who assisted them, were liable to intermittent attacks of zeal, during which they patrolled the forest paths with more or less diligence, causing what the Darcheaus considered very vexatious interruptions to honest business. They had never yet arrested anyone in that district; and though they made a great show of trying to catch the brigands who supplied the salt, they were always unsuccessful, as the villagers sometimes shrewdly suspected they meant to be.

Under a fine old elm tree—quite a friend of his, for he had personal friends among the trees—Gap stopped to look up through the thinning branches. In the nesting time a large bird had built there; she was gone now, but the empty nest remained. A fancy took him to look into it. Why not? He unstrapped the bag of salt from his girdle and laid it on the ground, set the faithful Jacquot on guard, and swarmed up the tree, an easy task to him. He had one hand already in the nest, when, looking down for a moment, he saw distinctly at some distance the glimmer of steel. Yes, and there were men in blue—men with arms and bayonets—coming through the forest track, and quite near too. The nest was forgotten. One desperate slide and scramble, and Gap was on the ground again. With rapid fingers he loosed the cord that bound the second bag of salt round Jacquot’s neck, and bade the dog “go home.” That trusty comrade looked first at him, then at the salt, asking as plainly as eye could do it— “Am I to leave my charge?” “Go home, Jacquot,” Gap repeated. “Gabelou is coming. Go home!” The tone of the last words was not to be trifled with. Jacquot set off at a run.

Then Gap took up both the bags, and started with flying feet in a contrary direction. He plunged through the trees till he reached an ancient oak, well known to him, which had a great hollow in its massive trunk. The mouth was more than Gaspard’s own height from the ground. Taking one of the bags of salt by its knot in his strong white teeth, he leaped up, caught the broken wood with his hands, and dropped in the bag. Now for the other! Just as he snatched it up, he heard a voice close at hand crying, “Halte la! Au droit!” They were coming—coming this way. They would see him! Well for the salt! But for himself? If he were found there all would be lost. He leaped up again, dropped in the second bag, heard the dull thud as it fell upon the other, and then scrambled up and dropped in after it himself. The hole was deeper within than he thought. He fell far down, feeling the sides in vain for something to cling to. At last he found himself in grim and utter darkness, standing on the salt, and with little more than standing room. “Peste!” he said to himself; “the cursed thing must be hollow down to the roots. What shall I do?” Stretching up his arms he groped eagerly, madly, despairingly for any hold for foot or hand which might help him to raise himself. Nothing of the kind! Just as he was giving up the effort, he heard outside the tramp of the gens d’armes. “Better be taken by the Gabelou than die here in the dark,” he thought, and a cry for help was trembling on his lips.

But he checked it, just in time. They would guess he had the salt and would search for it where he was.

The keen sense of honor, which was the birthright of this little “Gentleman of France,” had been transformed for the present into the instinct of faithfulness to his comrades and safe keeping of the salt. So he held his peace, nor let moan or cry escape him until all was still again.

Dead silence and black darkness reigned about him. Once and again he stretched up his arms, but could not even touch the hole above. He leaped up far as he might, but could hear, feel, see nothing save high above him a little gleam of light. “I can’t get out,” he moaned. “I can’t get out! They will never find me here. I must die.” Terror and anguish overwhelmed him, he wept and sobbed, like the child he still was.

After a while sobs and tears ceased. After all, he told himself; he need not despair so soon. So his frantic struggles began afresh. Then came cries, wild, piercing, frenzied. Perhaps someone might hear him, and come to the rescue. Or it may be that he only voiced his terror, through the instinct of the animal and the child.

His efforts exhausted him. He ceased to cry or struggle, ceased to think, almost ceased to feel. He even dozed a little, or else he was passing into a kind of stupor. Once he heard, or dreamed he heard, the barking of a dog. But he was too weary, or too dull, to be roused. The merciful veil of oblivion was falling over him, and it seemed as if sight or sound of earth would never break it more.

Something round and hard falling upon his shoulder aroused him. What was it? Where was he? He stirred, tried to look around him—but he was in thick darkness. He felt strangely weak, and all his limbs were cramped and aching. “It must be midnight,” he thought, “yet here I am, not lying down, but standing on my feet!” Still only half conscious, he stretched up his hand, and tried to grasp the thing that had struck him. He got it; and so acceptable was the ripe apple to the senses of touch and smell that it was at his lips in a moment. Then he knew he was horribly hungry; and presently the whole truth came back to him. He was imprisoned in a hollow tree; he could not get out, or make his presence known to anyone; he must die.

Still, apples do not grow on oak trees. Nor had they wings to fly about like birds. That one could not have fallen by chance into the hole where he was. Someone must have thrown it. The thrill of hope revived his failing senses. Once more he cried for help, but his voice was thin and weak. It was not his own at all.

Time passed—how long he did not know. Then came the barking of a dog, loud, sharp, repeated. “Jacquot!” he cried. “Jacquot! I am here!” Another sound followed. Someone with an ax was hewing at the half-decayed wood to enlarge the hole.

“Wait,” cried the voice of Darcheau, “I am getting at thee.” So he was, and working with a will. In a few minutes more, strong arms were stretched down to him and, not without difficulty, lifted him up out of his horrible prison. He was laid on the grass, not ungently. He saw the blue sky and the white fleecy clouds over his head.

But grass and sky and fleecy clouds were all turning round him. Still, he tried to raise himself, and to point to the tree. “The salt—in there,” he murmured; and then fainted quite away.

When he recovered consciousness Babette was hanging over him, and Jacquot capering about them, barking with delight. But the first thing he noticed was Darcheau laying beside him on the grass first one then the other of the bags of salt. With his dull spirit stirred to all the feeling of which it was capable, the man looked down upon the boy, and said approvingly, “Tu es bon camarade.”

When they got home and Gap had been regaled with food and wine, Babette said to him, “It was Jacquot and I that did it.”

“Tell me,” said Gap.

“Jacquot came home to supper, and we thought thou wouldst follow. When thou camest not, he grew restless, and began to bark and whine. He wanted to go in search of thee, but they would not let him, and shut him up. They were afraid, for they knew the Gabelous were about. So was I, for, oh, Gap! I thought they might have caught thee. All the night long I lay awake, and heard Jacquot’s pitiful whine. At last, in the gray morning, I crept out of bed, went to the shed and opened the door. There he stood, trembling all over, and asking me as plain as a Christian to let him out.

I said, ‘Gap! Gap! Jacquot, go seek Gap!’ He was off like an arrow, and then he turned back for me. I tore after him, sore put to it not to lose him among the trees. However, I caught him up—not at the oak, but at a big elm, a good way off. He smelt about it, as if puzzled; then all at once he seemed to find your track, and made straight for the hollow oak. Plain as a dog could speak he told me you were there. I threw in the apple I had with me, to show you help was coming, and then ran for father.”

“Babette,” Gap said, solemnly, “thou hast saved my life. Tell me what thing in the world thou dost wish for most, and, by my head! I will get it for thee.”

Babette did not answer him; but Gap knew pretty well by this time what wish lay deepest in the poor starved heart of this untaught child of the forest. He must find Philippe for her; or at least he must discover whether Philippe was alive or dead.

Chapter 6: Paul Beauclaise

“Wherefore hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?”

SINCE Gap’s adventure in the hollow tree more years have passed away, changing the boy into a handsome stripling of nearly seventeen, tall, well set, vigorous, and brown as an outdoor life in all weathers could make him. Dark, curling hair shaded a forehead which was broad and high, and would have been intellectual had anything been put into the brain behind it save an exhaustive knowledge of forest trees and plants, and of the ways and habits of forest creatures. He was versed besides in all the tricks and maneuvers, all the cunning feints and daring exploits, of the unlawful traffic by which he gained his bread. He began to be noticed as the most clever and successful young smuggler in all the country round; and the robbers, with whom he came so often in touch, looked on him as a very promising hoped-for recruit. Not that he had as yet shown any desire to join them. Much though he had forgotten of his early teaching, the words, “Thou shalt not steal,” still lingered in his memory. But he knew no commandment saying “Thou shalt not sell salt,” nor did he dream that in so doing he was stealing from the king. In other respects also, though he was now almost a man, it might be said of him, “The child is not awaked.”

He had taken long ago, very accurately, the measure of his host and hostess. jean Darcheau was harsh, brutal, liable to fits of passion, fond of wine when he could get it. But he was capable of kindness, had some rudimentary idea of justice and fairness, and was far less avaricious than his wife. This besetting sin of the French peasantry was probably the fruit of centuries of oppression, during which the poor man “hid his corn for fear of the taille, his wine for fear of the aide, his salt for fear of the Gabelle, and was afraid of being killed if he let anyone know he was not dying of hunger.” Jeanne Darcheau provided good food, for it was one of her very few but very fixed ideas that menfolk must eat well, or they would not work well; and of course Babette and herself might have their leavings, since they cost nothing. But as for parting with a piece of silver out of her hoarded store—she would very much rather have parted with one of her few remaining teeth. Along with avarice was an ever-watchful suspiciousness, which showed itself in the smallest matters. Still, Gap had accomplished something. He had coaxed or wrung from her enough to buy for himself, in the village, some coarse but decent and serviceable clothing, and now and then a skirt and jacket for Babette. He knew well that his services were worth much more. He contrived, too, that Babette’s share in the smuggling business should be little more than an excuse for pleasant rambles in the forest with Jacquot and himself. Her real work was in the hut, and the little patch of ground behind it, where Darcheau had planted a few common vegetables. Another of Gap’s achievements had been to put up, with some assistance from Darcheau, a small wooden shed for himself, where he slept, stored his very few personal possessions, and found a retreat when the company of the others became intolerable to him.

Young as he was, he was beginning to assert a degree of independence, and even a kind of authority, which was tacitly acknowledged by the Darcheaus. He had inherited a much larger and better-developed brain than they; and besides, he had had the advantage of ten years of careful, intelligent training. In his heart he despised them, with perhaps the exception of Babette, whose power of loving redeemed her from contempt, and who besides had saved his life.

He had long overcome his childish fears of going to the village of Besogne. He was well known there now, and very welcome, as the clandestine purveyor of untaxed salt. The people of the inn were among his best customers; apparently they did not recognize him. On one occasion the innkeeper happened to speak to him about the stranger who had died in his house some six years before. Gap had been unable to give him all the salt he wanted, because he had promised the priest, who was also a regular customer, what he needed to cure his bacon for the winter. The priest was unpopular in the parish, and the innkeeper began to abuse him. “I warrant you,” said he, “Monsieur le Cure would not put himself out for man or woman, and why should honest people put themselves out for him? His bacon will be cured well enough; and if it were not, he would never be at a loss for his dinner—the only thing in the world he cares for. ‘Tis more to him than the good God, or the Holy Sacraments, or the souls of poor Christians. Didst never hear how he let a man’s soul be lost, because, forsooth, he would not leave his dinner to come and shrive him? Ay, truly, ‘tis some six years ago now, or more. A stranger came to us from somewhere in Languedoc—the Cevennes, it may be, or no matter where—a decent, well-to-do sort of person he was, and had a pretty little lad with him. He fell ill, and the cure saw him, but did not think him near death. When, next day, he was taken suddenly worse, we sent to him, as in duty bound; but, an’ it please you, his reverence was at his dinner and would not be disturbed. When at last he thought fit to come, the poor soul was gone, and without shrift or Sacrament—God help him!”

Gap gave no sign of special interest in his tale. Indeed, he said nothing in reply, but he thought the more.

During the autumn that followed, some of the robber band who used to bring salt to the Darcheaus encamped in the forest, near the part where it merged into the desolate hilly country beyond. Tardif came one night to the hut to tell where they were, and to arrange matters with Gap, who was to come at a certain time to their camping-place to fetch the salt. The way was long, but the gens d’armes were just then showing little activity, so Gap could traverse the forest in the daytime without fear, sleep in the camp, and return the following day.

When the time came he set off gaily, Jacquot at his heels, and a good piece of black bread for both their dinners in one of the empty salt bags. He loved the wood in all seasons, and not least in the pleasant autumn weather. Bright drops of sunshine fell through the overhanging boughs, and the grass beneath his feet was still spangled with flowers. Jacquot, always happy with him, was capering about, for the most part in mere gladness, though now and then giving chase to some wild creature, which he never once succeeded in catching. Gap, like his attendant, was in high spirits. That day no ghosts from the past rose up to trouble him. He was living the life of the present, the life of the moment—and he found it very good.

Still, he was tired enough, and the hour was late, when at last he caught a gleam of light through the trees. Guided by it, and afterward by a confused hum of voices, he soon found the clearing where the robbers had taken up their quarters. A wild, uncouth-looking band they were, in very various apparel—here a handsome cloak, there a most dilapidated coat or ragged nether garments—as they stood or sate about the great fire, over which a large iron pot was hanging, supported in gipsy fashion by long poles. As Gap approached he saw four men standing a little apart, as if in conference—his own special friend Tardif-Rameau, the nominal leader of the band (though Tardif was much more popular and quite as powerful)—and with them two strangers, in ordinary peasant dress. One looked old, the other quite young. Rameau just then was speaking to the older man, and Gap saw him do a very strange thing. He saw him actually put back into this man’s hand some gold and silver which had apparently been delivered up to him. “Keep your money, monsieur,” said the robber. “Dog does not eat dog.”

“This dog is very much obliged to you,” said the stranger, pocketing the money with a smile.

“Aha!” said Gap to himself, “these also are gentlemen of the road. Now we shall have a feast, and plenty of wine. But what is there in that old man’s voice and in his look? Like whom is he? I cannot remember.”

He had no time to try, for the robbers were welcoming him heartily, and making room near the fire for him and for Jacquot, the night being chill, although the day had been warm and genial. He had even thought he heard, in passing through the wilder part of the wood, the distant howl of a wolf, which he had mt expected there, or at that season. So he welcomed human companionship, and the cheerful neighborhood of the fire, and gladly sat down to enjoy it. The two strangers were of the same mind, apparently; and yet, when the plentiful meal was served, they declined to partake, although pressed to do so by the robbers, amongst whose many sins the want of hospitality had no place. While they ate with apparent contentment the bread they had brought with them, Rameau rallied them a little on their useless self-denial—not rudely, rather with a queer touch of respect, which sat upon him oddly. “You need not be so squeamish, messieurs,” he said. “If ‘tis a matter of law-breaking, I could swear you are deeper in it than myself.”

A laugh passed round the group, and Tardif said, “Let the honest men alone, comrade. We trust them, and they trust us. Good so far—but that binds neither to row in the other’s boat.”

“I do trust you, messieurs,” the stranger answered, frankly. “And I thank you also. ‘Tis no light boon to share the warmth of your splendid fire, and to lie down near it in peace and safety.”

“Perhaps it is his accent that strikes me,” thought Gap. “He does not speak like anyone here.”

“‘Twould do us no harm if he paid his lodging by saying a prayer for us,” Tardif muttered to Gap, who was sitting beside him.

“Why? Who is he?” asked Gap.

“How should I know?—Hush”

Gap hushed accordingly; but he looked with keener interest at the strangers. The older man chanced to sit where the firelight shone upon his face, giving him a full view of it. Once he looked, he could scarcely take his eyes away again. What was there that drew and held him in that worn, wrinkled face, with “the look of one that had travailed sore” upon it; or in those dark, sad, weary-looking eyes? Yet they were kind eyes, and the face too was kind—not hard like Darcheau’s, but with a sort of calm in it. One of the old, piteous pangs of remembrance, so long crushed down, so nearly forgotten now, throbbed again in the wakening heart of Gaspard. He knew he had never seen that man before, he was sure of it. And yet he was equally sure that the man belonged to his old life, the life in his old home, the life with his father and mother and all the rest who loved him and whom he loved.

“Don’t you know his name even?” he asked Tardif again.

“He calls himself Paul Beauclaise—Monsieur Beauclaise, one somehow says, naturally, That stout young fellow with him he calls Henri.”

“His comrade, I suppose?”

“His servant, more like. One can see he is that sort.”

“Perhaps he has killed someone—some enemy of his—and has had to fly for his life,” Gap hazarded, suggesting, in compliment to the stranger, a respectable crime, worthy of a “well-born” person.

“Perhaps. But drink thy wine, boy, and hold thy tongue. ‘Tis naught to thee or me. Look, our fine guests are taking themselves off, no doubt to find a quiet place under the trees, where they will lie down in their cloaks.”

Unquestionably the group around the fire breathed more freely after their departure. The wine-cup went round the faster, and tales of robbery and violence, with ribald song and jest, went round with it. These things, in the presence of the strangers, had somehow been restrained.

Gap liked wine well enough when it came in his way, but never yet had actually exceeded. Usually he took a willing part in all that went on about him. His sweet boyish voice was still unbroken, and the robbers often asked him to sing. Tonight he was so silent and thoughtful that Tardif was provoked to say, “Gap is off to dreamland. Rouse up, boy, and give us a stave.”

He knew songs enough by this time, fit for such an audience; though, to do him justice, he avoided those with the worst poison in them—when he understood their meaning. But now he was either actually half asleep, or the old life of which he was dreaming took sudden possession of him, for, quite unconscious of what he was doing, he began, in his sweetest, clearest tones, the psalm beloved of his childhood

“The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want,

He makes me down to lie”—

Then, suddenly realizing what he was singing, he stopped short, burst into tears, and plunged into the wood to hide himself from the jeers and laughter of the rest.

He came upon the two strangers. The younger lay upon the ground, wrapped in his cloak, fast asleep. The elder knelt at the foot of a tree, absorbed in prayer.

Gaspard stood a little apart, waiting. Many thoughts were rising in his heart; it seemed to him that there were many things about which he wanted to ask this stranger. He felt like one long cast away among barbarians, who suddenly meets someone from his own country, and hears the sound of his own tongue “wherein he was born.” Not that he could reason about this, or put it in words for himself; he just felt it. “But,” he thought, “I must not disturb him. I will wait.”

At last the old man rose. He was not really old, only seemed so to Gap, and to others who did not know what his life had been. But Gap saw not then whether he was old or young; he saw nothing but the peace that shone in his face. “Perhaps it is the moonlight,” he said to himself, for the moon was bright then, as upon the night when he first came to the forest hut.

“Wouldst speak with me, my son?” asked Paul Beauclaise. His voice was not only that of a man of culture and education, but that of a trained orator, though this, of course, was unknown to Gap.

“If you please, monsieur, may I ask you something?”

“Willingly, my son; but may I ask thee something first? Was it not thy voice I heard just now in the singing of a psalm?”

“I forgot myself. I know not why I did it, nor what put it into my head.”

“But where or how didst thou learn it?”

Gaspard paused a moment. Then he said, in a low voice, “From my mother.”

“Ah? Is it thus indeed?—My child, what is thy name?”

“Gap.”

“Is that all?”

“Gaspard,” he began, but broke off suddenly and turned away his head, while his tears began to flow.

Beauclaise pointed to the trunk of a tree which the robbers, in their wasteful fashion, had cut down to make their fire. “Come, sit beside me, and tell me all,” he said.

As Gaspard did not speak at once he went on, “Thou needst have no fear of me. I could not harm thee even if I would—as assuredly I would not. I take it thou art one of those they call nouveaux convertis.”

“I am not converted at all, monsieur. Nobody converted me. Nobody tried. My father’s steward was bringing me out of the country, when he fell ill and died. Then I was afraid of being taken to the cure, and ran away. I got lost in the forest, and came to the hut of the Darcheaus-people who smuggle salt and sell it to the villagers. That was years ago, I scarce know how many. I was but a little lad, some ten years old. I have lived with them ever since, and done as they did. Now I am just a faux saunier, and I can never be anything else.”

“God help thee, my poor child!”

“They are not bad to me, monsieur,” Gaspard said. “There is Babette, whom I like, and Jacquot.”

“A comrade?”

“Ay, monsieur, and a good one, though he be but a dog. He and Babette once saved my life. And I want to do as much for her in return. May I ask you about that, monsieur?”

“Ask what thou wilt, and I will answer. Then it will be my turn, and thou shalt answer me.”

“Monsieur, is it far from this to Montpellier? Could I go there?”

“Not easily, I fear, for it is far enough. Why wouldst thou go to Montpellier?”

“Because of this, monsieur. Babette had one brother, Philippe. He used to carry the salt; but years ago, before I came, he got into trouble, and was taken up.

A peddler told Babette he was brought to Montpellier. Though everyone else thinks he is dead long ago, and will never be heard of again, she will not believe it. Nothing will persuade her he is not alive. The thing she wishes for most in the world is that I should go and find him, and bring him back to her again. And I mean to do it. Can I? Can you help me, monsieur?”

Monsieur Beauclaise smiled, and his smile was a very pleasant one. “Two questions!” he said. “To the last, I may answer ‘Probably.’ To the first, ‘I know not.’ To me it seems scarce likely that a smuggler from Auvergne would be sent to Montpellier, which is in another province. Hast any other reason for wishing to leave this place? Think. And tell me, Gaspard, what is thy full name?”

The words, though gentle, were compelling. Very low, but distinctly, Gaspard made answer, “Gaspard Charles Louis de Montausier.”

He felt the trembling of the hand Paul Beauclaise laid upon his shoulder. “My dear lad!” he said, with, emotion.

“Oh, monsieur, did you know them?” the boy faltered, incoherently. He, too, was trembling all over.

“Yes, Gaspard. I know your parents.” With reassuring emphasis he said, “I know,” and not “I knew.”

“Where are they? What has become of them? Tell me, monsieur, for God’s sake!” cried Gaspard; and, not knowing what he did, he sprang from his seat and threw himself at the feet of the stranger.

“Nay, my boy, rise up, sit beside me and listen; the tidings I have for thee are good. I have seen thy father and thy mother. They succeeded, through God’s mercy, in making their escape from this sad country and reaching England, where they can serve Him in peace and safety. They live now in an English city called Canterbury.”

“And my little brother Cyril?”

“He is with them—a fine little lad, much like what thou wast when they lost thee, as they say.”

“And the dear grandmother?”

“She is in a better home than England. God took her there, in mercy, ere thy parents left Rochambeau.”

“Ah, Rochambeau! I never heard the name all these years!” His voice trembled, but he managed another question— “And our dear friends, the De Fressinieres?”

“Of them I have been able to hear scarce anything, save that Madame de Fressinieres is dead. I know not whether they also have left the country.”

Silence followed. Gaspard’s face was hidden. Still crouching at the feet of his friend, he seemed to shrink together.

“Look up, my boy,” said Beauclaise, laying his hand very gently on the bowed head. “Art not glad to hear thy parents are safe and well?”

But Gaspard’s feeling at the moment was not gladness, but utter loneliness and desolation. He said, “Oh yes, of course! But—I am all alone. There is no one left here in France—save me only.”

“Do not grieve. Thou art not alone. Dost remember the lessons they taught thee in thy childhood?”

“Sometimes.” He stopped, then broke out passionately, in quite another voice, “God help me, I have tried hard to forget them!”

“And could not, because God was helping thee?”

“Not that. No, for God never comes here. No—for what kept me from forgetting was something that tried to kill me, something I could not bear. Perhaps it was the devil. If you live with smugglers, you have to live as a smuggler—or to die. And I don’t want to die. I am too young. Besides, why should I? I have got nothing to die for. So I put the old life away. Then things go right enough. Folk are pleased with me. And, I have Jacquot and Babette.”

“Thou hast more than these, Gaspard.”

Gaspard shook his head, incredulously. Paul Beauclaise went on, “Thou hast the God of thy fathers, who watches over thee for good. What was that thou went singing anon?”

“‘The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want’—but that is only a song. Would He have let the faux sauniers get me if He were my Shepherd?”

“Would He have sent me here to look for thee if He were not? But, Gaspard, His sheep hear His voice, and follow Him. So must thou.”

“What is it you want me to do?” Gaspard faltered. He was profoundly touched, but perplexed and uneasy. “At first, only to listen to His voice.”

“How can I? He does not speak to me.”

“Does He not? Are not the old prayers, the old texts, the old lessons that come back to thee, His voice? But it would seem they hurt thee. Dost thou pray, my child?”

“I used—but not for long now. I was afraid.”

“Because it also hurt thee? Yes, poor child, I understand it quite. But listen. Bear the pain, it is well worth while. For that pain is just God’s hand touching thee.” He laid his own, as he spoke, upon that of Gaspard, who saw in the clear moonlight that it was long and fine, like a woman’s for beauty and a man’s for strength. He went on, “God’s hand only hurts that it may heal. Go on praying, and thou wilt know. After the pain will come peace, and guidance.”

“But monsieur, what shall I do?”

“What wouldst thou wish most to do?”

Gaspard thought a good while, knitting his brows together. At last he looked up and said, slowly, “Do you think, monsieur, it would be possible for me to run away—to leave the country—like my parents? Would going to Montpellier be the way to do it?”

It was a question not very easy to answer. Beauclaise pondered. Then he said, “It might be possible for thee to escape out of France. And it would be the best thing, the very best, if thou couldst manage it. But it needs much care and great caution. For being taken on the way would mean the galleys, and I desire not that cup for thee to drink. But thou art young and strong, and, if thy looks belie thee not, a lad of courage and ready wit. Therefore I say to thee—wait, ponder, and above all things pray. Ask God to show thee what to do.”

“Monsieur, I do not know—at least I have forgotten—how to pray. Will it please you to teach me a prayer?”

“I will write one for thee, if thou wilt. Canst read writing?”

“I used to be able; but since I came here I have not seen a book or a letter.”

“I shall write very plainly. And thou shalt read over to me what I have written.” He took from his pocket a case containing a notebook, a tiny ink-horn and a pen, and wrote rapidly for some minutes. Then, tearing out the leaf, he gave it to Gaspard, and read over carefully with him the short and simple prayer he had written. A few words—a very few—he added about the love of the Father to whom prayer is made, of the Saviour for whose sake it is granted, and of the Divine Spirit who helps us to offer it. They fell upon the ear of Gaspard like “the chimes from his own village,” which the traveler in far lands hears again in sleep

“And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes

Wet with most delicious tears.”

In such words had his father taught him, and his mother, in the days that were no more.

Beauclaise left him to think of them, while he wrote something else on another leaf of his notebook. Then he said, “I think there is a way in which I can help thee. Thou hast spoken of Montpellier. Perhaps by-and-by thou canst make thy way there. I will give thee a letter to a good friend of mine, a physician and professor in the college; he will help and befriend thee for my sake.”

“Does he belong to the religion?” Gaspard asked, eagerly, using the word he had been accustomed to hear in his childhood.

“No, or he could neither practice his calling nor keep his professorship. But, for all that, he will help thee, and thou canst trust him. If there be any real hope of finding the boy of whom you spoke, which I greatly doubt, he will counsel thee about that also. And in the more important matter of thine own journey out of France, he will tell thee what to do.”

He folded the note he had written, directed it “A Monsieur le Professeur Berbier, a Montpellier,” and gave it into the hand of Gaspard. “He lives in the College of Physicians,” he said. “Beware thou give it to none save himself alone. Meanwhile, keep it as the apple of thine eye.”

“Trust me,” said Gaspard, emphatically. “But, monsieur, you will see my parents again, will you not? I pray of you, tell them about me.”

“I shall never see them again until we meet—yonder—” he answered, looking upwards to where the moon was “walking in brightness” through the midnight sky. “But I will write and tell them of thee—if I can.”

“But I thought for certain, monsieur, that you were on your way out of France. I heard the robbers say so.”

“No; I have come back to France.” Under the quiet words slept all the passion and all the resolve of a strong man’s soul.

“Gap! Gap!” a voice called to Gaspard through the trees. “Young idiot, whither hast thou run?”

“Thou must go,” Beauclaise said, regretfully. “But, do not forget.”

“Never! never!” Gaspard faltered. “Monsieur, I thank you.” He came near and, with instinctive recurrence to the manners of his childhood, would have kissed the hand of his friend. But Beauclaise drew him close, kissed him on lip and brow, and embraced him as a father would a son. To Gaspard it seemed a consecration.

Next moment they stood apart, for Tardif’s sturdy form appeared through the trees. “I woke up and missed thee,” he said to Gaspard. “Knowing thy silly way of running off into the wood when anything vexes thee, and hearing talk about a wolf abroad in these parts, I was afraid he might find thee.”

“You see, friend, the wolf has not found him,” said Paul Beauclaise, smiling. He added, to Gaspard, “But I think the Shepherd has.”

Chapter 7: Defender and Consoler

“He might have had the world with him,

But chose to side with suffering men

And had the world against him.”

—BROWNING

IF Gaspard had followed—as very gladly he would have done—the footsteps of the man he called Monsieur Beauclaise, he would often have found him in less comfortable quarters than by the brigands’ fire in the wood of Besogne. To take one experience from amongst many in the annals of that life of peril and suffering. On a cold night of the winter which followed his meeting with Gaspard, he was keenly pursued by his ever-watchful foes, and tracked to the house of one of the faithful in which he had found shelter. Presently his host, in great alarm, told him the soldiers were coming.

“There is one place—only one—I can hide you in,” he said; and he led his dangerous guest into the garden, where was a deep well. Invisible from the mouth, and just above the water-level, was a small excavation, into which the hunted man, let down by a rope, could just contrive to squeeze himself. He was not a moment too soon in doing it, for a hundred and twenty soldiers, armed to the teeth, were surrounding the place, and with loud threats demanding the pastor. Resistance was useless, and the host attempted none; he opened his doors and invited them to seek for him as they would. They ransacked every corner, of course without success. Still they swore he was there; he had been seen to enter, and could not have come forth unseen. At last one of them, who had heard of such places of concealment, suggested the well, and offered valiantly to go down by a rope and search it. His offer was accepted, but a plunge into the ice-cold water was the sole reward of his courage. He was drawn up shivering, and protesting that no living thing was there. So for that time the pastor escaped. On another occasion he got out of the town of Nimes by creeping through a sewer; and through the gate of Sedan he passed in safety in the disguise of a porter with a burden on his shoulder. In the wild country of the Cevennes his adventures were numerous—such as nights of violent rain or piercing cold spent in the open, or on one occasion, under a rock, in a space too small to sit, stand, or lie in. Yet none of these things moved him, nor availed one jot to abate his enthusiasm for the calling to which he had vowed himself.

It was not the calling to which he had been destined in his youth, and which in his early manhood he had followed with signal honor and success.

When Gaspard de Montausier was still in his infancy, Paul Beauclaise, whose real name was Claude Brousson, was already passing through some of the crucial scenes of his strange, checkereda career.

The great hall of the Parliament of Toulouse was crowded to its utmost capacity. There, from all Languedoc, were counts and barons, knights and gentlemen, the noblesse of the Sword—with judges and high officials, the noblesse of Robe; and, more stately than either, archbishops, bishops, and abbes, the noblesse of the Church. Great also was the gathering of priests and monks, and above all of Jesuits, for the cause to be tried that day was, in their own estimation, emphatically theirs. And high were their hopes of a victory, signal and decisive. Still their opponents, though vastly in the minority, were not unrepresented. There mingled in the crowd a fair number of nobles, gentlemen, and citizens who belonged to what was then styled officially “the pretended Reformed Religion.”

For this “cause célebre” was a test case for the Protestants of Southern France. Their great temple at Montauban (the Protestant places of worship were always called “temples”) had been closed, on the pretext that one of the royal edicts had been violated by the admission to the Protestant service of five converts to Catholicism. But friend and foe alike knew that this was but one drop of the thunder shower of calamity about to descend upon them. Nor was it the first. Already forty-two of their temples had been closed, upon various pretexts, false in most cases, and frivolous in all. The king willed it (“le roi le vent”), and was not the king as God upon earth? The priesthood, from the archbishops and bishops down to the humblest cure, willed it also. So did many others, and so, especially, did the populace of the great towns. Here in Toulouse, the most fanatically Catholic city of all France, the unreasoning passions of the mob were all enlisted in the cause of the Church of Rome.

Still, the five pastors of Montauban had dared to make appeal to the Parliament of Languedoc, which met in Toulouse; and though they paid for their temerity with imprisonment, their appeal was heard. For the Protestants, though already oppressed and outraged in a thousand ways, were not yet formally outlawed.

The Procureur-General having ended his long and violent harangue, the advocate of the Protestants stood up to answer him. He was Claude Brousson, a native of Nimes, an advocate and doctor of law. Still comparatively young, he was already well known for his eloquence and legal acumen. He wore his doctor’s robe, and the indispensable perruque hid his dark hair and shaded his grave and quiet face. Quiet, too, and apparently free from emotion, was the voice in which he began. He made a clear and reasonable statement of facts, proving that the terms of the king’s edict, which required that all “conversions” should be officially notified to the Protestant pastors, had not been complied with in the case before the Court. Moreover, one of the “relapsed” had never returned to the temple at all, and the other four had returned before the publication of the king’s edict. There was, therefore, no case against the Protestants, and no justification for the suppression of their temple. Then, rising from the particular to the general, the calm exponent of facts became the impassioned advocate of principles. He went boldly to the heart of the matter for—let friend or foe disguise it as he might—both knew that he was fighting for the very existence of Protestantism in France. To that bitterly hostile audience he dared to explain what the Protestant Faith really was, its loyalty to Christ, its conformity to Scripture, its simple and evangelical worship, its pure and lofty morality.

At last the public prosecutor interrupted him, crying out angrily, “Do you imagine, sir, that you are speaking in a temple?”

“I do, sir,” replied the intrepid advocate. “I am speaking in the temple of Justice, where the voice of Truth should always be heard.” Then, turning to the Court, he asked respectfully, “May I be permitted to continue?”

So far had the power of his eloquence prevailed that even that fanatical assembly bade him go on.

He went on without further interruption, and obtained the triumph signal under the circumstances of a suspended verdict. The Court could not decide against him, and would not—perhaps dared not—decide for him.

When the assembly dispersed, the Procureur-General came to the side of his bold opponent, and stretched out his hand to him. “I do not despair,” said he, “of seeing you one day a good Catholic.”

“You see how I am on the way to it,” returned Claude Brousson, no doubt with a quiet smile.

The intrepid defender of the Protestants had one more triumph. Once more, a little later, he was allowed to raise his voice before the same illustrious assembly upon this second occasion even more illustrious—on behalf of temples illegally closed and pastors unjustly banished. Such causes, good though they might be in law and equity, could not then be gained in France. Yet the impression produced was profound. It may be guessed from the fact that immediately afterward a Jesuit who was present rose from his seat and impulsively embraced the Huguenot orator, crying out, “You have edified me, sir, you have greatly edified me.”

After the assembly, the magnates of Church and State met in conclave. Not to judge the case—that was pre-judged—but to discuss the fate of the dauntless advocate. “We are doing all we can to suppress heresy,” they said to each other, “and this man comes and preaches it to our very faces.”

“Arrest him at once!” said the majority; but the President of the Parliament pleaded for milder measures. “Allow me to deal with him,” he said. And he did so. But his offers of preferment, which would have opened out before the advocate a splendid career, proved as vain as threats and menaces would assuredly have been.

No longer allowed to defend the persecuted community, Brousson devoted his energies to the task of organizing, inspiring, and strengthening it, so that it might present a courageous and united front to its enemies.

But perils thickened round him. Whilst he was zealously pursuing this work in his native city of Nimes, troops were sent to arrest him. After several marvelous escapes, he finally got out of the town, as has been said, by creeping through a sewer belonging to the House of the Jesuits.

He reached Switzerland in safety; and there he took up the cause of the multitude of exiles who had escaped from France, for the most part in poverty and destitution. He found abundant use for his eloquence in pleading for them, and he was very successful, especially in Switzerland and Germany. In particular, the Elector of Brandenburg, an ancestor of the present Emperor of Germany, became the warm friend of the exiles and of their advocate.

But the cry of agony from his native land was forever sounding in the ear of Brousson. Those poor sheep, left in the wilderness with the ravening wolves around them—whom had they to bind up that which was torn, to seek that which was lost, to bring the living water to that which was dying of thirst? The shepherds—where were they? Driven from the land, forbidden to re-enter it under the awful penalty, not of death alone, but of the lingering torture of the wheel. And yet Claude Brousson—no pastor, but an advocate and doctor of law—was bold enough to address a letter to the exiled pastors, entreating that some of them would return and minister to their flocks! It was not difficult to find reasons for declining, and it may be that one pastor voiced the feeling of others when he asked the natural question, “Then why don’t you go yourself?”

“If God had given me your talents, I think I would,” the great advocate answered, modestly.

Claude Brousson was no pastor. Moreover, he was fully employed in work of the utmost importance, which none other could do so well. Yet this was not the first voice that had come to him, calling upon him to volunteer for the forlorn hope of the Church. He heard the piteous cries of the suffering people, for “on the side of their oppressors there was power, and they had no comforter.” And he heard another Voice, he saw a beckoning Hand, which those who have the unsealed ear and the open eye seldom fail to hear and see—nor to obey, however strong may be the opposing influences. In this case they were exceptionally strong. By no means would the layman intrude upon the pastoral office, for which he had not been set apart in the appointed way. And beside the strong claims of the work he had already undertaken, there were the yet stronger and more tender claims of a beloved wife and son, of kinsfolk and of friends whose support and maintainer he was. There was also the natural shrinking—we cannot doubt it—of a sensitive, refined and scholarly nature, used to the sheltered life of the study and the law courts, from hardships and perils worse than those of Tardif and his comrades, and probably culminating in that form of death which was almost the only thing these daring outlaws absolutely dreaded.

Still, he went—although not until after a struggle so severe that it ended in a dangerous illness. Drawn by the magnet of love, love to God and to his suffering brethren, he made three missionary journeys—rightly called apostolates—into France, the first extending over a period of nearly seven years. He soon received, in an abandoned sheep-cote among the wild mountains of the Cevennes, the “laying on of the hands of the presbytery,” which entitled him to preach, and to administer “the Sacraments of the New Covenant.” This office was performed for him by two heroic pastors, who had dared to remain in the country.

The story of his three apostolates, if told in detail, would furnish hairbreadth escapes and heroic adventures sufficient to inspire more romances than one. Yet from the first two the daring evangelist had returned in safety, though with shattered health and exhausted frame. “Now indeed,” said those who loved him, “he may rest from his labors.” It was said especially, and with many tears, by the devoted wife whose sorrows and anxieties, during his absence, he had consoled so tenderly in his letters—whenever letters could possibly be sent. All that he was able to do for Christ, he told her, was her work as well as his, “for,” said he, “I am a part of yourself!”

Perhaps this time he might have yielded, had not the Peace of Ryswick, just then concluded, dealt what seemed a death-blow to the hopes of the Huguenots. They had expected that the Treaty between Louis XIV. and the Protestant powers of England and Holland would have included some stipulation in their favor.

Nor indeed were they forgotten during the negotiations. The Protestant plenipotentiaries interceded warmly in their favor; but Louis returned the cold and inflexible answer, “I do not pretend to dictate to William in what manner he should govern his own subjects, nor can he pretend to dictate to me.”

At the conclusion of the treaty, with no help in it for them, there arose from the suffering community—not indeed “a great and bitter cry,” for scarce, in those cruel days, did they dare even to cry aloud—but what was worse—a low, brokenhearted wail of anguish, perhaps of despair. It reached one ear at least, that of Claude Brousson. He could no longer forbear: go to them he must, and at least try to bring them the consolations of Him who “bindeth up the broken in heart.”

So once more he went to France, this time to his beloved South. He traveled under the name of Paul Beauclaise, though the alias was but a feeble protection to a man whose personality was so well known, and upon whose head a heavy price was set.

Paul Beauclaise, therefore, it was who, in the course of his wanderings, met a lost lamb of his flock in the lair of the robbers, acting the part of a young smuggler of salt.

Chapter 8: Gap Is No More

“What’s done we partly may compute,

But know not what’s resisted.”

—BURNS.

“OUR friends were off this morning before the rest of us were awake,” said Tardif to Gaspard, whom he had volunteered to set on his way. He took a gun with him. “I should like a shot at that wolf we heard,” he said. “But what ails thee, boy? Not a word have we had out of thy mouth today.”

“Nothing,” Gaspard said, shortly.

“Keep thy lies for other folk. But I need not ask. I know well what ails thee. Monsieur Beauclaise has bewitched thee.”

“Thou knowest naught about him.”

“Ah! You think that. Gilles Tardif is a fool, forsooth, who sees no farther than his nose. And thou, a mere child, hast all the wisdom of the ages in that curly head of thine. Still, I am wise enough to give thee a word of counsel, and thou wouldst do well to heed it.”

“Say what thou wilt,” answered Gaspard, ungraciously enough.

“So I shall, young bear, with thy will or without it. See thou meddle not with this Monsieur Beauclaise and his like, either for blessing or for banning. As for banning”—he lowered his voice— “I suppose I know this minute how to lay my hand upon three hundred golden louis d’or, full told. Ay, and others know it too. But there are things a gentleman of the road cannot stoop to.”

“Do you mean to say there is a price upon his head?” asked Gaspard, much interested. “But—what for?”

“What would earn him, if he were caught, not the gallows, but the wheel.”

Gaspard shuddered. He still felt the pressure of those kind arms about him, the touch of those fatherly lips upon his own.

“What a child thou art, after all!” said Tardif. “Thy cheeks have gone white, like a girl’s.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“Not understand! Thou who wert born one of them thyself, if I don’t mistake! I believe these Protestants have priests of their own, whom they call—”

“Pasteurs,” said Gaspard, supplying the familiar word.

Tardif nodded. “These folks are all banished from the kingdom,” he said. “And should one of them come back, the King’s Edicts—” He broke off suddenly. “Though why any man, not fit for the Bicetre, should want to come back, is past my guessing,” he continued. “Yet I think he has. Now thou knowest enough. So keep a still tongue.”

“What dost take me for? Oh, Tardif!”

“One word more. It may be sorcery or witchcraft. Or it may be the devil, for aught I know—though, if you ask my opinion, I should say the devil has not much to do with Monsieur Beauclaise, nor will know what to make of him when he gets him, as get him he must, I suppose, at last—he being a heretic. Whatever it be, he has some spell, some power about him—I know not what or whence—that draws folk to him. When I saw thee with him, I took fright. Take care lest he put his hand on thee, and spoil thee for a good comrade. There pity, thou art shaping so well to the work. And I like thee, soft though thou art at times. Now mark my words, and good day to thee.”

“No fear for me,” Gaspard answered, sadly. “For I shall never see his face again. All the same I thank thee. Goodbye, Tardif. Jacquot, come on!”

To no one, not even to Babette, did Gaspard speak of Paul Beauclaise. But he thought of him perpetually, and of his words. He remembered every one of them; and the prayer he soon knew by heart, and repeated continually. The first result of this was to take all the savor out of the life he was leading. There was no more pride for him in his clever maneuvers and daring escapades; no more joy in his dashes through the forest to get the salt, or in his skill and success in disposing of it safely. He cared no longer for the praise of Darcheau, nor even for that of Tardif. His very food lost its flavor, nor did the wine any longer “move itself aright and give its color in the cup” when he drank it; nor could the wild wood, with all its charm and beauty, solace him as of old—still less the companionship of Babette and Jacquot. He was tired of his present life, so he told himself, “tired to death of it.”

Still, there was comfort in knowing that his father and mother, and his little brother, were yet alive, and were safe in England. He knew scarce anything about England, save that it was a Protestant country; but that meant everything. It meant peace, safety, freedom.

If he could only send them a letter! But that was impossible; and ought he to regret it? What would they think of him, if they knew what he was now, and in what service he had to earn his bread? There were times when he thought he could bear it no longer; he must tell the Darcheaus he could carry salt for them no more. But that would mean certain death.

Amidst these perplexities winter came and passed, and still he found no rest, and reached no fixed resolve. But with the first breath of spring new strength and courage came to him. He thought they came to him suddenly, but in truth they had been growing in silence through the weary months, and what he thought the moment of their birth was really only the moment when they flashed into consciousness. He would go! By some means or other he would make his way—he would beg it if necessary—to Montpellier. Then the friend of Monsieur Beauclaise, to whom he had the letter, would tell him what to do.

It would be easy enough to run away; but he could not bear to leave his one real friend, Babette, in ignorance of his plans. He would console her by saying he intended to use every effort to find Philippe, and to get him to go back to her, if he could. This would be true, although not all the truth. And it would serve to keep her content, poor child.

The precious note to Monsieur Berbier he kept concealed in the lining of his coat, but could not help sometimes taking it out to look at, and to see that it was safe. He would tear it into little bits and swallow it rather than have it found upon him. But this would scarcely have been necessary. The man who called himself Paul Beauclaise had learned caution in the hard school of the hunted, and knew how to convey his meaning without endangering either his correspondent or himself.

But how could he go without money? A very little would suffice; a few sous would recompense the peasants whose cabins he passed for the morsel of black bread and the shelter which was all he needed, and all they had to give. Still, this very little he must have somehow. He knew where Jeanne Darcheau kept her secret hoard; but Gaspard de Montausier was no thief. Nor could the argument that he had far more than earned it weigh with him, for his conscience, if untrained, was also unsophisticated. No, he would ask her for it plainly.

“Jeanne,” he said, “there is to be a fair next month at Mende. I want to go, to see the fun, and to buy a few things before the summer. Give me some silver, I pray thee.”

“Thou hast everything thou needest. And for what wouldst thou go to the fair? And all that way too! To waste thy money, lose thy time, and perhaps get thy foolish head broken for thee, or get taken up by the gens d’armes, which would be worse. I give thee no good silver for that.”

Gap stood up before her, no child now, but a tall, strong lad, straight and handsome. “I mean to go,” he said, coolly. “And I mean to take with me three—four good livres tournois, to buy a new cap for myself and a fairing for Babette.”

Jeanne fairly screamed with horror. “Three livres” she repeated, ignoring the fourth as past hearing of. “Three livres tournois! Is the boy mad?”

“No, just coming to his senses. Four livres in good silver I must have, or I carry salt for thee no more.”

She laughed scornfully. “What else wilt do to get thy bread? A smuggler once is a smuggler always.”

“Is a partridge’s egg an egg always? Out of the smuggler comes a bandit. Rameau and Tardif would like me in the band.”

“A child like thee! With us thou hast good food and clothing.”

“The food is well enough. The clothing—a handful of rags. My work is worth ten times as much, and thou knowest it. Give me the money.”

“Darcheau shall give thee—a good thrashing.”

Gaspard’s eyes flamed. “Let him try! But there, mother Jeanne, be a wise woman, and hand out the silver.”

And, after a little more haggling, she actually did. A quarrel with Gap, she thought truly, would cost them much more.

One more thing had Gaspard resolved to do before stretching his wings and steering for the open, like a bird of passage setting out upon its flight. With great care and much labor he fashioned a cross of beech-wood, and cut in rude letters upon it “In memory of Guillaume.” For he could not bear to go away and leave the faithful servant of his house in an unmarked and undistinguished grave. He had long ago found out from the villagers, without betraying himself, the spot where he had been laid. When he was ready to set out upon his travels he tied up the cross, with a spare garment or two and some provisions, took the package on his back, bade the Darcheaus a curt farewell, and asked Babette to come with him a little way.

She was only too glad. When they had gone a short distance he said to her, “Babette, I may be longer away than you think; for I have it in my mind to make some search for Philippe, your brother. You know we talked of it long ago. I said I would do something. The time has come now.”

But Babette, so eager formerly, was frightened now at the fulfillment of her own wish. Philippe’s long absence had dulled her childish memories of him, and the brave, new brother who had come to her in his place was dearer now than he had ever been. She clung to Gap much more than she longed for Philippe. So she pleaded with him the difficulties and dangers of the enterprise, and entreated him to give it up.

Gaspard laughed at her fears for him; still, he showed a good deal of patience in setting them at rest. He told her at last he had something to do on his own account that would take him much farther than Mende.

“But how far? Where must you go?” she asked, choking back her tears.

“That is what thou must not know. If the Darcheaus wonder I come not back, and begin to question thee, thou must say, ‘I know nothing.’”

“I would not mind—so much—if I only knew—when thou wouldst come back.”

“When thou art least expecting me. Now, Babette, not one step further. Goodbye, little sister.”

Gaspard had set out early, and he reached the village ere the sun was high. He went at once to the churchyard; there was no one in sight, though the church door was open. He quietly unstrapped his burden, took out the cross and a large knife Tardif had given him, and began his work.

He had just finished setting up the cross, and was clearing the grave of the weeds that grew upon it, when through the open door of the church a slouching figure came forth, slowly and feebly. It was the old priest, in his rusty soutane and shabby clerical hat. Gaspard respected Pere Suchard not at all as a priest, and very little as a man, but somewhat more as a good customer for contraband salt. So he touched his cap in salutation, though without rising from the ground.

The old man paused, looked at him with an air of hesitation, then began to move slowly towards him.

Gaspard stood up at his approach, though rather reluctantly. “Good morning, my son,” said the priest, in a conciliating tone. “What art thou doing?”

“No harm to anyone,” Gaspard returned, with a touch of sullenness.

“Art going away?” the priest pursued, with a glance at the unstrapped bundle.

“What if I were?” was the answer, spoken none too courteously.

“This, that I would like first to talk with thee.”

“‘Tis somewhat late in the day, after caring all these years not at all for my soul, though something for my salt,” thought Gaspard. But he said nothing.

The priest went on— “Am I wrong in supposing that thy father lies there?”

“He was not my father.”

“Still, he brought thee with him here.”

“How know you that, Monsieur le Cure? You cannot prove it.”

“Why should I want to prove it? If I did, I would have tried ere this. But why stir foul water?”

“He was a good man,” Gaspard said, emphatically. “It is therefore I would tell thee something—”

“About him?” Gaspard asked, for the first time with a show of interest.

“About him, and myself. It can harm neither now I have kept silence long, and at some cost too.”

“How could it cost thee aught—” began Gaspard, but he stopped suddenly, looking with surprise at the priest’s weak, commonplace, aged face, over which a subtle change had passed. There was a look in it of meaning and of life, the faded blue eyes held a spark of fire, and the slouching figure was drawn up to its full height. But he seemed uncertain how to begin. “I only saw him once,” he said.

“No fault of the folk about him,” said Gaspard, with a touch of scorn.

“No-o,” replied the priest weakly, as he tried to uproot a weed with the end of his staff.

“No?” repeated Gaspard, looking into the troubled face before him with eyes of angry scorn, “I understood that Monsieur le Cure was duly sent for at the last; but his reverence was at his dinner, and could not be disturbed. And when at length he was good enough to come the man was dead.”

“And they think of me that I let him die—through my default—a lost soul! Dost thou, young man?” The priest leant heavily on his staff and waited.

Gaspard spoke at last “I thought you thought it,” he said, slowly, “and that you did not care—that,” taking up a pebble and flinging it in the air.

“You are wrong. Do you suppose I did not know what he was—what you are, if you are anything? I knew it at our first meeting, and, God forgive me, I did not want a second.”

Gaspard’s lip curled. “You feared his arguments?”

“Not likely. I thought I should find him past arguing, only ready for the last offices.”

“Those at least you need not have grudged him—that is, thinking of them as I suppose you do.”

“But he might not have been past—refusing them.”

“And what harm if he did?”

“Then you do not know?”

“I cannot guess. He would have been dead and safe. And who could have harmed you?”

“Are the dead always safe? Listen, boy. I will speak out this once, and deliver my soul.”

Surprised at his tone, Gaspard stood up and looked him in the face. He was familiar enough with old Pere Suchard, the droning, lazy priest, the haggling customer for contraband salt, but this man he had never seen before. It was a moment’s revelation, across the dim tarnished actual, of what we call the Ideal of what God meant him to be.

“Had I gone to thy friend with the viaticum, he would have refused it, and have died so.”

“And been safe forever from you and yours,” Gaspard said, hotly.

“Not so. Hear me,” said the priest, with a new air of dignity, holding up his hand. “I should have had to report him to my superiors, and there would have followed a process against his memory.”

“What is that?”

“He would have been judged and condemned as an obstinate heretic, who had refused the sacraments on his deathbed.”

“What matter? He was dead.”

“God knows where his soul was or is. But his body was here. Dost know what would have been done to that? It would have been stripped naked, fastened thus upon a hurdle, dragged through the place amidst the insults and mockery of the crowd, and flung at last into the common sewer, to be the prey of the foul creatures that haunt it. Boy, I have seen that thing once. It was a young girl—a lady—with father, mother, brothers—lover perhaps—looking on. God grant me never, while I live, to see the like again! And God grant me to die rather than have hand, act, or part in the doing of it!” Without another word he turned away and walked towards the presbytere with a quick, firm step, unlike his usual uncertain gait.

For a moment Gap looked after him, bewildered. Then he ran, and was quickly at his side. “Monsieur le Cure,” he said, “I am going away. Will you give me your hand?”

The priest stretched it out silently. Already the strange fire was fading from him, he began to look exhausted. Gaspard bent down and touched with his lips the weak, nerveless hand. “Benedicite,” the priest murmured, and went on. Gaspard stood and watched him till he entered the presbyters; then he returned to the grave, took up his pack again, tied it up, and set out upon his way.

In those dark days the priesthood of France acted generally a cruel and evil part towards their Protestant brethren, whose tyrants and oppressors they became. They were ready to send men to the horrible doom of the galleys, and women to cruel and hopeless imprisonment; they tore from their parents children of the tenderest years, and exposed them to such treatment that those who died of it were probably the happiest. But it should be told, to their credit, that there was one thing which (generally) they would not do one horror to which they offered a “passive resistance,” which drew down upon them reiterated rebuke from their superiors—many of them would not make the prescribed domiciliary visits to the dying Protestants, to press upon them the last sacraments, the refusal of which entailed consequences so revolting to humanity. No doubt some account is taken, somewhere, not only of the good men have done, but of the evil which they have refused to do.

Chapter 9: At the Fair of Mende

“Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.”

—LOWELL.

“I NEVER thought he had that much good in him,” Gaspard said to himself as he went on his way. He strode along, scarce heeding whither, for the hot and bitter thoughts that filled his breast. He had been instructed, after leaving the cultivated land that surrounded the village, to take a path that would lead him through a wild and hilly district. Here he came presently to a moorland, with a few leaf-trees here and there just donning their bright spring apparel, and now and then a group of dark fir-trees. He saw no living thing, nor any sign of human habitation. The utter loneliness suited his mood. He flung himself down on the heather, in the shadow of a great boulder, disturbing some wild bird, which flew upwards with an eerie, melancholy cry. But he did not heed. “I hate it all!” he cried aloud. “I hate it!”

There stopped his articulate speech. For the last six years he had had little chance of speaking, except to Babette, and not everything could be voiced to her. All the dim, confused thoughts that were struggling within him had to be crushed down into silence. Nor had he lived for those years on the sunny side of life. Plenty of hard, cruel, evil things had come to the boy’s knowledge, but nothing had struck him with such a passion of horror, of burning rage and shame, as the revolting treatment of the dead of which the cure had told him. It was rather odd that he did not think of it in connection with Guillaume, whose remains had so narrowly escaped it. It was the image of his stately father, of his beautiful mother, that rose before his eyes; and, strange to say, in the fierce flame of his passion, he saw them more distinctly now than he had done for years.

“But at least,” he thought, “they are safe from these horrors. And I—I will arise and go to them. I will stay no more in a country where such things are done.”

As yet, for him difficulties were not, or were faced with the pathetic courage of ignorance. Of geography he knew next to nothing, save that his old home, his father’s château of Rochambeau, lay in the Vivarais, which was in Languedoc, and that he had come with Guillaume into Auvergne, where he was now. He knew, too, that he was near the southern border of Auvergne, and that the way was not long to Mende, a town of Languedoc. He had heard the faux sauniers and the innkeeper of the village talk of the great Easter Fair at Mende; and he had said to himself, “I will tell the Darcheaus I am going there. And once there, I shall find the way to go to Montpellier, which also is in Languedoc, though, I doubt, a long way off, far to the south. But at Mende I will talk with peddlers and other traveled folk, who will tell me the way. There, too, at the Fair, I can buy myself a good cloak and a stout pair of shoes for the journey. Perhaps, too, I might find someone going with whom I might join. Who knows?”

But his first business was to get to Mende. His tramps through the forest had made him a splendid pedestrian, and the instructions he got from the innkeeper of Besogne brought him safely through his first day’s journey. He slept at a peasant’s hut, and its owner set him next morning on the right road. Thus, although not without some delays, a few difficulties, and two or three nights spent on the way, he at last fell in with groups of people going, as he was, to the Fair of Mende.

He joined one of these groups; and seeing a very frail, tired-looking woman with a stout “elderly baby” in her arms, he offered to relieve her of her load. After some pressing, she gave up her “little cabbage,” as she called him, exhorting him to be “sage,” and not plague monsieur with his crying. Gaspard wondered that she brought so young a child with her.

“And where was I to leave him?” she asked. “You see, monsieur, my goodman is dead, and the child and I alone in the world. And the seigneur must have his dues—though where they are to come from the good God only knows. Then there’s the corn to grind— ‘tis little enough we have of it, God wot, but that little must be ground; we can’t eat it whole like the horses, and ‘tis another seigneur has got the mill, and must be paid for that. But my husband’s brother’s son has a shop in Mende, and is doing fairly, so I am in hopes he will lend me a few livres to go on with, for the love of God. After that, what is to become of me God knows.”

Gaspard said a kind word or two. “Perhaps,” he added, “the seigneur will not ask for his dues from you, as you are a widow.” He remembered hearing, as a child, how his father, in similar circumstances, always remitted his rights.

“Ah, but you don’t know Monsieur le Seigneur,” was the answer. “He is a hard man, God help us.”

After that, they trudged on in silence. French peasants are not even now a loquacious race, and then they were, in more respects than one, “like dumb, driven cattle.” Gaspard could get very little information from her about the town of Mende, or the Fair, or anything else that he wanted to know. But he shared with her some rye bread and soft cheese he had bought at his last resting-place, and even the baby got a crust to suck, to his evident satisfaction.

At last they reached the dark, ugly, medieval town, nestling at the foot of its crags, and dominated by the lofty pinnacles of its great cathedral. In one of the narrow unsavory streets Gaspard’s companion recognized her husband’s brother’s son standing outside his tiny shoemaker’s shop. Whilst she was making herself known to him, Gaspard managed to slip one of his silver pieces into the baby’s hand. Then he gave him back to his mother and hastened to lose himself in the crowd, to escape her thanks. This generous deed sent a glow of pleasure through his heart, dashed however by the thought, “I hope the little rascal won’t put it in his mouth.”

He followed the stream to the marketplace, in the shadow of the great cathedral. Knowing nothing better than the one wretched shop which served all the needs of Besogne, he thought the booths, crowded as they were with cheap and showy wares, a quite remarkable exhibition of interesting and attractive objects. Here were gay kerchiefs, tawdry many-colored ribbons, glass and silver ornaments, of little value, but shining brightly in the sun.

As amongst these various allurements he stood a moment undecided, a voluble chapman, with flattering deference, invited “monsieur” to buy a kerchief or a ribbon for his sweetheart, “for certainly such a handsome young man cannot but have a sweetheart already.” Then, a booth with toys for children attracted his eye; but he soon passed on to another where rough country clothing was to be sold. He had really some business here; though, boy-like, he wanted to have “a good look round” before attending to it. And—oh, joy of joys—here was actually what might be called a bookshop! Here at least were a few second-hand books, ranged temptingly on the board that served for a counter, and surrounded by ballads abominably printed on coarse paper, and a supply of crucifixes and Agnus Deis. Gaspard did not care for these, but he looked eagerly at the books. Most of them were lives of saints, but there was also a Latin book or two. He ventured to take one in his hand and look at it. It proved to be Cornelius Nepos, much used in those days as a Latin reading-book. Gaspard had just begun it in his old home; and he was looking with curiosity at the first page, through which he remembered stumbling with much assistance, when someone touched him on the elbow. He turned and saw a lad with a handful of cheap (and probably worthless) horn spectacles.

“Monsieur,” said he, with a bow, “know that my master, who has a magnificent assortment of glasses of all kinds for the eyes, and is, moreover, himself an eye doctor of noted reputation, seeing that you are studiously inclined, hath sent me to counsel you to avoid those rheums and affections of the sight to which students—”

But the rest of his harangue was lost upon Gaspard, for, looking across the marketplace in the direction pointed out, he saw for a moment, through some casual opening, a face and figure he could not mistake anywhere. It was gone again instantly, but that one sight had been enough. With more vigor than courtesy he fought his way through the intervening crowd, earning hearty cuffs and curses from those whose persons or whose wares he endangered. At last he stood breathless beside the man he wanted. Laying his hand on his shoulder he said but one word, “Tardif.” “Gap? What devil brings thee here?” was the answer.

“None, that I know of. And thou?”

“Dost think a man can talk here? Where dost thou bide?”

“Nowhere—have but just come. But I can get a bed. I have money.”

He put his hand in his pocket; but, much to his dismay, he found it empty. “Someone has robbed me,” he cried out. “And I had—”

Tardif promptly silenced him. “Young fool,” he said, “didst not know what it was to come to a fair? But shut up now. The thing is done, and to raise a pother would be only to risk worse. How much hadst thou?”

“Four—no, three—three good livres tournois. Oh, what a loss.”

“None so great! And loss is loss. As soon gather spilled milk as those livres tournois. After all, ‘tis fair play. We lose and we get, we get and we lose, all in turn.”

“Ay, but no turn to get is like to come to me,” Gaspard said, ruefully. He was moving off, but Tardif called him back. “What wouldst do now?”

“I don’t know,” still in a disconsolate tone. “Perhaps I had better go back to the book-stall, and ask—”

“Go!” laughed Tardif, “and get a broken head in place of thy livres tournois. No; come with me, and I will give thee more than thou hast lost. For I happen to want thee.” Tardif was a man of authority, much looked up to by the robber band, while Gaspard was only a boy smuggler, in the service of the despised Darcheaus. So he submitted—and was flattered.

Tardif brought him first to a booth where food was sold, and they partook of a good supper of stewed beef and vegetables, washed down with wine of the country. “I have no money,” Gaspard had objected, but Tardif threatened to “clout his head” if he would not eat. When they had finished he said, “Let us go into the fields; I have somewhat to say to thee. ‘Twas lucky I met thee.”

“For me, no doubt,” said Gaspard.

“For me too. Thou canst help me.”

Gaspard flushed and hesitated. But no more was said until they had left the town behind, and were sitting under a tree in a quiet field. The night was falling now. “We can sleep here,” said Tardif. “No roof like the sky for me.”

But Gaspard meanwhile had been pondering his words, “Thou canst help me,” and gathering all his strength for what must be said, ere he agreed. There was one way in which he could not help him.

“Tardif,” he said, timidly, “I would fain help thee, but—”

“Well, what are thy ‘but’s for?”

“Tardiff, I am a smuggler, but that other thing I am not,” and now he spoke out boldly.

“Oh, not a robber, thou wouldst say,” said Tardif, with a loud laugh. “Keep thy wits to pick up thy crumbs with, thou pretty chicken of grace. I tempt thee with no robber’s work, ‘Tis on the other horse the saddle is just now, for I am giving it up myself. I have broken with Rameau.”

Gaspard was surprised. Even the Darcheaus knew of the constant quarrels between Rameau and Tardif; they knew too that Tardif was in all respects the better man. But they thought he would make himself captain of the band; they never dreamed he would leave it. For what could he do? Where could he go? The outlaw could not return to the ranks of the law-abiding. The gates of that Eden were shut on him forever, and guarded by more than one flaming sword—not, however, in the hands of angels. “What wilt thou do?” Gaspard asked, wondering.

“I have another profession in view,” Tardif answered, oracularly.

“But how? What do you mean? You could never get a pardon,” said the mystified Gaspard.

“‘Twould be wastepaper if I could, for I am going to do worse.”

Gaspard, quite unconsciously, moved a little farther off. There was but one thing he could think of worse than stealing. But how could he say the word, and to Tardif, from whom he had received nothing but kindness? Tardif a murderer! And, as it must be, a murderer for gain! What other motive could he have?

Tardif read his thoughts and laughed again. “Come closer, boy,” he said. “Don’t be afraid to touch me. I am no murderer, nor will be. ‘Tis to save life, not to take it, that I am going to risk my neck.”

Gaspard’s amazement and perplexity kept him silent. How could a man be punished, not to say hanged, for saving the lives of other men?

“I suppose you think I have lost my wits,” Tardif went on. “But no. The trade is good. There is money in it.”

“More than in smuggling salt?”

“Ay, much more. Good livres tournois—nay, good louis d’or; and by the handful. Smuggling salt indeed! ‘Tis better work to smuggle souls—across the frontier.”

“But you said, to save life?”

“If I did—is it life for a man to slave at the galleys? or for a woman to be shut up in a dungeon? Rather death than either—at least for me. And death it would be—for the guide, if caught, goes straight to the gallows.”

“With his pockets full of louis d’or?”

“Ay, if he be a fool. Fools fail, wise men succeed.”

“But who—tell me who is it you mean to guide across the frontier?” Gaspard asked, a wild hope throbbing at his heart. He began to guess at the meaning of Tardif.

“What if it were the like of your friend, Monsieur Beauclaise?”

“He will not go.”

“No; but his friends will, and do, whenever they can.”

“Oh, Tardif!” was all Gaspard could find to say. The throbbing at his heart grew wilder, and he looked at the bandit with great wondering eyes.

“Oh, Gaspard!” laughed Tardif, in answer. “Why so amazed? ‘Tis all in the way of trade. I tell thee, there is much money in it.”

“And thou wilt do it—for that?”

“For what else, my young cockerel?”

“For the saving of them.”

“One does not work for the work; one works for the pay.”

“Tardif, do you know—”

“Do I know thou art a chip of that same block? Pouf! –do I know a chicken from a hawk?”

“And wilt thou—oh, wilt thou take me with thee?”

It was not a question, but a supplication, with the boy’s whole heart behind it.

Tardif nodded. Yet Gaspard’s heart sank as he said, “But I have no gold to give thee, nor silver even.”

“Set thy mind at rest. Thou shalt pay me well, for all that—in another way. Dost not see, I want thee for a bait?—as he who would sell his wares will make a present of a sample, or as the doctor will cure his first patient without fee or reward. Hearken! thou shalt serve me loyally, and I will bring thee free of charge over the frontier—say to Switzerland. Is it a bargain?” “Surely; only it is to England I want to go.”

“That can be settled afterward. The main thing is to get thee out of France, by land or by sea.”

“But how can I serve thee?”

“Thou art near as tall as I am, yet art thou a very child. The Huguenots are cowed, terrified, surrounded by spies and informers, and most naturally they are suspicious of strangers. How, think you, would they take it if I came to them, cap in hand, and said, ‘Messieurs, I am one Gilles Tardif, a brigand and a faux saunier. I know secret ways across the country and over the frontier; I know the coastline too, a good deal of it, and I am willing to conduct you safely out of France for a sufficient consideration?’”

“They might think you meant to betray them, because you would gain more by that.”

“Or even that I might do like a rascally guide I heard of, who murdered a young lad he was conducting for the sake of the gold the poor boy had with him. They were no Huguenots, but good Catholics whom I heard saying he ought to have been broken on the wheel for it. No! the biggest fool is he who thinks every man a fool but himself. Seest thou, it will alter things a little if I go to these gentlemen holding thee by the hand. ‘Messieurs,’ I will say to them, ‘here is a very well-born young man whom I have undertaken to pass out of the country, having the means of so doing. I would fain find two or three more to join him, and make things easy all round.’ Then they will talk with thee and question thee. Thou wilt tell them thy name and parentage; and, moreover, thou rememberest enough of thy childish lessons to show thou art a true lamb of their own fold. Thou canst say, too, that thou knowest I mean well by thee. So shall I touch my gold, and thou get thy freedom. How will that suit thee?”

“Right well,” answered Gaspard. And he meant it.

“Then go to sleep and dream of it. For me, I walked all last night as well as all yesterday, so I shall sleep like the dead.”

Chapter 10: Wayfarers

“‘Tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation.”

—SHAKESPEARE.

IT was long before the young eyes of Gaspard de Montausier closed in slumber. He was amazed and delighted at the events of the evening, but he was also perplexed. Upon one point, however, he felt no perplexity at all; not a doubt of either the good faith or the ability of the brigand Tardif even crossed his mind. Instinctively he trusted the man, and whenever Gaspard trusted, he trusted wholly. Still, he did not feel at liberty to show him the note Monsieur Beauclaise had given him, much as it would have increased his own value and importance in his eyes. Had he not promised the pastor to keep it as the apple of his eye? He would be as true to the pastor as he expected Tardif to be to him. But, on the other hand, he must tell Tardif about it. For it would be plainly the right thing to go first to Monsieur Berbier and deliver it. Monsieur Berbier would tell him how to find those brethren in the Faith to whom he would have to address himself if Tardifs plan was to take effect. Therefore they should go first to Montpellier.

Then came the thought of Babette, and the hopes that he had encouraged her to entertain that he would find, and if possible bring back, her lost brother Philippe. Could he, after promising to search for him, give it up and do nothing? Could he leave, quite forlorn and uncomforted, the one being who through all these dreary years had really loved and cared for the young smuggler of salt? He could not do it. In the morning he would lay the matter before Tardif, and ask his counsel and co-operation. So thinking, he fell asleep—and, for the first time since he got it, without saying the prayer Monsieur Beauclaise had given him.

When he awoke it was daylight. The sun was shining, and the birds were singing in the branches of the great chestnut tree under which they had made their couch. A new spring of hope and gladness in his own heart echoed the song. He might yet be free! No more hateful, degrading servitude; no more carrying of salt through the forest, or peddling it to stingy villagers! Never again the squalid hut of the Darcheaus, or the lair of the robbers, with their wild orgies and their wicked talk! Might there not instead, in the far English land, be Home again for him? Father, mother, brother, all to embrace him once more?

Leaving Tardif still asleep, he stepped out from under the tree and looked about him. He saw above the little town the two towers of the great cathedral, unequal in height and structure, yet both of them beautiful; behind them the rocky battlements of the “Causse de Mende,” and far above all, the glorious peak of Minet piercing the sky. Gaspard thought the gloomy little town was like his past life, and the splendid sun-clad mountain summit like the life of hope and freedom to which Tardif was beckoning him. He knelt down, and after saying the prayer which had been given him, added a brief but fervent petition of his own, that God would help him to get out of France, and to find his parents.

By this time Tardif was stirring, but he did not seem inclined to talk. He said, however, as they made their hasty breakfast on some bread and meat he had brought from the town, “I wonder the Darcheaus let thee go.”

“They could not keep me,” said Gaspard, with a laugh.

“Did they not try? They must have known they had seen the last of thee.”

“I think they were not so sure. They thought hunger might drive me back to them, and to the trade. ‘Once a smuggler, a smuggler always,’ Jeanne said. Or else—” he stopped there, and they finished their breakfast in silence; then Tardif said briefly, “Come on.” They had walked a little distance before Gaspard, who was rather repressed by his manner, ventured to ask “Whither?” and got the answer in one word, “South.”

Then he summoned courage to say what was in his mind. “Tardif, I want to go to Montpellier.”

“Why? Did thy people live there?”

“No, but—Tardif, didst know aught of Darcheau’s son, Philippe, who was caught and thrown into prison before I came?”

“I knew the young urchin. But how dost thou come into the matter?”

“Babette thinks he was taken to Montpellier. She wants me to find him for her.”

“Poor little maid! Thou wouldst have to go further than Montpellier to do that. The boy is dead.”

“Dost know it, or guess it only?”

“I happen to know it. Though why a little smuggler, whom nobody cared about, came to be sent to Montpellier I do not know—nor anyone else, save those who did it. But one of our band who was taken in Languedoc was imprisoned there, and managed to escape. He told us that Philippe Darcheau died in prison of the fever; and further, that he believed the rascally jailor sold his body to the doctors, to be cut up.”

“Ah Poor Babette!”

“She need never know. I would not tell thee, lest it should slip out. Nor her parents. And I told the others to be silent too.” This tenderness of heart was strange in a bandit, but Tardif’s ways were often strange.

“Yet, ‘tweer well she knew he was dead,” said Gaspard. “Better that than go on guessing. Only not—the other thing.” He paused a moment, thinking how to put what he wished to tell Tardif. Then he resumed, “But, as for Montpellier, there is something else which you ought to know. Monsieur Beauclaise told me the name of a person of consideration there, who would help me. Moreover, he gave me a note to give to him. It is Monsieur le Professeur Berbier, of the School of Medicine.”

“Capital!” cried Tardif, standing still a moment in his surprise and delight. “Little goose, not to tell me that the first moment! Where had thy wits gone to? Show me the note.”

Gaspard put his hand on his heart. “It is there,” he said. “But, forgive me, Tardif, I cannot show it to anyone till I give it into the hand of Monsieur Berbier himself.”

“Another man would tell thee thou hast it not at all, only perhaps a message. But, Gap, I know thou couldst never find wit enough to make a lie, though not lacking it for other needs. So I trust thee. And this Monsieur Berbier, who seems just the man we want—most like he is one of those people for whose good Louis d’or I am going to risk my neck, though now, of course, like everyone else, he has got to call himself a Catholic.”

“He is a Catholic, but a good friend of Monsieur Beauclaise, who would help any friend of his, for his sake. But, Tardif, thou wilt be careful.”

“Dost preach carefulness to me, with the down not yet upon thy cheek? To me, who for nigh twenty years have gone up and down the country with my life in my hand?”

“Thou didst begin young.”

“Yet older than thou art now. Thou art a boy; I was a man.”

“Where wast born?— I think not hereabouts?”

“No; but I don’t want to name the place, not to thee even. Only, we were near the sea. I have sometimes had to do with boats and barges, and the like. The name is accursed for me. Yet things were well enough with us there at first. My father had a métairie, with cattle, and land for tillage. I was his only son; and his brother, my uncle, was the cure. My sole trouble was that the folk called me ill-favored, and that I feared to seem so in the eyes I wanted, above all, to look on me kindly. And they did it, for a while.” Here he came to a full stop. Gaspard did not like to break the silence that followed, even by a question. He wondered that Tardif should tell him all this; and he would have wondered more had he guessed that he knew more now than any of Tardif’s comrades or associates knew about him.

Tardif resumed presently, “What happened after, I tell no man. Nor will I name him who did me wrong. He was noble. Yet I spoke words to him—to his very face—which I think peasant never spoke to noble since the making of the world. So I had to flee for my life; and I took the road, as thou knowest. The worst was—no, not the worst, but the next to it—that my parents were ruined too. But I have known how to help them since. Now remember, never a word of this again, or we part company.”

Gaspard nodded. “Thou hast had a hard life,” he said, in a low, rather constrained voice.

“That’s as it may be. There are two kinds of people in the world—those who eat, and those who are eaten. A man is born one way or the other. We peasants are born to be eaten, like the sheep, which is not so pleasant for us. Therefore, if now and then we can turn eaters ourselves, so much the better.”

“But the end, Tardif, the end? Here the galleys, or the gibbet. Hereafter—”

“Pouf!” laughed Tardif “All that is most likely a story of the priests. If not, there is always one of them at hand at the last to smuggle you into an easier place—one you can get out of, at all events. That is, if the money is there. For priests are just like all the rest—they eat, or they are eaten.”

“But the good God, Tardif? What of Him?”

“The good God is on the side of the eaters.”

“Oh, no, no!” Gaspard cried in horror. “Better die than think that!”

“Wait and see, my lad,” Tardif said, with the coolness of utter conviction. “Thy friend Monsieur Beauclaise, now—of which sort is he?”

“Certainly not of the eaters.”

“Precious like to be eaten. Yet, he prays to the good God. Well, if He hears, delivers him from his enemies and gives him to triumph over them, I shall begin to think there is something to be said. Meanwhile we have got ourselves to fight for, that we be not eaten too.

Now listen, Gaspard: we shall go presently through a part of the country—we being now in Languedoc—where there are many of thy people. But it would not be safe for ourselves, or good for them, that we should mix or meddle with them in any way. For they live in great fear, and I hear the country swarms with priests and monks, and also with spies and informers. So keep thou a still tongue and a steady head.”

“But,” Gaspard hazarded, “may not some of them be very anxious to go away?”

“They dare not try it. Nor could we help them. We must come to the towns, and work cautiously, like cunning anglers, for the fish we want to catch. Be sure, if questioned, to call thyself a Catholic, as a matter of course. But say thou art an ignorant lad, who hast never had much teaching.”

“Which is true enough,” Gaspard acquiesced. “Indeed I am ignorant.”

“What hast thou in that bundle on thy shoulder?”

“Only a clean shirt and a pair of stockings.”

“How dainty we are, to be sure!”

“The innkeeper’s wife made them for me, because of the salt I brought them. Till then, I went without.”

“Put them on over thy others, and stuff the wrapping into thy pocket, so we look not like travelers. Not that I have much fear. I know the ways of the road.”

So they journeyed on through the pleasant land of Languedoc, perhaps at its pleasantest then, in the bright spring weather.

They did not want for anything; Tardif had money with him, part of his share of the profits of his unlawful business. It was not much, however, for the habits of the robbers were wasteful, and their gains precarious. He used it carefully; not from stinginess, which was not one of his faults, but from prudence: the poorer a man was supposed to be, the more safely he could travel. Once they met some disbanded soldiers, who would have been dangerous to travelers worth robbing, but Tardif fraternized and drank with them, and a talk followed about the band of brigands he had left. But this Gaspard did not hear, as Tardif had promptly ordered him off to bed. However, he said to him as they pursued their journey next day, “I don’t like those fellows, Gap. ‘Twas about a squad of them that wanted to join our band that I fell out finally with Rameau.”

“What brings so many of them about?” asked Gaspard.

“The peace, boy. The peace between our king and William of England! Of course the king can’t be expected to pay soldiers, or feed them, when there is no fighting.”

“What will he do with them?”

“How should I know? A good many of them have been quartered on the Huguenots, a good many more have turned brigands, or smugglers. As for the rest, God help them!”

Once it was their chance to lodge in a village wholly, or almost wholly, inhabited by Protestants—or, as they were styled officially, whether they had ever been “converted” or no, “nouveaux Catholiques.” They were civil, even kind to the travelers, but very reserved and silent. In fact, they lived in a state of perpetual terror. Gaspard made some timid overtures to his hosts, but they were manifestly afraid to trust him, and Tardif called him away, and told him roughly to “mind his own business.”

Wherever they went, those who talked with them, whether Catholic or Protestant, seemed to stand in great awe of the Intendant, or Governor of the Province, the notorious Lamoignan de Baville, of whom it was said that he “supped on new blood every night.”

Tardif hurried Gaspard quickly through the districts where the Protestants were most numerous; but although, between his guardian’s precautions and his own shyness, he learned nothing from them by word of mouth, he received impressions which, though vague, were strong.

During his residence with the Darcheaus he had felt himself the victim of circumstances—an unfortunate child, driven from his home and his friends. Child-like, he looked no farther, nor asked for the cause of his troubles. It was the cure’s tale which first stirred in him a passion of resentment, a bitter hate, against those who did such things to him and to his people; for he thought of the Huguenots rather as his “people,” to whom he belonged, than as his brethren in the Faith. What had they done to be thus banned, proscribed, oppressed; to have their pastors hanged or broken on the wheel; their men sent to the galleys; their women flung into prison; their children torn from their parents and dragged to the hated Jesuit schools; their very dead exposed to the most revolting barbarities? Who did these things? Who caused them to be done? He asked this many times of himself; and once, perhaps unconsciously, he asked it aloud.

Tardif answered him: “The king. That goes without saying.”

This was to Gaspard as if he had said, “The lightning, or the earthquake,” or any other force of nature, equally inscrutable and irresistible.

“No doubt,” Tardif added, “the priests set him on.”

“I don’t think Pere Suchard would,” said Gaspard. “He is not so bad.”

“I don’t mean the country cures, who are of no account,” Tardif said, scornfully. “I mean the great folk about the king, who can speak to him—archbishops, bishops, abbes, and the like. But mind thyself, Gap, and keep a still tongue until thou canst set a firm foot upon foreign soil.”

Chapter 11: Gaspard Finds What He Seeks, and Does Not Like It

“For every inch that is not fool is rogue.”—DRYDRN.

AT last Tardif and Gaspard drew near the pleasant town of Montpellier, the capital of Languedoc. The fair and smiling landscape had no charms for Tardif, none at least that he was conscious of; but the orchards, the vineyards, the oliveyards—still more the beautiful gardens teeming with spring flowers in all the hues of the rainbow—filled the soul of Gaspard with frank delight. They saw everywhere handsome square villas, the dwellings of the rich and noble; and plenty of substantial homesteads, the homes of less rich but fairly prosperous people.

Tardif got into the town by representing himself as a workman, seeking employment in the manufacture of the woolen stuff called futaine, for which Montpellier was famous. Gaspard he represented as his son, who wished to be apprenticed to the craft. They found lodgings at a wine-shop, in the quarter where most of the wool-workers lived. With these Tardif quickly fraternized; he let them see that he was not quite penniless, very acceptably proving the fact by treating them to sundry cups of wine. He told them he was in no great hurry to settle down; he wanted to show the town to his boy, and to find out for himself which master would pay them the best.

His new comrades gave him information which would have been very useful if his professed object had been his real one. There was plenty of room, they told him for new workmen, now that the Huguenots were done for; and they named several master craftsmen, in their own trade and in others, who had been half ruined by the loss of their best workers. “However,” said they “things are beginning to look up again; Monsieur L’Intendant—though everybody is afraid of him—has a good eye to the prosperity of the town, and the increase of the king’s taxes, which depend upon it.”

Of course the first sight-seeing expedition of Tardi and Gaspard led them to the massive old building where the world-famous College of Medicine had its headquarters. They inquired there for Monsieur le Professeur Berbier, and Gaspard had the note for him ready to produce. But they learned, to their disappointment, that Monsieur Berbier had some time ago resigned his professorship, and left not only the University, but the town. Whither had he gone? No one knew, and, apparently, no one cared. The travelers left the College thoroughly disappointed, and not knowing what to do next.

For about a week they made what inquiries they could for Monsieur Berbier, always without success. This was unsatisfactory to both, though more so to Tardif than to Gaspard. For Gaspard, in spite of the strange thoughts that were stirring within him, could still be diverted by the wonders of a real city, the first he had ever seen. He loved to stand outside the shops examining the wares in their well-stocked windows, and to see the guards of Monsieur L’Intendant in their gay uniforms pass through the streets on their way to and from the citadel. Even the frequent processions of monks and nuns were too novel and too curious to be disregarded. Yet all the time he longed wistfully to come into touch somehow, sometime, with his own people. In vain! It seemed as if a Huguenot was not left alive in the town, so thoroughly were they crushed under the iron heel of Baville. Nor did people speak much about them now; some were silent for fear of bringing themselves under suspicion, others from the more generous fear of exposing some unfortunate neighbor to cruel persecution. Sometimes it was mentioned casually that there were soldiers quartered upon such and such a house, and that such another house was shut up because the father was in prison or at the galleys, and the family scattered, no one knew whither. That was all.

One day Gaspard was lingering, not for the first time, outside a particularly attractive goldsmith’s shop in the Rue des Augustins—his natural love of beautiful things, starved so long, finding in this way a real though imperfect satisfaction. Someone came to the door carrying a parcel, and inquired, “Does Mademoiselle Berbier live here?” Gaspard was on the alert in an instant, all the beauties of watches, rings, and bracelets totally forgotten. A young man stepped out and answered, “She does. Give me the parcel.” Gaspard looked at him. He was rather undersized, less dark than most of his southern race, and with sandy hair. His face was not an agreeable one, yet it showed considerable intelligence. Gaspard took an instant dislike to him, and felt a strong though quite unreasonable desire to knock him down. But this did not prevent his asking him, with the courtesy Frenchmen of all ranks usually show each other, if he knew Mademoiselle Berbier.

“Naturally,” said the young man. “I am for the present acting as garcon de boutique to Monsieur Fontanes, goldsmith and jeweler, and I also wait upon his lodger, Mademoiselle Berbier.”

“Can you tell me if she is related to Monsieur Berbier, who was once a Professor of Medicine here?”

“That can I. She is his aunt. Why do you ask?”

“Because I want to know.”

A queer little smile lit up the young man’s face, without making it more amiable. “And I have told you,” he answered, turning on his heel.

“Don’t be in such haste,” said Gaspard. “Tell me where Monsieur Berbier is to be found; I have a letter for him.”

“Give it to me then, and save thyself a long journey,” said the other, stretching out his hand. “He shall have it in a few days.”

“Not so fast, friend. I am to deliver it into no hand but his own.”

“I see. Thou dost look for payment. That is thine affair. So find him for thyself.”

“Tell me where, and I will.”

“Why should I? Is it worth my while?”

“It is worth every man’s while to be civil.”

Just then Tardif came up, and Gaspard in a couple of words explained the situation. With one of his keen glances, Tardif took in the young man from head to heel. He said to him, with a smile that was half a sneer, “Bring the lady her parcel, then look for us in the wine-shop round the corner, and we will discuss the matter over a cup or two.”

The shopman nodded acquiescence, and disappeared. Presently the three were seated in a private room of the wine-shop, talking amicably enough over more cups than one or two. “You want to know about Monsieur Berbier?” said the goldsmith’s assistant. “He lost the professorship—oh, about three years ago. Why? Just the old story, the standing quarrel between the Bishop and the University. There’s bad blood between them always, and the gentlemen of the Medical School come in for the worst of it. Monsieur Berbier is gone to Toulouse, where he came from, and where he has many friends. But he has left some of his instruments, and other matters of importance, here in my care. I am to bring them to him when he sends for them.”

“I thought it was in Monsieur Fontanes’ service you were,” said Gaspard, whose instinctive dislike to the young man made him anxious to trip him up.

“Not I; I belong to Monsieur Berbier. But being obliged to stay here, in order to take charge of his affairs, and having time on my hands, I engaged myself, for convenience, to the goldsmith. I like the business. It is good to be handling gold and silver.”

“True enough,” said Tardif. “Don’t you wish they came off in your hands when you touched them, like wet paint?”

The young man gave him a sharp, suspicious look, which he returned with interest. Something he saw seemed to strike him particularly. “Where are you from?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“That means, don’t choose to tell.”

“Not at all. When I was a slip of a lad I had a very bad illness. In it, I forgot everything.”

“Not surely thy name and thy birthplace?”

“Not one thing at least—that it is not wise to talk of oneself to strangers. Monsieur Fontanes will be wanting me in his shop. Good afternoon, monsieur, and thanks for your good wine.”

Tardif s detaining hand was on his shoulder. “Stay a minute,” he said. “It will not hurt, Monsieur Fontanes to wait on his own customers a little longer. Nor will we hurt thee, perhaps rather do thee a service. Tell me—didst ever go through a wood with a dog at thy heels and a couple of bags of salt at thy girdle?”

The youth’s face paled suddenly, then crimsoned all over. “What dost mean? I know naught of such things,” he said, sharply.

“Ay, dost thou! For if I am not much mistaken, thy name is Philippe Darcheau.”

“Why? How do you—” But Gaspard sprang up with a great cry that drowned the rest of his words, and Tardif went on with cool decision: “No man could mistake thee who had seen thee as I did, a mean-faced urchin of thirteen. Thou art little changed, save in stature, and that down upon thy cheek. Dost not remember me?”

Philippe paused. “Thou art Tardif,” at last he said, sullenly, and with evident reluctance. “I did not know thee though at first”; and his tone seemed to say, “I am sorry I know thee now.”

Gaspard’s eager voice broke in: “And thou art Philippe Darcheau! Oh, I am so glad! Let’s look at thee.” He came in front of him, and stood looking him in the face. Had anyone wished to paint, by way of sharp contrast, the ideal noble and the unmistakable churl together, the pair might have stood as models for the picture. The keen, eager face of the one, with refinement and sensitiveness in every line and curve, made the blunt, coarsely-molded features of the other all the more striking. Yet there was no lack either of shrewdness or of force in the expression of the son of the people.

“What is that to thee?” he said. “Who art thou? Thy face, at least, I never saw.”

“Nor I thine. Yet have I dwelt for long years in the forest of Besogne, with thy father, and thy mother, and thy sister Babette.”

Philippe turned from him angrily. “What do I want to hear of all that for? Why hast thou come to torment me?”

“But—they are thy father, thy mother, and thy little sister,” pleaded Gaspard, in bitter surprise and disappointment.

“Much good they ever did for me! Put me to carrying the salt before I could bear the weight of it! Whose fault was it that I was caught, dragged to prison, misused, arid all but killed there? Parents, indeed! Precious parents they were; and a little like I am to go and look for them! If thou hast stepped into my shoes, I am sure I wish thee joy of them.”

“But Babette—thy little sister Babette—Philippe, she loves thee, mourns thee, longs for thee.”

With a short, derisive laugh, Philippe turned to Tardif: “Dost bear this young fool?” he said. “Blest if he does not want me to leave all my prospects, and go back to drudge at smuggling the salt” “Don’t know,” said Tardif, coolly. “After all, there is good money in the salt. But settle it between you as you may. I am going to take a walk.” He turned to go, but turned back to say, “How was it then, Philippe, that we heard thou wast dead, and—if not buried, done worse to?”

“I was dead,” said Philippe, quietly, and he sat down again.

Gaspard remained standing, his heart full of bitter pain and hot anger. He had found Philippe for Babette, and, behold, he no longer cared for her!

“It is not usual, in my experience, for dead people to come to life again, and serve in goldsmiths’ shops,” Tardif observed.

“I was ill in prison. I felt my life going from me. I knew I was dying. After that, I knew no more.”

“You had a swoon.”

“No, I died. If I had swooned, I would have been the same after that I was before. But ever since I am quite other. I was Philippe Darcheau, I am Jacques Fredon. The first thing I knew there was light all about me, and a wonderful sweet smell. One man was rubbing me, another stood watching. ‘He is coming to,’ I heard him say. Something was put to my lips—I drank, and it was delicious. Then they gave me other things—good wine, and by-and-by good food too. Oh, they were kind to me, very. I mean, he was.”

“Who?”

“Who but my master, the great physician and professor, Monsieur Berbier. He brought me back to life, fed me, clothed me, taught me.”

“He must be a good man,” said Tardif, with a congratulatory glance at Gaspard. This promised well for their prospects.

“I don’t know, for I never saw a good man. But I know he is a very wise man, most like the wisest in the world. And I am his pupil; he has made me wise too.” Philippe Darcheau, or Jacques Fredon, stretched out his arms, raised his head proudly, and looked about him with an air of profound self-satisfaction.

“We may take thy word for his wisdom,” said Tardif. “But thine is another matter.”

“Ah, you doubt me! But you shall see. Ask me about anything you like in Heaven or on earth, and I will give you an answer, and settle the matter for you in half a dozen words.”

“Ay, and another matter along with it in the same, half dozen—that thou art the biggest fool in the Province of Languedoc.”

“I?—A fool?”

“As I say; for the biggest fool is he who thinks himself a wise man. ‘Tis nothing to us, though. Now thou hast told us that Monsieur Berbier is in Toulouse, we want no more of thee.”

“Oh, but we do—we do!” said Gaspard. “Philippe, I cannot understand thee. Dost mean that, when Monsieur Berbier took thee from the prison and brought thee back to life, there was something that did not come back, something that died in thee? Dost mean it was thy love for Babette? For thou didst love her. Thou wert good and kind to her, she said it often, often. I tell thee, that part of thee is not dead, it is only sleeping. Wake up, man; wake up, I say, and be the old Philippe again! For the poor child’s heart is sore, it is nigh to breaking in her, for the love and the longing she has for thee.”

A slight, a very slight change came over the hard face of Philippe, bringing with it a moment’s softening. Then it passed. “‘Tis no use,” he said. “Once for all, Philippe is dead.” Then, with a smile; “But thou thyself art a likely lad enough, whosoever thou mayest be. Thou seemest very fond of Babette. Why didst thou not try if a lover would not console her for the loss of a brother?”

Gaspard was fond of Babette, yet somehow or other this suggestion seemed to him positively monstrous. Altogether, he thought Philippe detestable, and the desire to knock him down returned in full force. As he could not do that without any ostensible reason, he turned away from him in deep disgust.

“I must go,” Philippe said, presently. “But, messieurs, there is something has to be said first. You must swear not to betray me.”

“What about thee?” asked Tardif, with a touch of scorn.

“How I was once a little smuggler called Philippe Darcheau. How, by another kind of smuggling, the warders got what they thought was my dead body out of prison, and sold it to the doctors. And the rest of it.”

“Chut! Who is there to rake up all that at this hour of the day? Who cares what became, years ago, of an urchin like thee?”

“One never knows. One should always keep on the safe side.”

“True. But the safe side, for us and thee, is not in our oaths, but in our interests. If I tell tales, thou hast but to show that I have earned the gallows myself already; and assuredly, if half a word passes thy lips to our hurt, I will not spare thee. That either can hang the other is the best proof that neither will. However, seeing we are two and thou but one, and also that our danger is the greater, thou wilt swear on the crucifix to tell no man who I am.”

Philippe demurred a little, but soon consented; when a new difficulty arose—there was not a crucifix to be found. At last, however, some kind of oath was administered, and taken. Then Philippe departed.

But they were not done with him. That evening he came to their lodging, which he had found out somehow. Tardif had gone out; and Gaspard, not much pleased at the visit, asked him curtly what he wanted.

“To give you this letter for Monsieur Berbier. ‘Twill be a help to you, for I have written his address on it, can you read?”

Gaspard nodded. “Very well, we will take it,” he said. “That is all, I suppose?”

“Not quite. I do not know who you may be, but you come from Besogne. Who is cure there now?” “Pere Suchard, the same you knew.”

“He is a broken reed, but perhaps he will serve my turn. Because,” he added, with rather a shamefaced look, “I am thinking of writing a letter.”

“Who is there to read it?”

“The cure, if he will, can read it—to Babette.”

“He may, for he is kind enough. But he never comes into the forest, and the Darcheaus rarely trouble themselves about Mass, or the like.”

“Still, ‘tis the best way. I will send it to him, and he can send for her. No harm in that.”

“And small good,” said Gaspard, scornfully. “Where’s the merit of haggling over one’s plain duty? Half done is not done—sometimes worse. You ought to go to her.”

“And leave my master, and my master’s work? That is my first duty. But, after all, what is duty? What a man is paid to do. It comes to that in the end.”

“Oh! no. It is what we owe—to ourselves, to our neighbors, and to God.”

Then Philippe said words Gaspard had never heard from human lips before: “There is no God.” He recoiled from him in horror.

Philippe laughed aloud. “Art a three years’ babe?” he asked. “All wise men know that. Look round thyself at the world, and see if it be not true.”

At last Gaspard rallied his powers and spoke. “How darest thou utter that awful thing, if even thou art wicked enough to think it? Hast thou no fear of being punished for a blasphemer, and right horribly too?”

“Peste, no! The horrible punishments are kept for those who do believe in God—a little differently from their neighbors. Still, we philosophers take care to be on the safe side. ‘Tis not the way of wise men to proclaim their wisdom on the housetops. I once heard a sermon from the text, ‘Wisdom crieth without, and maketh her voice to be heard in the streets,’ and I thought how little the speaker knew about it! Oh, yes, we hear sermons, and go to Mass, and so forth—occasionally. That is wisdom too.”

“I call it hypocrisy. But does Monsieur Berbier think like that? I could not believe it of the friend of Monsieur Beauclaise,” he added to himself.

“Believe what you will—who cares? And say what you will—who would, mind you? But I am going to write to Babette; give me a message for her.”

“Not I! And the sooner you take yourself out of my sight the better,” said Gaspard.

And so there were people in the world who believed there was no God? No God to hear prayer, to pity the suffering, to help the weak, to do justice and judgment in the world to come! Gaspard wondered they had the courage to go on living at all. If he thought that, he would want to kill himself. But that would be worse. It would be horrible to go out of the world with no God to receive him anywhere, a lost wanderer, in blackness of darkness forever. If there was any other world to go to at all! If you take God away, he thought, all the rest would fall down like a house of cards—and people would just go out, like candles, when they died.

The horror possessed him, held him like a vice. But only for a few minutes, though these seemed an age. He woke up suddenly, as if from a dreadful dream. “What would my father or my mother have said to such talk?” he asked himself. “And where are they now? Why have they, who used to live in peace and plenty, been robbed of everything, and forced to wander in a foreign land? Why did they suffer so much, give up so much, imperil their very lives, and my own also? They might have escaped it all. But they would not, because of their duty to God—that they might worship Him, in what they thought the way He had appointed. Then—they knew Him!” To the bitter blasphemy of Philippe, “There is no God!” Gaspard’s heart flung back the answer, “There is, for my father and mother know Him.”

It was quite sufficient for him, just then. Still, it was an answer only in the seed. To meet the requirements of the future, it would need growth and development. And such requirements were pretty sure to come. The arrow of doubt may be drawn from the wound, it may be broken and cast away, yet once and again the old hurt will throb and sting, a chance touch may inflame it even to torture.

“And still at an uncertain hour

The agony returns,”

is true in the secret history of many a soul which yet never has yielded, and never will yield, to the whisper of despair.

Not amongst the conquered, but among the conquerors are written the names of those who have looked in the face of the “Everlasting No”—have seen the specter of negation, but, thank God, have seen beyond it too! For they know, and it may be with a larger and surer knowledge than the rest, that the heart and center of all things is not the Everlasting No but the Everlasting Yes—not a formless, sunless, fathomless abyss, but that Power, Love, and Righteousness—Infinite, yet Personal, comprehensible, and approachable—which in one imperfect utterance we call—God.

Chapter 12: Monsieur Anastase Berbier, Doctor of Medicine

“A generous friendship no cold medium knows.”—PoPE.

SOME days later, in the city of Toulouse, a man of no great stature, but with a great head and forehead, sat in his comfortable study, writing a letter. His dress marked him as a physician; and that he was also a surgeon and a chemist was shown by his surroundings, which comprised cases of instruments, bottles of mysterious appearance, retorts, crucibles, and other things of which no uninitiated person could tell either the names or the uses.

But at present he was engaged in a matter quite extra-professional; and, like most men whose profession is also their passion, he resented its intrusion upon the serious business of life. Why had he, for his sins and in an evil hour, consented to become one of the guardians of the child of a distant relative? In heaven’s name, was there no other relative nearer than himself to take up the burden—for a heavy burden it was like to be? And he a physician! A good avocat would have been far better, for there was sure to be lawyer’s work—and plenty of it. Such a tangle as it was! The father dead, and a Protestant; the mother living and of the same Faith, and the child the nominal heir to a fair estate! If he were taken from his mother and brought up a Catholic, he would inherit, of course. But if he died “en bas age” (as the French phrase is), then the estate would go to his cousin, the next heir. And that cousin was the other guardian. Monsieur Berbier stopped to meditate, and bit his quill. His thoughts began to crystallize into a kind of soliloquy. “Verdun is a bad man, and to be trusted—just as far as one can see him. But then he has influence. He will work heaven and earth to get the charge of the child, who is still a babe in arms. Why not? one might say, he being a Catholic. Yet I do not like it, and that for good reason. The air of De Verdun’s house will not be good for the little Alphonse de Fressinieres. I don’t say he will murder the boy outright, like the devil-worshipper De Rignac, —but there are ways and means. At best, if he lets him grow up, he will marry him to a daughter of his own, or in some way or other make merchandise of him. Personally, however, I doubt he will grow up. And Verdun will get his way; for he is hand and glove with Monsieur de Broglie, the Intendant’s scapegrace of a nephew. Is there anything I can do to stop him? If now I knew some able advocate, some man of brains and principle, like, like—” The pen dropped from his hand. Over his keen, intellectual face there passed a sudden, softening change. Presently he murmured, almost audibly, “Old friend, if but I had thee here beside me—with thy strong, virile eloquence, thine adamantine sense of right, thy clear, piercing intellect. Truly, thou hast not left thy like behind thee. Shall I ever forget those scenes in you crowded hall at the Parliament, when thou didst defend thy Faith in the presence of the Archbishop and the Intendant, and all the clergy and noblesse of the province? Ah, Claude, Claude, what a wrong thou hast done to thy profession in abandoning it thus!”

Then once more his thoughts grew inarticulate, wandering vaguely in the maze of bygone years. He went back to the time of his first great trouble—before he got that professorship at Montpellier—when, just as he was rising into notice, the jealousy of a rival physician had involved him in a lawsuit which threatened the ruin of his career. Then it was that the eminent advocate, lately come from Castelnaudary to Toulouse, had taken up his cause and won it, winning something else to his lifelong gratitude and friendship.

As he pondered thus, the twilight deepened. His servant, an old woman, entered with a lamp. “Monsieur,” she said, as she placed it on the table, “there are two men here—or rather a man and a young lad—who want to have speech with you at once. The lad says they have letters for you.”

“Bid them give them to you. I am busy,” said Monsieur Berbier, who was the more unwilling to be disturbed because he was doing nothing.

“I did, monsieur, but the boy says he has one which he must give into no hands but yours.”

“Well, bring him in,” the doctor said, testily. He added to himself, “A plague on this day! It has brought me nothing but worries. And it ends as it began. I suppose these varlets want to be doctored for nothing, and bring me letters they have begged from some bishop or seigneur.”

Two persons entered—Tardif, with strong muscular form and hairy face, and Gaspard, slight and graceful, with handsome features and dark brown wavy hair.

“Who are you?” the professor asked.

Tardif spoke first. “My name is Tardif,” he said.

“I bring a letter to monsieur from his servitor Jacques Fredon, now at Montpellier. Here it is.”

Berbier, as he took it, glanced at Gaspard. “And who is thy comrade?”

“That, monsieur, he will tell you himself. He also has a letter for you.”

Berbier opened Philippe’s communication and read it carefully to himself. After a pause he said, “My servitor says thou art a clever fellow and without scruples, ready for any work that offers. Is that so?”

“Monsieur may believe it, especially as it comes from a clever fellow, and one very certainly without scruples.”

Berbier smiled. “Thou art not without wit, at all events,” he said. “Though what Fredon thinks I want with thee, I know not. I trow thou hast had more to do with the fighter’s craft than the healer’s. Hast been in the army?”

“No, monsieur. The fact is, we have come all the way from Montpellier because of the letter this boy has for monsieur. He is under promise to give it into no other hand.”

“Here waits mine to receive it,” said the doctor, turning to Gaspard.

Gaspard gave up the treasured note with a pang. It had seemed like a friend to him all these months. But he had still the written prayer. Nothing should rob him of that—nothing.

As the lamplight fell upon the paper, a sudden joy lit up the doctor’s face. “Ah, Claude!—just as I was thinking of thee,” he murmured.

Gaspard’s quick ear caught the murmur. “It is from Monsieur Paul Beauclaise,” he said, thinking, “He will be greatly disappointed. He thinks it is from some old friend—some Monsieur Claude.”

But there was no disappointment in the eager look with which Berbier devoured the few words within. His face transfigured by a keen and vivid interest, he turned again to the travelers. His eyes were for Gaspard, but with a glance at Tardif, he asked, “How did you come?”

“By the new canal, monsieur. An easy journey.”

“Still, it is late, and you must want food and rest. Go to—” He took out a silver crown, and gave it to Tardif. “Go to the ‘Dancing Bear,’ which is hard by. Anyone will show you. Get supper and a bed, and come back to me in the morning.”

“That will we,” said Tardif, bowing low, “with our best thanks to monsieur” (the “tip” was, for those times, a magnificent one). “Come, Gaspard.”

“No,” said the doctor, “the boy stays here.” Then to Gaspard, “Sit down, my lad.”

As the door closed behind Tardif, Berbier placed the lamp so that he could see the face of Gaspard. “What is thy name?” he began, but interrupted himself to say, “But thou too must be hungry. Wilt have supper ere we talk?”

“Monsieur, if you really know Monsieur Beauclaise, I had rather talk with you about him than sup with the king.”

“I really know him you call Monsieur Beauclaise. And if I understand what he writes to me, I think thou wouldst not greatly care to sup with his majesty, ‘le Roi Soleil.’ So then, thy name?”

“Gaspard Louis Charles de Montausier.”

Berbier started. “Montausier? I know the name” (“and for a very noble one,” he might have added). Then, answering the boy’s eager look, “No, I did not know thy father. But I knew his greatest friend, whose mother was a kinswoman of my own. It was thought, for his father, a mesalliance.”

“Do you mean Monsieur de Fressinieres?”

“The same. He is dead now. But tell me when and where you saw Monsieur Beauclaise.”

“Last autumn—in the forest.”

“What forest?”

“A forest of Auvergne. It is called the wood of Besogne. The truth is, monsieur, we were smuggling the salt.”

“That counts for nothing. Though I rather wonder at you, a Huguenot, taking to the work: the smuggling of yourselves out of the country is your kind of contraband traffic.”

“Which is just what I was doing, monsieur. Or rather, what was being done with me, I being but a ten years’ child. But the servant to whom my father gave me in charge having died on the journey, I ran away, for fear of being given up to the priests, and falling in with smugglers, had to join them to save my life. I stayed with them and carried the salt until lately, when I left them on pretense of going to the Easter Fair at Mende.”

“But it was not there you saw him? You said, last autumn.”

“Yes, monsieur, last autumn. I had gone as usual to get the salt from—well, monsieur, you will understand—from those who were in league with us, and used to bring it to us from the people who made it.”

“What? Had he fallen into such hands?”

“He might have fallen into worse,” said Gaspard, with a smile. “When I came up, the chief of the band—a man as hard as a stone, and with more murders than one upon his soul—was just handing back to him—yes, I saw it with my eyes—handing back to him the gold and the silver his men had taken from him. I heard him say to him, ‘Dog does not eat dog’—as if they and he were the same!”

“In a sense they are,” said Berbier. “Both are outlaws. But go on. Tell me how he looked.”

Gaspard struggled with the difficulty of describing what had so profoundly impressed him, and gave it up. He only said, “His face is more worn and suffering than any man’s I ever saw. And yet his dark eyes shine—with a kind look in them, but very, very tired. I can’t tell anymore,” he finished awkwardly.

“You have told,” said Berbier. “But how did you get to speak with him?”

“After supper he went away into the wood with the young man—his servant, I suppose. I—well, he drew me, I don’t know how. From the first moment I saw him, I was not myself His voice brought me back to my home, my father, my mother, and all the rest, and his look—in spite of the weariness and the sorrow in it—was even happy, somehow. I could not stay with the band—I was not fit for their company; and so—we got together at night, and he talked to me. He told me my parents had left the country and got safely to England, and he hoped I would one day do the same. Then I said I wanted to go to Montpellier.”

“Why Montpellier, of all places?”

“Because I wanted to find the son of the people I lived with, Philippe Darcheau, for Babette, his sister. She loves him, longs for him day and night.”

“Never mind that,” said Berbier, impatiently. “Go on about Monsieur Beauclaise.”

“It was not that only made me long to go away,” Gaspard explained. “I hated the work, hated my life, hated everything—except Babette and the woods. I thought that if I got to Montpellier, I could surely find the way to get farther still. So I asked Monsieur Beauclaise about it; and he, thinking you still lived in Montpellier, gave me that note for you. But he also said good words to me, words that I cannot tell again to anyone, about God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. He said he thought the Good Shepherd had found me. That was the last word I had from him.”

“When he gave you the note, what did he tell you about me?”

“That you did not belong to the Religion, but that you were a very good friend of his, and would do anything in your power for him, or anyone he commended to you.”

“You shall find that he said the truth. What is it you want?”

“Monsieur, I thank your good will. One thing I wanted is done already, and no good has come of it. We have found Babette’s brother, and he refuses to go back. He does not care about her anymore.” Here Gaspard stopped, remembering he must not betray that Philippe was Jacques Fredon, Monsieur Berbier’s servitor. An oath was an oath, even if given to a rascal.

“‘Twas odd enough that you found him. But your other wish, Gaspard?”

“How can I but wish with all my heart to go too, England, where Monsieur Beauclaise tells me my parents are? Oh, monsieur, can you help me?”

“I must think about it. But who is this Tardif who is with you? How does he come to have part or lot in the matter?”

“He is a friend, one of the band I spoke of He met me in Mende, at the Fair, where I was wandering forlorn and perplexed, not knowing what to do next. They call him a desperate fellow, but he has always been good and kind to me. He says more money is to be made now by helping Protestants out of the country than by smuggling salt, or robbing on the highway, and that he has a mind to try it. He spent his youth somewhere near the sea coast—I know not where, for he never speaks of it—but he knows a great deal about ships and seafaring men. Also, the way to get to Switzerland.”

“Humph! Does he know that, if he is taken in the act, he will be hanged, as sure as Haman?”

“He knows it right well. But he trusts to his skill, his daring, and his luck.”

“And what have you covenanted to pay him, if he brings you safe out of France?”

“Me, monsieur? I have not a cent to give him.”

“But of course he will make his count of you some way. Not, I hope, by betraying you and getting the reward. Then how?”

“He says he looks to find a few others anxious to get away, and able and willing to pay for his services; and that I will be of use in introducing him to our people, who will know me for one of their own, and telling them what he is doing for me, and that he can be trusted. He says he is like a craftsman who does one man’s work for nothing that he may get the custom of many more.”

“Ah, a clever rogue! But what if he be a rogue after all. Can you really trust him?”

“With my life.” And Berbier saw he was speaking from the depths of his heart. It was some moments before he answered him. Thoughts were rising in him which might lead to important issues. But he must have time to work them out.

“Excuse me, monsieur, I am forgetting how hungry you must be,” he said, suddenly. Having heard Gaspard’s name he spoke to him as one gentleman does to another, using, when he thought of it, the courteous ‘vous’ instead of the familiar ‘to.’ “Have the goodness to ring that silver bell beside you.”

Gaspard rang the bell, then stood up to go away.

“Pray sit down again,” said Berbier. When the servant appeared, she was told to bring supper for two, and a bottle of St. Peray.

Thus, after nearly seven years, young Gaspard de Montausier sat down once more at a well-appointed table, and ate and drank with a companion who, although in the estimation of the world as it then was far inferior in rank to himself, was a man of cultivation and refinement.

Much refreshed in body, and greatly cheered and comforted in mind, he at last suggested timidly that he ought to join Tardif at the inn. But Berbier said to him, “You are my guest now, Monsieur Gaspard. There is a bed here very much at your disposal.”

Nothing that he had was too good for the boy to whom “Claude” had asked him to be kind.

Chapter 13: Plans and Proposals

“Let facts be facts, and life the thing it can.”—CLOUGH

MONSIEUR BERBIER spent most of that night in anxious thought, and when Tardif appeared next morning, he had his plans ready. So he shut the door upon them both, told him to be seated, and began frankly enough, “I have heard from Monsieur Gaspard the kind of work you propose to undertake. He is prepared to vouch for your faithfulness, ‘with his life,’ as he says. And as he is a gentleman, of a most honorable family well known to friends of mine, his word is sufficient. I have therefore determined to invite thine aid in a matter of much importance and considerable difficulty—if, having heard all, thou art willing to undertake it, and if, with regard to the terms, we can come to an agreement.”

“ ‘If monsieur will be good enough to open his pack,’ as the peddlers say, we shall know better where we are.”

“Couldst thou contrive to smuggle out of the country, and deliver up safely to his friends in Geneva, or some such place, a mere babe—an infant in arms?”

Tardif mused. “It would be difficult—very. But it has been done, therefore it can be done. And if it can be done, Gilles Tardif is the man to do it. Of course there must be a woman, a nurse.”

“That goes without saying. There is money in the business. The boy is an heir.”

“But to what does that serve, monsieur? If he is sent out of the country, it is a case of confiscation. That is scarce what his kinsfolk want.”

“Thou art a shrewd fellow, Tardif. No but there is something else they dread much more. If he is not sent, they will not be allowed to keep him. He will assuredly be taken from his mother, who is a Protestant, as the father was also, to be brought up a Catholic. But this is not the worst of it. I have reason to think he will be given in charge to the next heir, who is his guardian along with me, and has practically all the power, having the ear of Monsieur l’Intendant. His friends dread this of all things, and for that matter so do I. For he is a man of very indifferent character, and who knows how he will deal with the poor child?”

“I understand, monsieur. If the child is taken abroad, the other guardian will have broken an egg and got the shell for his pains. Still, the egg will go to the king, who is little like to pay me for breaking his own Edicts—except with a halter.”

“Have no fear. The grandfather is wealthy. The mother, too, has money. They are eager to secure the child’s safety, and the mother, especially, to have him brought up in her own religion.”

“But if they are Protestants, they may be beggars, or prisoners, by tomorrow’s sunrise.”

“The grandfather is a new Catholic; but the mother and sister have not yet conformed, though they may be forced to do it any day. Hitherto, the grandfather has been able to protect them. If he sees a chance of getting the babe, and perhaps the sister too, off in safety, he will not tighten his purse-strings.”

“He had better not, if he wants the thing done. As I said before, it is difficult. Remember, monsieur, my life is at stake.”

“Well, man, name thy price.”

Tardif deliberated; apparently seeking inspiration from a bust of Apollo which stood on the top of the doctor’s bookcase, though in fact he never saw it.

Berbier waited for him patiently, till at last, stooping over the doctor’s chair, he said something in a low voice; to which Berbier answered with something like a start, “That’s a long price.”

“The price of my life,” said Tardif, “which is worth more to me.”

“No doubt, my man; but remember it is not the loss, but the risk, we pay for.”

Tardif stood out for his own terms, and some sharp bargaining followed. “I must consult the child’s friends,” Berbier said at last.

“As you will, monsieur. I am not keen upon the job. Besides the risk and the difficulty, there is another reason.”

“What reason?”

“If, now, it were a man or a woman, or a grown boy or girl,” said Tardif, bringing his words out slowly, and with a sort of hesitation, “it might be worth the trouble. One might think one was saving the man from the galleys, the woman from prison, or the poor children from mishandling. But a babe in arms! He has no religion. What harm if they do make a Catholic of him? He will take as kindly to the Mass as to the other thing. And I, knowing little of either, think it is no matter which.”

“And I, knowing a good deal of both, am disposed to agree with you,” said Berbier, with a smile. “Gilles Tardif, I think thou art a philosopher.”

“Let not monsieur call me that, if he pleases. For his servitor, Fredon, says he is a philosopher. And he and I are not stuff of one pattern.”

“Ah! poor Jacques is a clever lad. But his learning is rather like strong wine taken on an empty stomach. It has got into his head and set it spinning a little. But that is my fault. Now, as for thee, this is what I will do. I will give thee a letter to Monsieur de Mauzac, the child’s grandfather, and thou canst conclude what bargain thou wilt with him. He may make things easier all round by finding two or three more who are anxious to get out of the country, and able to pay for it. He lives near Montauban, and knows all the Huguenot gentry of that neighborhood.”

“But monsieur has said that he himself has been ‘converted’; is it safe to trust him?”

“Perfectly, my good man. As you will see, you being something of a—well, of a man of sense—when I tell you how he was converted.”

“How, monsieur?”

“The Bishop of Montauban sent for him, and some other Protestant gentlemen of his diocese, men of mark and heads of families, as if to hold conference with them. But behind the tapestry in his hall of reception he hid a number of stout lacqueys, guardsmen and the like. When these gentlemen entered, the men in hiding leapt out on them, and tried to force them to their knees. No easy matter, for though taken by surprise, they were not weaklings, and they made a gallant resistance. Some were kneeling, some were knocked down, and some still changing blows, when the good Bishop took up his crozier, made the sign of the cross over them all, muttered a few words in Latin, and then informed them that they were now and henceforth good Catholics, members of the one true Church, and spiritual sheep of his fold.”

“And were they?” Tardif asked pertinently, with a laugh at the doctor’s story.

“Certainly as good Catholics as a whole regiment of dragoons could have made them. Perhaps they owe something to Monsieur de Cismond for sparing them the terror and the misery that mode of conversion would have caused them. Now, I have only to exhort you to prudence. I think you are a man of intelligence, and will understand the need of it.”

There followed some talk about details, which need not be recorded. Then Tardif was dismissed, to amuse himself in the town until the following morning, when Berbier would have letters ready to send with him to Montauban.

Gaspard had been waiting with some impatience for the end of the interview, at which he had not been invited to “assist.” Berbier sent for him as soon as he was alone. He asked “Monsieur Gaspard” to be seated, and spoke to him throughout with the almost exaggerated deference for rank which was characteristic of the time. “I have pretty well-arranged matters,” he said, “with your companion—your servant I suppose I should call him.”

“Not at all,” Gaspard returned, smiling. “Rather the other way. I always do what he tells me.”

“That is wise, for the present. He is a shrewd fellow, and knows what he is about. I have set him on the track of a business which I think he may find very profitable. He goes tomorrow to Montauban. Now we must think of you.”

“I go with him, of course.”

“Not ‘of course.’ You are welcome to stay here with me as long as you will.”

“You are most kind, monsieur,” Gaspard said, with feeling. “But how could I burden you so? And what should I do here?”

“You would not burden me. I should give you work, and at the same time see to your education. Listen, Monsieur Gaspard. I know that by birth your place in the world is much higher than mine; but the fact that, as a Protestant, you are proscribed and outlawed, may be taken to alter things a little. You are in danger, I can protect you. You need a home, I can offer you one.”

“But, monsieur, I cannot understand. Why should you do all that for me?”

“For three good reasons. Firstly, I like you. Secondly, I think you could help me in ways wherein I need help. Thirdly, and this reason is the strongest, he whom you call Monsieur Beauclaise asks me to do all I can for you.”

Gaspard was silent, plunged in thought. What a translation from purgatory to Paradise Berbier’s offer would have seemed to him, had it reached him in the hut of the Darcheaus! Even now, the temptation was strong. Rest, safety, ease—and all these amidst surroundings which bore at least some resemblance to those he had been used to in his childhood! But no, a thousand times no! The thing was impossible. He must crush down the very thought of it—trample it beneath his feet. He spoke out bravely, “I thank you, monsieur, I thank you with all my heart. But this thing you offer me would mean—to look no more on my father’s face, or my mother’s.”

“It need not. The times may change—will probably change—so far as to allow a greater measure of liberty to those who desire to leave the country. You may well wait for such a change, and take advantage of it when it comes.”

“But in the meantime I must give up my religion.”

“Is it so certain you have a religion?”

Gaspard held his head up proudly, “I am a Protestant,” he said.

“Indeed? And what do Protestants believe?”

The head, which was raised so proudly before, drooped now in perplexity. At last Gaspard was obliged to say, “I—scarcely know.”

“Then why refuse a comfortable home, and run yourself into divers and sundry great perils, for you scarcely know what?”

“My father knew,” Gaspard said, slowly.

“Do not be in haste to decide,” Berbier answered, in tones of real kindness. “Take a day to think over it. Tardif does not go until tomorrow.”

“I thank you again, monsieur, more than I can say,” said Gaspard, and relapsed into silence. The thinking business, evidently, was beginning already. Berbier, to give him time, took a volume from his shelf and began to read.

The silence had lasted long enough for him to become absorbed in the adventures of Abauzi—the Arab physician who visited France in the ninth century when Gaspard rose from his seat, came over, and stood before him. “Monsieur,” he said, “I can decide at once, if you will tell me one thing.”

“Certainly, if I can.”

“You are his friend, and know him far better than I. If Monsieur Beauclaise were here, what would he tell me to do?”

Monsieur Berbier felt as if caught in a trap. Every word that fell from Gaspard intensified his longing to keep, and to attach to himself, this splendid boy, whose ignorance would only make him more delightful as a pupil, and who might in the end become to him all he had hoped to find in Jacques Fredon—hoped, and been disappointed! Fredon was like ice, clear and cold—clear in intellect, but—oh, how cold in heart! Not cold towards his master—he did the lad that justice; he loved him as much as he knew how. But Gaspard would be like sunshine, light and warmth together. Still, the answer to his question was not doubtful for a moment. Berbier could lie, upon good cause shown, as stoutly as any man, but he could not lie to Gaspard—nor about that other. At last he said evasively, “What think you he would say, Monsieur Gaspard?”

“I do not think, I know,” Gaspard answered, firmly. “He would say ‘Be true.’ Monsieur Berbier, I am grateful for your kindness, but—I go with Tardif to Montauban.”

“My boy, I am very sorry; still, I can say no more.”

A silence followed. It was on Berbier’s lips to say “Why not stay with me till Tardif has made his arrangements, then let him, if successful, come back and fetch you?” But he knew this would have been impracticable; if Gaspard and his intended guide were once separated, the chances of their meeting again would be very uncertain. After a while he spoke. “Since you have decided thus, I will tell you something I think you ought to know. The business about which he is going to Montauban is the possible conveyance out of the country of a child—a babe in arms. That child is the heir of your father’s friend, Monsieur de Fressinieres.”

“Ah!” cried Gaspard, breathless with interest. “But how come they to be there? They are of the Vivarais, like ourselves.”

“I told you Monsieur de Fressinieres was dead. But I suppose you never heard that, a year or two before, he had married a second time?”

“I did not even know Madame de Fressinieres was dead. I am sorry. I remember her very well.”

“It must have been soon after you left your home. Huguenots have short lives nowadays. Sorrow and fear are maladies for which yonder books hold no cure.” (He glanced at the volumes on his shelves.) “Why, under the circumstances, Monsieur de Fressinieres married again, is not for me to say. But I knew of his friendship with the De Mauzacs, which had lasted since he studied in his youth at the Protestant College of Montauban. Perhaps he thought that, since Monsieur de Mauzac had conformed, his daughter would be better elsewhere. However that may be, he married her, and only just lived to see his little son.”

“And his daughter, Mademoiselle Elene?” Gaspard asked eagerly. “What of her?”

“She is with her step-mother, at Château Mauzac. So far, they have not been molested. Monsieur de Mauzac is wealthy, and he has managed things well, with the connivance, as I suspect, of the bishop. But now the symptoms are ominous. There is even a rumor of troops to be quartered on De Mauzac, to make him keep order in his household. That would probably mean that the babe would be torn from his mother, and consigned to a guardian of whom I have the very worst opinion. While, as for the mother and the sister—”

He stopped, for of the horrors that crowded into his mind it was impossible to speak. But his look and silence told enough. Gaspard sprang from his seat, “Oh, monsieur,” he cried, “let us go—let us go now and save them! Tardif will know what to do. He will help them to escape from the château before the soldiers come.”

Berbier laid his hand on his arm. “Gently, my boy, gently. There is no need for such haste. The thing is but a rumor as yet; perhaps but a warning, sent by some secret friend. But, were it otherwise, you could not save them.”

“Oh, Tardif can do something. He thinks of all sorts of expedients. Perhaps that is just why God has let him come with me.”

“Think so, if you like. Though I have not found—” What he had not found, however, Gaspard was not to know. He went on, “If Tardif can do anything, he might try to save the child and the demoiselle. There must be a nurse with the child, who would serve as a companion for her. But for Madame de Fressinieres, it could not be thought of. Her health is far too frail; the hardships of the journey would kill her. Monsieur Gaspard, what has come to you? You look transfigured.”

So he did. His eyes kindled, his cheeks glowed. A new tide of life and purpose and power was coursing through his veins. He seemed taller too; henceforth he looked, and he was, no longer a gallant boy, but a brave young man. “Oh, we will go,” he said; “we will save them—God will show us how.”

Chapter 14: The Story of Elene

“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.

Chapter 15: "To Save Baby"

“In such a scene, in such an hour

The weak are strong, the timid brave,”

IT was a beautiful evening in spring, about two months after the arrival of the De Fressinieres at the Chateau Mauzac. Elene stole out of a little postern door to breathe the fresh air and to think in quiet, for solitude within the walls was not easy to find—certainly not for Elene, with her frail and sorrowing stepmother clinging to her for comfort and companionship, and old M. de Mauzac, now very feeble in health and much broken in spirit, turning to her more and more. Besides, the many domestic duties which in those days devolved upon the chatelaine began to be her recognized portion. The servants grew accustomed to go to her, “since madame is not so well today.” And when leisure chanced to come, she always spent it with le petit, who was the light of her eyes, and the joy of her heart. But this evening, for once, she was better away from him—that she might think the more freely about him! M. de Mauzac’s sight was failing; and when he had the misfortune to receive a letter (for a misfortune he considered it, and, in truth, it was often the precursor of one), he now generally asked Elene to decipher it, and to answer it at his dictation. That morning he had called her to his private room, and given her two letters to read for him—one from a friend in Montpellier, the other from our acquaintance, M. le Docteur Berbier, in Toulouse.

Elene began with the first. After many courtesies and with much circumlocution, his correspondent informed M. de Mauzac, with infinite regret, that it was only too evident that M. l’Intendant had had his eye upon him for some time, but especially since he had received into his house the widow and the children of “Stop there, che’re petite,” the Baron interrupted. He was nothing if not a gentleman, and Elene should not learn, in his house, that she and her stepmother were dangerous guests. “Give me that letter. It is naught, what he says. You may read the other for me, if you will. It is from M. Berbier, who is one of the guardians of your little brother. It will only concern the management of the estate.”

Elene began to read: “M. le Baron, I hold it to be no more than my duty to warn you that the infant heir of M. de Fressinieres is being closely watched, and there is, as I apprehend, some danger of his abduction. In the event—which, I grieve to say, I have learned from other sources is only too probable—of soldiers being quartered upon you, on account of the—”

An exclamation of horror cut short the reading, and a trembling, aged hand, stretched out hastily, caught the paper from Elene’s. This was worse than the other, far worse! Yet the old man rallied his forces. “Berbier is an alarmist,” he said. “Not being noble—though a very estimable person, and a most skillful physician—he does not understand that we of the noblesse are not to be dealt with like common folk. Send dragoons to the Chateau Mauzac! They would not dare! And why should they, when I have conformed with my household? The bishop will answer for me. He will stand my friend. Make your mind quite easy, dear child; that is all idle chatter, no more. Go now to Manon and the little one, and see how they are today.”

Elene had to go. Throughout that long day she went diligently about her various duties, but with one word ringing all the time in her ears, and in her heart— “Baby is in danger—baby is in danger.” (“Le petit,” however, was the term she used, “le bebe” being not yet naturalized in France.)

When evening brought a little rest, she went out to think in quiet, in the fresh air with the blue sky above her. Her mind, well trained by her father, worked clearly and quickly. Something must be done, and it was she who must do it. What was it to be? But here a sudden storm of passion swept over her, threatening to rend into fragments the delicate web of thought. Was it baby— “our baby”—who was to be torn from their loving arms, perhaps by the fiends who had done little Maurice to death before the eyes of his mother, or by others as cruel as they? Or, if that horror was spared, as it might be, seeing he was “noble,” he might be given up to those who would perhaps neglect or misuse him, and certainly bring him up in an alien Faith—a Faith it were better to die than to embrace. Ay, far better! As she thought of what was being done around them every day in the name of that Faith, the tears that had started to her eyes were “turned to sparks of fire.” All the passion of her young, strong soul was poured forth in thankfulness to the God of Righteousness and Mercy, that she and those she loved had their portion with the oppressed and not with the oppressors; with the Church that was trampled and tortured, not with the Church of the torturers and the tyrants.

Yet such thoughts are not the best for the sufferers; and Elene, with all her heavy burden of care and sorrow. was still happy in this—she had found a refuge from them. It is a refuge which, in all ages, has been open to the persecuted—an “open secret”—a way which leads into the Holy of Holies—into the very presence of Him who hides them there privily “from the provoking of all men.”

Elene had found the way thither even before her father’s death, but since then more fully, because her clinging soul was thrown more completely upon the one Friend she could never lose. It was with that Friend she took counsel now. He would show her how to save baby—for his own sake, the darling!—and also for the sake of others, whose dangers his presence would increase. She lifted up her eyes, and looked around her. The beautiful day was ending now; the sun was setting, more quickly than it does with us. Very fair in its light looked the little river Aveyron, and the fields beyond it, seen from the hill on which the Chateau Mauzac was built. Her eye followed a footpath leading down to the river; but she soon lost it as it wound amongst the bushes. The bend of the river at the foot of the hill was also hidden from her; but she knew there was a hut beside it, where a poor old couple lived, and kept a small boat. They were Protestants, who had been shielded hitherto from persecution by their own poverty and the protection of M. de Mauzac. She had already made friends with them, through the Freemasonry of the proscribed and oppressed. And now, as she thought of them, there came to her the first glimmer of a plan.

She had not time just then to think it all out. She must go in and take care of baby for a while, as Manon had a headache. This, of course, was her delight, as well as her duty. As she sat beside the sleeping babe, her busy brain went on with something far more important for him than the little cap which was growing all the time in her nimble fingers.

Some ten days afterward, Manon, who was subject to headaches, had another, and a very bad one. Elene insisted on her resting for the night and giving baby into her care. When she had wrung an unwilling consent from the devoted nurse, she carried the little Alphonse into his mother’s room to bid her goodnight. Madame de Fressinieres was now a confirmed invalid, rising late and going to bed early. She was half asleep when the child was brought to her, but roused herself to kiss and caress him. She remembered afterward that Elene brought him back again for yet another kiss, and that his little arms curled lovingly about her neck, and would scarcely let her go.

Elene took him to her own room, where no one else would come until the morning. But instead of preparing him for the night, she took off his dainty wrapper, and put on him the clothes she had made for little Maurice—a proceeding he seemed to find very diverting, being wide awake, and in high good humor. She played with him until he was just a little tired, then laid him down softly, and sang him to sleep with the old cradle songs she had learned for his benefit. As soon as he was asleep, she began her own preparations. She arrayed herself rapidly in the peasant’s dress she had with her, into the bodice of which she had already sewn safely a little purse containing ten Louis d’or, also given her by her father to provide against contingencies. Her shoes she took off, and tied them to her belt. Then she took the sleeping child in her arms without waking him, and stole down the stairs and through the halls and passages of the great rambling old château. As she expected, she met no one, and heard nothing worse than the scratching of a rat, though even that made her heart quake. M. de Mauzac was in his study, at his devotions as the household supposed, but more probably asleep. The servants were at supper in the hall, too busy with their food and their conversation to hear a light footfall on the stairs.

She had contrived, as she had possession of the keys, to unlock the postern, after the steward, as he thought, had left all safe for the night. So she got through easily, and had just closed it quietly behind her, when Alphonse woke up, and feeling a cool air blowing in his face, and things in general quite out of the range of his small experience, set up a dismal cry. Terror seized on her soul; for they were just under Manon’s window, and if she heard that cry, tortures would not keep her from her nursling! For the first time deaf to his wailings, Elene tore down the hill to get him out of hearing. Once she struck her foot against a stone, and for one horrible moment thought they would both fall. But she righted herself, as she believed by a miracle, without losing her hold on the child. On and on they went, until at last she stood, breathless and panting, at the door of the cottage by the river.

It was quite dark now, and the old couple had gone to bed. She had previously told them her plan, but without fixing the night for its execution. As agreed upon, she knocked at the door, first low, then loud, then louder still. At the third knock she heard a stir within, and presently the old man appeared, wrapped in a cloak.

“Ah, mademoiselle, it is you! Come in.”

The old woman was already at the fire fanning into vigorous life the “seed” that had been left beneath its ashes. She pointed to the bed in the recess. “Mademoiselle will get in there,” she said, “with the baby. I am going to warm some milk for him.”

“And I,” said old Chaumont, “will be ready in five minutes to go and get the boat.”

For a good deal more than five minutes, however, Elene and her little charge enjoyed perfect privacy and as much rest as they could get within the closely-drawn curtains of the great bed. The baby slept, and Elene even began to doze, in spite of her terrible anxiety lest anyone in the château should chance to miss them, unlikely though she knew it to be.

Mere Chaumont’s voice roused her, saying, “All is ready now, mademoiselle. Chaumont has the boat out. But it is dark—very.”

While Elene drank the hot soup which had been warmed for her, the old woman said in an encouraging tone, “Never fear, mademoiselle. Chaumont knows every inch of the river, and can make his way in the darkest of nights. He will bring you quite safely to Negrepelisse, and put you in the care of his cousin. There are many of our people in Negrepelisse. Only mademoiselle must be very cautious, very prudent; for they live in much fear, and scarcely dare to open their lips, since the dragoons were there, at the beginning of the troubles. Still, you will be safe in the house of Jacob Conseille, Epicier. He is a new Catholic; and mademoiselle knows how much that means, and how little.”

Here Chaumont came to hasten them. “We must be quick,” he said, “so as to get there while it is dark.”

His wife carried the child to the boat, laid him in a soft little bed they had made for him and covered him with a warm shawl. “Save your arms while you can, mademoiselle,” she said. “He is a heavy weight for such as you to carry.”

Elene turned and kissed her. “God bless you, Mere Chaumont,” she said. “God reward you both for what you are doing for me.”

“Ah, mademoiselle, we can do nothing now for our Lord—not even pray to Him with others; so the only comfort we can have is to give a little help sometimes to His people ‘under the Cross.’”

This was the common name by which then, and for nearly a hundred years after, the Protestant Church in France was called by her friends and adherents, “The Church under the Cross.”

Elene soon found herself afloat on the dark, silent river. No sound reached her ear save the rhythmic dip and splash of the oars in the water. Chaumont had been a good oarsman in his day, and his strokes were still strong and steady. Elene had a comforting sense that the right thing was being done, and they were actually on their way to freedom, if not to safety. She had quite settled in her mind what to do. With baby in her arms, she would try to make her way across the country from Neo-repelisse to the not far distant Cevennes; where she counted upon finding friends, and the means of concealment, amongst a population almost all Protestant. But she knew nothing of the district that lay between—how was she to traverse it? As she thought of tills, she unconsciously looked upwards, and behold, the glory and the majesty of the midnight sky was revealed to her. A thousand points of living light shone, and twinkled, and glowed in the dark gulf of ether. Immeasurably far away they seemed, and yet so near! Truly “a voice was heard among them”—a voice that spoke to the very heart of the forlorn and sorrowful girl— “Lift up your eyes and see, Who hath created these, that bringeth out their host by number: He calleth them all by name by the greatness of His might, for that He is strong in power; not one faileth. Why sayest thou, oh Jacob, and speakest, oh Israel—my way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not neither is weary? There is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.” At the thought, the frail and helpless girl lifted up a fearless brow to the stars of Heaven, and spoke to Him who dwells above them all, and yet to her was “nearer than breathing, closer than hands or feet” — “Amen, oh Eternal, Amen! So do as Thou hast said.”

The night wore on. Ever and anon the baby claimed attention; Merle kept him warm in her arms, and fed him with the milk Mere Chaumont had given her for him. At last the stars grew dim, and pale light appeared in the east. The old man rested on his oars for a little. Presently he said, pointing to the north, “Negrepelisse is over there. When it is light, mademoiselle will see the church spire. ‘Tis but a little place now. They say it was bigger long ago, and had walls and towers; but they were destroyed some sixty years ago, in the wars of religion.”

Elene smiled—she could smile now, for her heart was lighter. “If it is big enough to shelter baby and me, I shall not mind,” she said.

“It will do that. But mademoiselle must be cautious.” In the fast-increasing light the little boat glided pleasantly on. Baby, now wide awake, laughed and to crowed, rejoicing in the novel entertainment got up, he seemed to think, for his especial benefit. The sun had just risen when the boat drew up to the little quay of Negrepelisse.

Chaumont helped Eli ne and the child to land, and came with them to the house of “Jacob Conseille, Spicier.” On the way she tried to thank him for what he had done for her, and to slip into his hand one of her Louis d’or, which she had kept ready for the purpose. But he refused absolutely. Like his wife, he thought the rare privilege of serving his Lord in one of His members more than payment enough.

To exchange the protection of Jean Chaumont for that of Jacob Conseille, was to exchange the climate of Italy for that of Greenland. Jacob Conseille belonged to a class very numerous everywhere and under all conditions. While he sincerely believed that the Protestants were right, and the Catholics wrong, he had no convictions strong enough to suffer—not to say to die—for. At the beginning of the troubles he had gone with his Protestant fellow-citizens to the marketplace, to hear the mayor and the curd invite them all to “re-unite themselves” to the true Church; an invitation backed with the strong argument that the dragoons were coming—in fact, already on their way. His voice joined in the answering cry—the cry of surprise and panic— “Je me réunis.” Whereupon the news was sent to the rejoicing king that the whole population of his good town of Negrepelisse had been, at one stroke, converted from the error of their ways.

Others retracted afterward; not so Jacob Conseille. He had no appetite for the dungeon or the galleys, and a great appetite for successful trade and good “livres tournois.” Still, he salved his conscience by the bestowal of part of his gains in charity, and by occasional acts of kindness to his former brethren in the Faith, who were enduring the persecutions he had evaded.

He and his wife and sons were kind enough to Elene. One rule of hospitality they certainly fulfilled—that which requires the host to speed the parting guest. They made her welcome for the day on which she arrived, and the night that followed, but they showed clearly that they expected her to go the next morning. However, they gave her some very useful directions as to the way she ought to take to reach the Cévennes, and also the names and addresses of certain persons with whom they believed she would be quite safe. They thought she might travel without risk in the character of a peasant girl—an orphan bringing her little brother to relations who had promised to provide for him, while she earned her bread as a servant.

Further, they advised her to stain her face and hands with walnut juice, with which they supplied her. And the two daughters of the house, who helped her to do it, said, while alone with her, a few sympathizing words, which showed they were not altogether of the same mind as their parents and their brothers.

Chapter 16: Baby Is Saved

“God took thee in His arms, a lamb untasked, untried.”

ALONE, unfriended, unprotected, the young girl faced her desperate enterprise. Alphonse, a remarkably fine child for his months, which were some eight or nine, was no light burden for her young arms. She was well used indeed to carry him at home, but that was from his nurse’s arms to his mother’s, or out into the pleasaunce to enjoy the fresh air. It was a very different thing to carry him all day long, and day after day, with aching arms and weary feet, often under a blazing sun, and sometimes with the added pain and faintness of hunger. She had got Conseille to change one of her gold pieces into useful silver and copper, but she did not always find a place where she could either beg for food or purchase it. Milk for baby was a great difficulty; sometimes she had to give him bread soaked in water instead. More than once it was late before they found a refuge for the night; and twice it happened that sudden rain came on when they were far from shelter, and with all her care she could not quite protect her charge. He grew fretful and uneasy, and she feared he had taken cold. Weariness and discouragement came upon her as the days went on. Sometimes she was obliged to sit down and rest, out of sheer inability to walk any farther. Also, she was growing perplexed about her way. She had followed, as far as she knew, the directions given her by Conseille; but, with all her care, she missed somehow one or two of the landmarks for which he told her to look out.

One day, soon after noon, she sat down to rest, with Alphonse in her arms. She was close to the gate of a dilapidated farmhouse, from the inmates of which she had intended to beg a little milk for the child, and a meal for herself. But so utterly spent was she that she did not feel able to walk even the few necessary yards. Baby had been wakeful the night before, and had kept her from sleeping, and now almost as soon as she sat down she dozed off unawares.

She was roused by a furious barking—a huge black dog rushed upon her from the open gate. With just one thought in her bewildered brain—to save baby—she started to her feet and put him over the hedge behind her. Then she heard her garments tear, she felt a horrible pain in her left arm, and sank to the ground. “I am lost,” she thought. “Oh God, save baby!”

Someone dashed out of the gate and clutched the dog’s throat with one strong hand, while the other belabored him soundly with a stout stick.

“Are you hurt, my daughter?” asked a voice, in a broad country accent.

Her failing-senses came back to her. She looked up, and saw, rather to her dismay, that her deliverer was a burly priest in a rusty soutane and a shabby clerical hat, which shaded a broad, honest, good-humored face.

“Not much,” she tried to answer. “But—baby—”

The cure threw down his stick, leaped over the hedge, took, the child, now crying lustily, up in his arms, and brought him to her. “He is quite safe, my daughter, as thou canst see—and hear also. Thou art a brave girl to have thought of him before thyself. For thou art sore hurt, as I see. Allow me.” He laid the child gently down beside her, and began to examine the wounded arm.

Elene shrank from his touch, from fear not of what he would do, but of what he could not fail to see—the white arm of a young lady behind the brown hand of a peasant girl.

He saw but he said nothing. Taking out a large handkerchief, clean though coarse, he bound up the wound skillfully enough. “Are you faint?” he asked her.

“No, monsieur,” she answered bravely, determining not to be. Then, rallying her forces, “Baby—is crying.” The priest took the child once more, and pacified him with the skill of one well used to baptismal offices. “Is he your brother?” he asked.

“Yes, monsieur, my little brother. We are begging our way to our friends, who will take care of him, and get me a place. We were going to yon farmhouse. Do you think they will let us rest there? I fear I cannot go much farther.”

“I am sorry, my child, that I cannot advise you to go there. They are bad people. You would not be safe with them. Indeed, I have just been reproving them for their evil deeds. Can you walk a little way with the help of my arm? I will carry the child.”

“I will try. Where will you take me?”

“To the convent on yonder hill. It is not far; and the good sisters will take care of you both.”

“Oh, monsieur, not there,” Elene pleaded. “For God’s sake, not there! Anywhere else you please to take us. Only—not a convent.”

“Poor, foolish child, afraid where no fear is! There is nowhere else to bring you.”

“If M. le Cure would but give us shelter himself!” Elene said desperately, and not wisely. But she instinctively trusted the face she looked at, which was now relaxed into a broad smile.

“And what would my parishioners think of me if I brought as a guest to the presbytere—a young lady?”

“A poor beggar girl, monsieur, and her baby brother.”

“As you please. But I have no choice. I must take you to the convent. Come, be brave. Lean hard on me. Stay a moment, though!” He ran into the house, and soon returned with bread and country wine, and a pitcher of milk.

“I cannot bring you in there,” he said. “Those people are not for such as you. But you must have food and wine. Drink this, mad—ma fille.”

Elene drank some of the wine, and ate a little bread. The baby was fed, and found himself very comfortable in the arms of the priest, who urged Elene, if she felt at all able, to let him take them at once to the convent.

Despair was in her heart, but she knew it was useless to resist. So she put her arm within his, and allowed him to support her weak, tottering footsteps.

“I wish I could carry you as well as the child,” he said. “But take courage, my daughter, we have not far to go.”

Very far indeed it seemed to her; a confused, nightmare dream of putting one foot before another—mechanically, yet with what a painful effort!—for weeks, and months, and years.

At last a door was reached, and a bell was rung. The door opened, and after a brief parley Elene was brought into a room where gentle hands laid her upon a couch, and she fainted.

When consciousness returned, reason did not return with it. Sometimes she was dimly aware of women in the dress of nuns, who moved about her and gave her things to drink; but for the most part she was back again in the home of Elise, whose baby she confounded with Alphonse. As in her fever dreams she tossed restlessly from side to side, she complained continually that she heard baby crying. “He cries—he cries—he cries,” she used to wail, like Elise. The nuns tried to soothe her, one of them especially, in whose touch and tone she seemed to feel a peculiar softness. “No, mademoiselle,” Sceur Adele would assure her. “Your dear little brother is not crying. He is quite happy, and we are taking the greatest care of him.” For the time Elene would be satisfied. But again, and yet again, the trouble came.

She was just conscious once that someone put a crucifix to her lips. Instinctively she raised her hand and pushed it aside. “Poor child, she does not know what she is doing,” said a voice beside her. But at length her good constitution, aided by kindly and careful nursing, won the victory. She began to recover gradually. At the end of some three or four weeks she lay on her bed, weak and helpless, but emphatically and entirely Elene de Fressinieres again. Everything about her was pure and clean. Her own clothing had been removed, and a soft loose wrapper put on her instead. But she missed the belt into which she had sewn her little store of louis d’or; should she ever see it again? Yet there was something else she missed far more.

“Where is baby?” she asked, in her faint, weak voice, of the nun who came to her with her soup.

“I am glad to see you so much better,” said Sceur Marthe kindly. “But, sister, you must not speak.”

The answer was a beseeching whisper, “Only tell me, just one word—I must know.” The deep blue eyes that looked so large in the white wasted face were full of a wistful entreaty that dragged the words from Sceur Marthe’s reluctant lips. “Baby sleeps,” she said, and turned her face away.

“Then bring him to me. Let me see him—just for one moment.”

“Chut, chut! You will make yourself ill again, sister. I cannot let you excite yourself. I pray of you to be calm. I will go and ask the mother to come to you. But, first, you must take your soup.”

Elene obeyed, for she thought it was a step towards seeing baby.

“I am a great deal better,” she said. “While I was sick I used to hear baby crying. Now I am better, I never hear him at all.”

She waited with what patience she could for the visit of the Mother Superior. She had nearly fretted herself into a return of the fever before any one came; and then it was not the formidable lady she expected, but her favorite amongst the nuns, gentle Sceur Adele. “Dear sister,” she said, “you are not so well as you were in the morning. So you must be good and patient, and do as you are told. Then you will be better tomorrow.”

“And tomorrow—they will let me see baby?”

Sceur Adele nodded. “That is, if you are wise and get better,” she said.

“Tell me only now if he is well,” Elene pleaded.

“Oh, yes, very well. Now, sister, I will say a prayer for you, and then you will go to sleep.”

To Elene, in her weakness, sleep was near at hand. The last thing she knew was Sceur Adele’s soft kiss on her forehead, and her murmured “Poor child, Holy Mary help thee!”

Next day she was still better, and so far able to control herself as to keep the desire of her heart somewhat in abeyance. “If they see I am too eager, perhaps they will not let me see him, lest it should hurt me,” she thought.

So, during the day, she only spoke of him to the sympathetic Sceur Adele.

Evening brought the Mother Superior, a lady of ample proportions and dignified presence, stately but not unkind.

She sat down by the pallet of Elene and asked after her health.

“If I am recovering, it is altogether owing to your kindness, and to that of the good Sisters,” Elene answered with genuine gratitude.

“Have you had everything you needed during your illness, my daughter?”

“Indeed, madame, I have. I owe you more than I can say.”

“Were it so, it is in your power to repay us by giving us a great joy.”

“How can I do that, madame? I am only a sick girl, poor and helpless.”

“Not so, my daughter. You are of the noblesse. Une demoiselle de qualité.”

“How can you know?”

“How could we not know?” asked the Lady Superior, with a smile. “Your look, your voice, your manners would have betrayed you, even if you had not, in your delirium, betrayed yourself a hundred times by your talk—and your prayers.” She said the last words in a significant tone, bending low over Elene.

“Oh, I am lost!” thought the poor girl.

The mother went on, in a not unkindly tone, “My poor child, I know you are a Protestant. Therefore I say it is in your power to give us the great joy of converting you to the true faith, and thus saving your soul alive. That will more than recompense us for aught we have done for you.”

“What if she tries to move me by harming baby?” thought Elene. “Not that, oh God!—not that. Anything but that!” Her look of terror made the Lady Superior fear she was going to faint.

“Take courage, my child,” she said kindly. “Do not be afraid. We will deal gently with you. At present you are sick and weak, and not fit for argument. Nor is our good chaplain accustomed to deal with such cases as yours. So, for the present, we will not trouble you. I shall only ask you, as your strength permits, to read a few good books which I will give you; and to reflect seriously within yourself which is likely to be right—the Holy Church that was founded by our blessed Lord and His Apostles nearly seventeen hundred years ago, or the new religion which was preached by two apostate priests, M. Luther and M. Calvin, as it were the other day?”

“But, madame, our Lord Himself said—”

“Chut, chut, mon enfant!” said the lady, stretching out a hand to silence her; “you must not argue. I was about to say, I hold you excused from all religious duties, except it be at your own desire, save those of reading and reflection, until the end of next week, when the bishop is coming to hold a visitation. Then, we will inform him of your case, and he shall deal with you as he sees fit. But it is my duty to warn you, that although, for my own part, I am very loth to resort to compulsion, I cannot answer for what he may command.”

She rose, as if meaning to end the interview. But Elene caught the strong hand in her own frail and weak one— “Dear madame, tell me of baby. Let me see him, for God’s sake.”

The mother sat down again, and was silent for a space. Sore was the temptation that assailed her to deceive the poor girl for her soul’s benefit. Why not conceal the truth, and use the bait of giving her the babe again to bend her to their will? Ah, but then she would have to be undeceived again—and that would be too cruel. The mother could not do it!

“My daughter,” she said gravely, “do you wish to know the truth?”

The hungry longing in Elene’s eyes answered her. Then she said the same words Sceur Marthe had done, “Baby sleeps.” But Elene understood them now.

She sat up, her pale face burning, her long hair streaming over her shoulders. All her heart was in her eyes. “Tell me—” She could say no more.

“Lie down, my daughter. Be calm, and listen. The poor little one was ill when he came to us. We think he had caught cold. We did all we could; we nursed him tenderly; but fifteen days ago, while you were so ill that you knew nothing, the good God took him to Himself. He did not suffer at the last. It came in a moment, just a ceasing of the weak little breath. And he is now in Paradise with the angels; for we had him baptized, as was right and fitting.”

“No, madame; he was baptized before—”

“That was no true baptism. Heretics can neither give nor receive the Sacraments.”

But the good mother’s polemics were scattered to the winds by the marvel she saw before her. Elene de Fressinieres was kneeling on her pallet, her hands clasped, her eyes lit with some inward fire, her whole face transfigured. “Thank God!” she said aloud, with a voice that had in it the thrill of a Thanksgiving Psalm.

The mother thought she was delirious again. “Poor child, I see you are distraught. And I scarce wonder at it. God help you,” she said.

“He has helped me. Baby is safe. Now, madame, you may do with me what you will. I have nothing more to fear, and little more to suffer.”

“But of course, my dear, you are very sorry. You loved your little brother—”

“Loved him? He was the light of my eyes. God knows it! But, madame, I am not sorry. We Huguenots do not sorrow now when those who are the light of our eyes are taken from us. No; we kneel down and thank God that they are dead—and safe. The king, and the bishop, and the priests, and you too, madame, would fain have kept him from Him but ‘when Jesus saw it, He was much displeased, and He took him up in his arms and put his hands upon him, and blessed him.’ And—I am satisfied.”

Chapter 17: A Lonely Wanderer

“All is lost, except a little life.”

ELENE lay upon her pallet with closed eyes and white lips, in the inevitable reaction that followed the passion of her glad thanksgiving.

By and by gentle Sceur Adele stole in, and took her place beside her. Her soft dove-like eyes showed traces of recent tears. At last she said, with a tender touch of her hand upon Elene’s, “My sister, I am so sorry for you.”

Elene looked up. “Why should you be?” she said indifferently. “What does it matter about me?”

“Oh, but the baby—the darling! I assure you, mademoiselle, we have all been weeping for him—even the lay sisters. I can’t help crying still, whenever I think of him” (she was certainly hear it at the moment). “I think even the holy mother cried for him, though she would not let us see it. He was so beautiful, and so sweet! ‘Twas the greatest pleasure we had to nurse and pet him, and indeed we all fought for it. He used to laugh and crow so prettily, when he was well. He loved to play with our rosaries—dear little angel! One could see he was getting ready for Paradise. If he ever got hold of a crucifix there was no taking it from him; and we would not have tried, only he used to put it in his mouth, the innocent! He knew it was something good. Oh, he is now in Heaven, no doubt of it!”

“I know it,” Elene said faintly. “And I know you were good to him.”

“Indeed we were. We did everything we could think of to make him well. We gave him white bread steeped in milk, and soup, and fruit, and bon-bons. Even a little wine, with water—the very best of everything.”

Then seeing a doubtful look on the face of Elene, “Dear sister, was it wrong what we did? Indeed we would have hurt ourselves a thousand times over, rather than hurt a hair of his dear little head.”

Elene was silent a few moments; then she said slowly, two large tears gathering in her eyes, “I know it. God bless you. And—it is all right. God wanted baby in His Heaven.”

Sceur Adele had not at all exaggerated the love and admiration she and the other nuns had lavished on the baby. If “a babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure,” even when the house is in the real sense of the word a home, it could not fail to be, to these solitary women, a marvelous and ever fresh delight. Sceur Adele said, “He was like a new, beautiful book God had written for us to read in.”

She thought she could never do enough tor Elene, to comfort her for a loss so cruel, so overwhelming. And Elene’s sore heart responded to the love, if not to the comfort. A very sore heart it was, as the slow, sad days wore on. She did not weep, nor make moan; but she felt that she had nothing left to live for now, and that the sooner she followed baby, the better it would be. The approaching visitation of the bishop, for which the nuns were in a bustle of preparation, and about which they talked continually, scarcely affected her at all.

Still, in spite of her indifference to life, her health began gradually to improve. We cannot die because we wish it; she had a good constitution, and good care and nursing from the nuns, who had more experience with sick girls and women than with sick babies. Nor did they molest her on the subject of her faith, or her want of it, as it seemed to them; save that someone ventured, now and then, a word in season, such as, “Ah, if dear mademoiselle would only have recourse to the Holy Mother of God, she would heal her sorrows!” But they talked among themselves, and with bated breath, of the approaching visit of “monseigneur,” when, after having been twice deferred, it became imminent at last. “He is a hard man,” they said. “Heaven knows what he will do with the poor young lady!”

“Perhaps put her in the dungeon on bread and water,” suggested one.

“Perhaps give her the discipline,” said another.

And a third added, piling up the agony, “Perhaps shut her up all night in the southwest corridor, where the ghost walks.”

This was the ghost of a wicked old Mother Superior, who was said to have starved a nun to death for telling of her misdeeds.

Sceur Adele heard all, and said nothing. But she took occasion to suggest to Elene that, as she was now a little stronger, it would do her good to take the air in the garden. With the inertness of the physically weak, Elene objected at first, until Adele became so urgent that it was easier to comply than to refuse. She allowed her friend to bring her to a little arbor, where she sat for a while. She repeated the experiment next day, and even asked Adele where they had laid baby. Adele offered to show her his resting-place, in the little cemetery where the nuns were always buried, and she noticed with a faint pleasure that it was covered with fresh flowers. She said scarcely anything, but the sight did her good. After that, she sat in the arbor, each day for a longer time, toying with a bit of fine needlework, or languidly reading one of the “livres de piete” with which the Mother Superior had supplied her.

Usually, her eyes traveled over the pages without conveying much impression to her brain; but once she came upon a story which interested her, as a romance or a fairy-tale might do. She spoke of it to Sceur Adele, who was glad to find her interested in anything. “I never heard before,” she said, “that Zacchaeus, the publican, of whom we read in the Holy Gospels, was thought to have come into these parts.”

“Oh, yes, he did,” said Sceur Adele. “I thought everyone knew that. He became a holy hermit, and lived in a cave, high up on a rocky mountain—Rocamadour, that is the name of the place. ‘Tis not so far from this, either.”

“I marvel,” said Elene, “that a man who had had the wonderful joy of receiving our blessed Lord in his own house, and hearing His beautiful words, should choose to live in a cave at the top of a hill, rather than go about preaching to all the people, that they might learn to know and love Him too.”

“Perhaps he only went to live in the cave when he was tired and old,” said Adele. “There is a hermit there still—or at least there was, for we were told he is gone now. But he was not a good man like Si Amadou, which is the name of Zacchaeus in religion that is why the place is called Rocamadour. No; he must have been a very bad man indeed. People say he worshipped the devil—Holy Mary keep us from harm!” and she crossed herself.

It occurred to Elene that this monster of iniquity might really have been only a persecuted Huguenot such accusations being often brought against them by their enemies. But she only said, “That is no likely.”

“One cannot prove it, I suppose; but all the people about there believed it. They used to supply him with everything he wanted, lest he should do then harm. But, dear sister, ‘tweer well you laid down your book, though I am glad to see you reading it Come with me for a little walk; it is our recreation time. You have never been to our garden of vegetables, behind the convent. You look from it down a steep rock, and see trees, and fields, and people in them, far below.”

“But how can you see them with the high wall all round the place?”

“Ah, there’s a little gate, and you look through the bars. It used to be left open as often as not, since no one went in or out by it, on account of the rock. But the gardener, cunning fellow, had made a little path for himself partly on the top and partly down the side of it; and he used to steal our cabbages, and sell them in the village. When we found him out, the Mother Superior had the door well fastened. But the vegetables go on disappearing, the Saints only know how.”

Elene agreed to go, and as they went she asked a question, a rare thing with her.

“Sister, what is the name of the priest who brought us here that night? He was so kind, I should like to know it.”

“Oh, that was only Pere Favre, the village cure. He has nothing to do with us Regulars, of course; we have our own chaplain, as you know.”

Elene certainly knew it, having had more than one interview with the chaplain; but he, being both ignorant and easy-going, was quite content to fall in with the wishes of the Mother Superior, and leave the perplexing case of the young heretic to the more competent hand of “monseigneur.”

“They say Pere Favre has little learning, and no manners at all,” continued Adele. “But at least he does not let any wrong or wickedness go on in his parish without trying to stop it. Nor any fighting.”

“I should like to see him again.”

“Well, you may. When monseigneur comes, he will have to wait on him, as his duty is. And that will be on Friday—at last. No more putting off now.” She stole a furtive yet significant look at the face of her friend. It showed no change, beyond a little tightening of the firm-set lips.

But a clearer sense of what it might mean for her came to Elene, when she thought of it afterward. Life was returning to her, and life means the possibility of suffering, and the fear of suffering, which is worse. She could no longer think of what the bishop might do to her with the calmness of utter indifference; and the calmness of perfect faith is seldom won without a struggle.

At last it came to the very day before the advent of “monseigneur.” The nuns were frantically busy with preparations for the entertainment of the great man, with his chaplain and attendants. Elene offered to help in the arrangement of the mass of beautiful flowers they had gathered for the decoration of the convent; and the nuns, thinking this a sign of grace, would gladly have accepted her services. But Adele, who was all that day in an irritable, excited mood, interfered almost angrily. “No, no, Sceur Elene, we shall just have you fainting on the floor, and making a scene for monseigneur. For the sake of all the Saints, go off to the arbor, and sit there in peace and quiet. I will bring you your dinner, which is only bread and cheese, as no one has time for cooking today.”

At the usual dinner-hour, Adele came, with the plate of bread and cheese in her hand, and a large bundle hidden under her robe. This she laid beside Elene, who saw with much surprise the peasant’s dress in which she had come, more than six weeks before. “Put that on,” Adele whispered breathlessly. “And run—run for your life! The little gate is open, and no one looking.”

“Dear sister, what have you done for me?”

“Nothing much. The gardener has got a key of his own, as I suspected long ago. I have just made him unlock it—if he did not want to have it taken from him, and brought to the holy mother. But go—go. Don’t lose a minute. Only kiss me first—my sister.”

“God bless you, dear, dear sister! God reward you,” Elene faltered, embracing her.

“Leave the dress you have been wearing, under those laurel bushes. I will bring it back to the storeroom without anyone knowing,” said Adele, as they tore themselves apart.

But she turned back again to say— “I will keep flowers on the grave always, my sister.”

She was gone. Elene, with the bewilderment of one who walks and works in a dream, obeyed all her directions, put up the bread and cheese for future consumption, and took her way through the garden. It felt like her escape from Château Mauzac over again. “But then,” she thought, “there was baby. Now I am alone; and shall be till I die.”

She found the gate unlocked, as Adele had told her, and stepped forth once more into the world, utterly desolate.

Ever afterward she thought with real gratitude, not only of her special friend Sceur Adele, but of all the community of St. Ferrand. It was none of their fault about baby. They had done the best they could for him, according to their lights. And He who is all light, and in Him no darkness at all, had put forth His own hand, and made it indeed the best, the very best, for her darling. For what was before him if he lived? “Father, dear father, I have saved him for you,” said Elene; and in the midst of her loneliness and desolation, she lifted up her heart in thankfulness.

The good cure, and the kind-hearted nuns of St Ferrand, were happy in this—they had never, up to their meeting with Elene, been brought into direct contact with a Faith different from their own. They had heard of Protestantism, of “Huguenotrie,” as heresy, as something very bad and wicked, of the nature perhaps of that devil-worship which Adele had spoken of with such horror; but they had never had any personal dealings with a Huguenot. The hateful role of the persecutor had never been forced upon them. And so they escaped the curse of the persecutor—the hardening and deadening of soul which comes from not only silencing the voice of God within the heart, but crushing down the instincts of our common humanity. Perhaps also, had the test been applied to them, they might have escaped the curse in another way: as in those evil days some did to their honor—by not silencing the Divine Voice within them.

Chapter 18: Elene Finds a Friend

“By the heart’s wound when most gory,

By the longest agony,

Smile—behold in sudden glory

The Transfigured smiles on thee.”

—E. B. BROWNING.

NEVER did a human being feel more utterly forlorn than Elène de Fressinières when she found herself at the foot of the rocky path that led to the village, the nearest house of which, that of the dishonest gardener, was only a stone’s-throw from her. Her first thought was that she must not stay there; he might pass by and recognize her, and a man so greedy of gain would be sure to betray her in the hope of reward. So she turned into the first path that led her away from the village, and for a while walked aimlessly on. But her limbs, so little used since her illness, soon began to fail her; and, after a mêtre or two, they refused to take her any farther. She looked around her: the place was solitary, and the narrow, hedgeless path was overshadowed by trees, one of which stretched forth a gnarled and twisted root that seemed to offer a seat.

She accepted the invitation, and sat down. Then she remembered she was hungry; so she took out her bread and cheese, and ate a little—not much: she had not energy even to eat. For a while she was utterly passive, not thinking, not feeling, not even suffering.

Suddenly she started up with a cry— “Baby! where’s baby?” She looked wildly about her. “I must have dropped asleep and let him fall. Or someone has robbed me of him.” But presently she came to herself.

“No one has robbed me,” she said. “And He who has taken him has done well for him and for me. I have no more fear now—no more care. Now that he is safe, nothing seems to matter.”

But as time passed she began to think she could not sit forever by the roadside. Where was she to go? What was she to do? Should she go back to Mauzac, to tell the mourning mother that her babe was safe with Christ, in his Heaven? For a while she thought of it, not only as a sweet relief to more hearts than one, but as perhaps a positive duty. But then came a thought that withheld her. Amongst the directions her father had given her for the future was one positive and solemn command: “Should the soldiers come to any house where you are, escape if possible, even at the risk of life or limb. Let no motive, however strong, not even the wish to save another, ever tempt you to put yourself into their power.” She was far from understanding him then, but the look in his face as he said it rose up before her. Probably the soldiers were at Mauzac now. She could not go there.

She had absolutely no motive for going in one direction more than in another. She knew as little where she was as whither she wished to go. Before the accident that brought her to the convent, she had been pretty sure that she must have lost her way. While there, she had been for the most part too ill to think about place at all; nor had it occurred to her, even when she was better, to ask the sisters the precise locality of the convent, or its relation to any of the landmarks Conseille had named to her. For her design of bringing the baby to the Cevennes and hiding him there amongst their brethren had been frustrated by his death; and as to any natural curiosity about her surroundings, it was, like other natural instincts, pretty well dormant for the time. Her escape had been quite unpremeditated, so she had neither the vestige of a plan, nor the knowledge necessary to form one Suppose she still wished to go to the Cevennes, how could she? Most likely it was leagues and leagues away practically as unattainable as Geneva or Amsterdam. North, south, east and west, all were equally black, equally blank to her. In the absence of a reason for moving anywhere, why should she move at all?

There began to fall upon her that kind of atrophy, or paralysis of the will, which is in fact a disease in itself. She sat on where she was, thinking, if she thought at all—nay, hoping perhaps—that she would die there, and thus rejoin her father, her mother, and baby.

At last, in the deep silence of that solitary place, she heard an approaching footstep. Not a free strong step, but a wavering and uncertain one, punctuated by the sound of a staff striking the ground. She raised her bowed head to look. A man, evidently blind, was coming towards her, but paused a few yards off in seeming perplexity. Then he spoke aloud. “I doubt I am on the wrong road altogether. Oh, Holy Mary, Mother of God, guide a poor blind man to his home this day!”

It was the best thing that could possibly have happened to Elene de Fressinieres. Hopeless, purposeless though she was for herself, the claim for help from another reached a heart which had been trained to helpfulness from the cradle. She rose, and came towards him. “Can I be of service to you, monsieur?” she asked, in the courteous way French peasants were wont to speak to each other. The man was evidently a peasant, uncouth and ragged, with little about him to win sympathy, except his infirmity.

Glad to hear a friendly voice, he began volubly to pour out his troubles and his needs. The boy who was guiding him had fallen ill the night before, at the village where they slept, but feeling better in the morning had set out with him. On the way, however, he became ill again, worse than before, and was quite unable to go farther. But as he himself must needs get home that night, he went on without him, trusting to meet some charitable person who would help him on his way. Where was his home? Negrepelisse, to be sure.

“Negrepelisse!” exclaimed Elene, in surprise. “But that is leagues away.”

“None so many but that we can reach it tonight, if we try. In fact, I must. My brother’s wife’s stepdaughter is to be married tomorrow, and they will never forgive me if I miss the wedding.”

“But it is not possible,” said the dismayed Elene.

“Oh, yes, once we get a league or so on our way the odds are that a cart or something will come along and take us up.”

After a little more talking at cross purposes, Elene came to a clearer understanding of the situation. In her perplexed and weary wanderings she had been unwittingly describing a circle, and during her last few days on the road had actually approached Negrepelisse again, instead of leaving it, as she intended, farther and farther behind her.

The thought of returning thither was very distasteful to her. To escape it, she proposed bringing the blind man back to the village he had left, where he could easily procure another guide. But he entreated her to go on at once, offering her, as an inducement, willing hospitality with his family, and a share in the wedding feast. This failed to tempt her, the rather as she gathered, from the prayer she had overheard, that he was a Catholic, and, not a “new” one.

But presently something else occurred to her mind which rather changed her point of view. In the course of the day she had spent with the Conseilles at Nevrenelisse a quiet sad-faced woman had come in with some fine sewing which she had been doing for the family. Conseille’s daughters told her afterward that she was Isabeau Durand, a good woman who lived with her aged mother in a hut amongst the ruins of the old fortifications, “just by the south gate that was”; and one of them added under her breath, “Isabeau is a veritable saint.” Elene knew that many of the people of Negrepelisse were still Protestants at heart. She had no baby to fear for now, and as for herself, she would probably be as safe among them as anywhere else. And the very suggestion of fellowship and sympathy, of having “one of our own,” as she phrased it, to speak to again, wrought upon her lonely spirit like “the sound of water far away” upon the ear of the traveler fainting with thirst. “I will come with you to Negrepelisse,” she said to her companion.

The blind man was sharp enough, and had known the country well before he lost his sight. He told her of various landmarks; and with the aid of these, assisted by the directions of one or two passers-by, she found the way without much difficulty. It was a different matter to walk in it. Her limbs, still weak after her illness, began all too soon to fail her. At last she said she could go no farther, and they sat down by the roadside to rest, and think what to do. But fortune favored them. A man driving a cart of firewood came by, and hailed the blind man as an old acquaintance. “Hullo, there, old Verte!” he said. “What brings thee here, so far from home?”

“That were a long story, friend Robin, for I think it is thy voice,” said the other. “At present I would much rather know what would bring me back again.”

“My cart, if it like thee to sit in it.”

“It likes me well, if so be thou hast room for my guide also.”

“I should be a harder stick than any I am bringing to town if I could not find room for such a pretty girl.”

And the carter, having disposed his firewood so as to make place for the two, very kindly and carefully helped them to their seats. Elene, as she thanked him, asked if he could put her down anywhere near the old south gate.

“Certainly, ma’amselle,” was the obliging answer. “Anywhere you will, for the sake of your beautiful eyes.” He added to his kindness by sharing with them the rye bread and soft cheese he had brought with him for his evening meal.

It was late and very dark that night when a tired, bewildered girl, after some wandering among the ruined fortifications, found herself knocking at the door of a quaint, queerly constructed little hut. The back and one side were of ancient masonry, the rest was partly mud and partly stone, and it was thatched with straw. The small though not unglazed window showed a light still burning within, so she knew that someone was awake.

The door was soon opened, by a woman to whom Elene said, “Are you Isabeau Durand?”

“Yes,” was the answer. “And you, who come to us so late?”

“Elene de Fressinieres, whom you saw some two months ago, at the house of M. Conseille, the grocer.”

“Mademoiselle had a baby with her then.”

“My little brother, who is now with Christ.”

The door was thrown wide open then. “Come in, mademoiselle, you are very welcome in His name.”

Isabeau led her into the kitchen. There a fire was burning, and an old woman sitting beside it, who stood up, and looked suspiciously at the stranger.

“Dear mother,” said Isabeau, “this young lady has come to us for the night. She is known to me already as one of the household of faith.”

“Oh, as for that, a great deal is known to thee, no doubt! But one thing thou dost not know, nor ever think of—what it may cost thee and me to give shelter to such. Have we not suffered enough already? Art greedy for more?”

“Good mother, do not distress yourself, I pray of you. I will go—” said Elene, turning towards the door; but Isabeau laid on her a detaining hand, which, though very gentle, was strong.

“Mademoiselle,” she said, “you will do no such thing. My mother would never forgive herself. If her words sound rough, it is because she has seen much sorrow. Her heart is tender. She would not sleep tonight if we turned you from our door.”

“But I would not for the world endanger you.”

“You do not. You are not the first of His members our Lord has given us the joy of sheltering, and if we suffer for it, it will be the first time.”

“Well, take thy own way, Isabeau. Young folk always do,” said the old woman.

Isabeau’s plain but pleasant face kindled into a smile.

“To thee, dear mother, I am ever young. But I am quite an old woman now, as you see, mademoiselle.”

“I see you will be a dear friend,” said Elene, already feeling the glow that heralds a dawning friendship.

“And now, mademoiselle,” said Isabeau, “while you take such supper a we can give you, I will make ready your resting-place for the night.”

“That thou needst not,” said Mere Durand. “Sit thee down and talk to the young lady, as thou sayest she is. I will do the work, of course. Ay, the old do not talk, but they work, while the young sit at ease.”

So Elene had a comfortable “rear-supper” of chestnuts boiled in milk; and enjoyed afterward very sweet repose in a little chamber, or closet, which opened out of the kitchen by a door not perceptible from the outside.

She ate her breakfast the next morning to an accompaniment of scolding and grumbling from the old woman, which the daughter took with great composure. There followed a simple “family worship,” which consisted of singing a psalm, reading a portion of Scripture, and offering a prayer written, Isabeau told her, by M. le Pasteur Brousson, for the use of “thy Churches under the Cross.” Then she invited Elene to come out with her, and sit in one of the many cos) nooks to be found amongst the ruins. “Mother does all the housework,” she explained, “and right well sip does it too. She will not let me help her, and it only vexes her to be asked, so I let her have her way, and keep to the sewing myself.”

Elene, who was feeling wonderfully cheered am comforted, pointed to the armful of fine needlework her new friend was carrying. “You must let me help you with that,” she said, and actually with a smile “You will find me a fair needlewoman. My father used to say, A woman ought to be as skillful with the needle as a man of honor with the sword.”

After a slight demur, Isabeau yielded the point, an soon found that the demoiselle had not overpraised herself; she could even teach her some new varieties of the delicate fancy stitches then in vogue.

Tongues went as fast as needles. Elene poured her story into sympathizing ears, ending with the account of her flight from the convent. She mentioned what she had hardly noticed in the hurry of departure though she thought of it with some dismay during her weary tramp with the blind man. “I have lost all my money,” she said; “there were nine Louis sewn into my belt, which Soeur Adele did not bring me with my other things. No doubt she knew no of it.”

“Probably not. The Superior would have taken it and put it somewhere for safety, under lock and key.”

“Indeed, they all showed me so much kindness should not grudge them the money if—if only—” Elene paused with a troubled look. How could she tell Isabeau that her trouble was that she had nothing now wherewith to recompense those who gave her hospitality?

“Do not grieve over that,” Isabeau said, cheerfully “There are many worse losses, and harder to remedy. I am thinking we may be able to find out for you how things are going at the Chateau Mauzac, through some of our secret friends, for we have many in the town, ‘New Catholics’ as they are called, but amongst ourselves we call them ‘Nicodemists,’ after him who came to our Lord by night.”

“But you, Isabeau—you have never bowed your knee to Baal?” said Elene, using another expression common amongst the Huguenots.

“That was God’s doing, not mine. When we were told that the soldiers were coming to the town, and that we were to assemble in the marketplace to hear what M. le Maire had to say to us about it, mother and I went with the rest—my father had died six weeks before. M. le Maire, an old Catholic of course, told us we must all join the king’s religion at once, and enlarged upon the dreadful things the soldiers would do to us if we refused. And it was so easy! We had only to cry out, Je me réunis! and we might dwell at ease, not a soldier entering our doors. Mother obeyed, for she was frightened, and knew not what she did. But I held my peace—and no one noticed it. So you see, mademoiselle, I cannot say that I confessed my Lord before men—I can only say I did not deny Him.”

“Were you not troubled afterward?”

“Only with fines. We sold nearly all we had to pay them. Then, fearing further trouble, we left our lodging in the town, and hid ourselves amongst these ruins, where few know anything about us. My brother, who had stayed in our old home to look after things, joined us here, and built this little hut for us. Then he went away to the Cevennes; and there, last winter, at an Assembly, he was killed. He and others stood their ground, braving the soldiers, to give the preacher time to escape, which, happily, he did.”

Isabeau told the story in a quiet, matter-of-fact way; but Elene could divine the feeling that lay beneath. “It was a good way to die,” she said, softly.

“It was his duty,” said Isabeau.

Time passed on. Elene was made more than welcome by both the Durands; for the mother, though her tongue was sharp and her temper short, was thoroughly hospitable at heart. Her bowl of soup or her slice of bread and cheese signified nothing, they said; and besides, was not mademoiselle most kind and skillful in helping Isabeau with the sewing?

But, at least with Isabeau, she soon ceased to be “Mademoiselle”; they even dropped into the familiar “to” and “toi” of kinsfolk and near friends.

So Elene rested quietly, while mind and body recovered their equilibrium after the long strain they had undergone.

The companionship of Isabeau was very soothing and helpful. She was one who had been “through the flood on foot” and come out on the other side. A day came at last when she led Elene into the secret place of her heart, and showed her the treasure hidden there—that treasure which was at once her cross of anguish and her crown of glory.

“Our old home,” she said, “was at Carlat, in Foix; we had a good vineyard there, and some other property. Our pastor was M. Bayle, a good man, full of kindness to all, and harming none. He had grown old among us, and we all loved him well. He had two sons. The younger, Pierre, was a clever lad—oh, very clever; I have never known anyone so learned. He knew Latin, mathematics, algebra—everything you can think of! And philosophy—he used to talk philosophy by the hour. I could not understand him, nor am I sure his brother did, or his father even. Indeed, I doubt if he understood himself. But he was unsettled in his mind, poor lad, and at last he apostatized. Not from fear, like others, for he had courage enough, though he lacked steadiness. But he soon repented, and returned to the Religion. At last he went abroad. We hear he is a great man in Holland now. He is Professor of Philosophy in the university of Rotterdam, and a writer of learned books, moreover. But,” and her voice sank, “they say a terrible thing about him—that he has given up believing in God at all.”

“Oh, how could he—?”

“Because of the terrible things God has let happen here. And to those he loved. Dear old M. Bayle bore up against the troubles as long as he could, strengthening and consoling his flock, and trying to keep them true to the Faith. But his heart was broken. He died, and Jacob, his elder son, became pastor in his stead.”

Her voice took another tone as she said the name. Elene looked up quickly. Struck by the expression she saw in the quiet face, she looked again, and there came to her a new revelation. With a thrill, half of awe and half of rapture, she dimly foreboded something which might bring into woman’s life a light and gladness undreamed of, but also a possibility of anguish, even to heartbreaking. Yet the broken heart would not willingly be made whole again, at the price of losing the sweet treasure of its anguish.

“Yes, dear child,” Isabeau resumed, answering her look, “we were betrothed. Jacob would not leave the country when other pastors did, nor would he lay down his sacred office; for he was so sorely needed. The place was like the land of Egypt, not a house where there was not one dead, or in prison, or at the galleys, or in hiding. But before long he was taken. They threw him into a horrible dungeon, called L’Enfer, and worthy of its name. He suffered—no, I will not speak of what he suffered. It is over now; and God has taken from me, not the memory, but the anguish.”

“What was the end?” Elene asked in a low voice, half choked with tears.

“In two months God set him free. If there had but been one word, one message of farewell! But there was no one to bring it. How, after the first, the long agony of those weeks went by, none knows but God only. But one thing we know—he kept his word, and ‘did not deny His name,’ for such denial would have opened his prison doors at once.”

“Oh, how did you ever bear it?”

“I did not bear it. While he yet lived, I wore out my heart in passionate appeals—to man, which were worse than useless, to God, who was silent towards me.”

“But not always? Not long?”

“It seemed long to me. But when we heard he was at rest, a change came. Some think the dying, as they go forth on their wonderful way, have power to visit those they love, and tell them. But it was not so with me. No vision of the face, no sound of the voice I loved, came to me in my desolation—nor will, I think, ‘until the Heavens be no more.’ That which came was quite other. It came in the darkest hour, in the deepest depth of all. A letter reached us from Pierre in Amsterdam. He had heard of the cruel fate of the brother he loved and knew to be the best and noblest of men, doing good to all and harm to none. It killed in him the last remains of belief in God. Then it seemed to me as if hell had opened her mouth, and I was falling down, down into it.”

“Though I make my bed in hell, thou art there,” Elene whispered.

“True. We cannot fall anywhere His arms are not underneath us. Pierre Bayle and the philosophers may talk, but I have felt. And I have seen. Look at this stone.” She took up a pebble that lay near. “See, I throw it upwards. It falls. If it did not fall, but stood suspended in the air, what would you think?”

“That some power I could not see was holding it up.”

“Well, if you saw men and women, and little children even, stand firm where every law of human nature made it certain they must fall, would you not think the same? Nay, if you saw them, amidst anguish unutterable, the anguish of the rack or the wheel, not only stand firm, but rejoice with exceeding joy, giving thanks to Him who had called them to this honor and glory, would you not think the same?”

“I would—for them,” Elene answered, humbly. “But I have not such strength.”

“Nor I. I am not like M. Chaulieu, M. Papus, M. Doubs, M. Homel, M. Plans, and the rest of our martyrs. But God is the same. Christ is the same—as I found when I ceased to struggle, and just ‘sank down on Him.’ There is not much to say, for the best part cannot be said at all. Only this—He came. He filled my heart with His peace. All that is long ago. Thirteen years have come and gone since then. I am old now, long past thirty. But the peace has stayed. For He has stayed—will stay with me even to the end. I am not content only, but thankful now for all the past. I can say now of him I love, ‘Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word.’”

“I think,” Elene said, with shining eyes, “I think you must long to follow him, and be where he is now.”

“I used. But not of late. At least, not often. And not most to be with him. Not that he is less than he ever was to me, even in the days of our betrothal. But Christ is infinitely more. And Jacob, my father, my brother, and the rest who have gone before, are joined with Him, very members of His Body. So having Him, I have them too.”

There was a silence; then Isabeau resumed: “For some things I should be glad to stay here yet awhile. I can sometimes, in quiet ways, help our people a little.”

“As you are helping me,” Elene said, gratefully.

“Besides that joy which God gives me, there are two wishes I would fain see fulfilled before I go to Him. For Pierre, Jacob’s dear brother, I pray continually that God would bring him back to the knowledge of His Truth. And then there is my mother. She holds the disbelief of Pierre in horror, and thinks those who fall into it worse than our persecutors. But then, she thinks hard thoughts of God on account of the miseries she has seen and felt—my brother’s death; Jacob’s, whom she loved as a son; our pastors martyred; our men at the galleys or in prison. Oh, mademoiselle, you know it all! She says she cannot love Him anymore; He is hard and cruel. Dear mademoiselle, will you pray for her, as I do, that ere He take her Home, He may whisper His secret in her ear.”

“What is His secret, Isabeau?”

“That Christ has seen of the travail of His soul, and is satisfied. He tells us that now; hereafter He will tell us how.”

It is written in the Book of Moses, the servant of the Lord, that the Israelites, when they took the spoils of Canaan, were commanded to pass through the fire “everything that might abide the fire.” Many things were exempt, because they were unfit for such an ordeal; it would either have reduced them to ashes, or have left them, not purified as gold and silver, but calcined to cinders, hard and shapeless. In great public calamities, however, not only the moral gold and silver, but other things quite unable to abide the fire are seized upon by the devouring element. No one can suppose that the whole Protestant population of France was composed of saints and heroes, to whom the miseries heaped upon them were only as the furnace to the gold, or the lapidary’s tool to the diamond. While we thank God for the magnificent galaxy of martyrs and confessors which make us half forget the horror in the glory, we should remember also the thousands that must have been “martyrs by the pang without the palm.” Amongst the weaker, we should remember the ruined lives and broken hearts; amongst the stronger, the souls made hard and bitter, filled with passionate rage and hate against their oppressors, or robbed of their faith in God, and driven to despair.

How much easier it would be for us to confront, “fearless and unperplexed,” all “the oppressions that have been done under the sun, and the tears of them that are oppressed and have no comforter,” if only oppression always worked out the moral amelioration of the oppressed!

But we must not forget that the end is not here, and that, moreover, the end is not yet. If in one sense every human life is as a tale that is told, in another and very real sense it is as a tale that is not told, upon which, beneath the last line that is given us here, the Author’s hand has written—

“To be continued elsewhere”

Chapter 19: "The Manna of the Desert"

“Hear, Father, hear Thy faint afflicted flock

Cry to Thee from the desert and the rock;

While those who persecute Thy children, hold

Blasphemous worship under roofs of gold.”

ONE day, Isabeau took back the kerchiefs, the stomachers, and the jabots Elene had helped her to embroider, to the shop for which she worked, and returned, her usually grave face shining with joy.

“Oh, what has happened?” cried Elene, startled at the change in her.

“Nothing good, depend upon it,” said poor Mere Durand. “Nothing good ever happens to us.”

“Wrong for once, mother dear,” Isabeau said, turning to her. “You will be as glad as anyone to hear—we are to have an Assembly.”

“Well, at least, thanks to Providence for that,” said the old woman, as if admitting generously that, once in a way, some good might come from that quarter.

“Mother will be as eager about it and as keen to go as anyone,” her daughter remarked, when she left the room.

“But is she strong enough?” Elene asked, doubtfully.

“That indeed I doubt. I fear it is a risk. But I do not dare to withhold from her such a joy and privilege, if even she would consent to be left behind.”

The joy and privilege of attending an Assembly, at which every person present, man, woman, or child, was liable to be shot down without mercy; or at least, to be consigned, the men to the galleys, the women to cruel and, perpetual imprisonment! Precious—indeed we can hardly realize how precious—was the word of the Lord to these His suffering children, who, though He fed them with the bread of affliction and the water of affliction, could yet thank Him that He fulfilled His promise, “Thy teachers shall be no more removed out of thy sight, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers.”

Elene asked eagerly where the gathering was to be.

“Oh, a long way off. We must cross the river, and walk through fields and pasture-land till we come to a certain glen, which is the place of meeting. It will take us three hours’ good walking. We shall have to set out before seven, for ten o’clock is the hour appointed, next Monday night.”

“‘Tis well there will be moonlight.”

“Those who arrange these things for us try to choose nights when we will have the moon.”

“But should the night be dark or rainy, what then?”

“We trust in God, and go all the same. That is, most of us go. But it is very rarely we have the opportunity in these parts.”

“Do the Catholics notice nothing?”

“We go very quietly, singly, or by twos and threes. But as soon as we reach a solitary place we join in little companies and go on together. And, when it is safe, we sing together softly. Always, when we draw near the chosen spot, we hear the sound of singing: those who have arrived the first raise a psalm to guide and hearten the others.”

“But is it safe?”

“Just as safe as aught else. There are always sentinels posted to give the alarm if needful. Last time, some of our people fell in with a couple of Catholics who were taking a night journey on business of their own. They did not want to harm them, but they durst not let them go. So they brought them on with them, and made them listen, will they or nil they, to a right good sermon. Then they took an oath of them never to reveal the matter. And the men were staunch, and did us no ill, only saying to all who questioned them that they had had a misadventure.”

“Have you heard who is coming to preach to us?” Elene asked, with keen interest. “Is it really a pastor? Only once have I seen one since I can remember.”

“He is a pastor, so he can give us the Holy Supper. A young man, and not learned, they say—save in the Holy Scriptures. His name is Portal. He was a poor peasant lad in the Cevennes, who could not even read or write. But when M. Brousson was in France for the first time—ah, you know that name?”

“Indeed I do; my father told me of the great lawyer, the defender of our brethren, who returned again from his exile once—twice—to help and comfort us.”

“Nay, three times. He is in the country now. But in what part I cannot tell.”

“Oh, if he would but come to us! I have never seen him; I hope I shall, some day.”

“So do I. Yet it is not the servant we go to meet, but the Master.”

“I know,” said Elene, softly. “And this M. Portal?”

“Henri Portal, the peasant boy of the Cevennes, heard M. Brousson preach. He received the word with joy, and laid his whole heart at the feet of the preacher. He followed him from place to place, serving him like a son, bearing his messages to the faithful, and distributing amongst them the prayers and exhortations he wrote for them. In the meantime M. Brousson was teaching him. In the caverns and solitary places where they had to hide, he taught him to read and write; taught him also such other elements of human learning as he thought needful. Most of all, he taught him the Holy Scriptures. Happening one day to hear him pray, and say a few words to a little company, he saw in him gifts God might use in His service. He sent him from him to teach, and soon learned that God was blessing his words. When Henri came back again to minister to him in his life of toil and peril, M. Brousson said, ‘No, my son; God has called thee to higher work. Go thou and preach the Kingdom of God.’ I think Henri prayed him, even with tears, to let him stay; but M. Brousson would not. So he went; and to the great gain, as I have heard, of God’s children under the Cross. And afterward he was rightly and lawfully ordained by the laying on of hands—M. Brousson’s and another pastor’s.”

“I shall like to hear that man preach.”

The evening, so eagerly anticipated, came at last. To avoid observation, Isabeau went first to the house of her employer with some work she was returning, having arranged to go to the Assembly by a different path from that which Elene and her mother were to take, and to meet them, bringing food and a lantern, at a place agreed upon, beyond the bridge. The fact that the town was now unfortified lessened their danger, and so did the temper of the townspeople, many of whom were themselves “New Catholics,” and others friendly, or at least indifferent.

The evening proved dark and cloudy. The summer days of Languedoc are not as long as those of England, and, summer though it was, a chill wind blew from the mountains on the east. Elene was wrapped in one of the long black cloaks, usually worn by the Huguenot women, though not exclusively by them, which Isabeau had lent her. She stepped bravely along the rough way, her heart beating high with hope and courage. There was in her the true spiritual hunger of the child of God for His Word, but there was also the delicious thrill of a new and soul-stirring experience. Everything conspired to awaken it—the hour, the mystery, the precautions, the peril even. When they left the town, crossed the bridge, and came into a winding path that sloped upwards through fields and vineyards, this feeling grew upon her. Nor was it checked by the talk of her companion, who poured into her ears a succession of terrible stories of the deeds done by the soldiers when they succeeded in surprising an Assembly. These stories fanned instead of quenched the fire of her enthusiasm. She was in the mood that night to dare anything, to suffer anything, for her Faith.

So indeed was her companion. But she soon complained of fatigue; and when they went on and on without meeting Isabeau or anyone else, she became alarmed, and bluntly accused mademoiselle of having lost her way. Even the traditional respect of the peasant for the lady could not restrain her complaints and reproaches.

Elene bore them the more patiently because she feared they were not undeserved. Might she not have forgotten something, or misunderstood the particular directions Isabeau had given her? And it was so dark, and now, moreover, beginning to rain! What if they missed the Assembly after all? And poor old Mere Durand was so tired already! Elene said to her, at last, “There is shelter yonder, under that hedge. I pray you sit down there and rest. I will go up that little hill and see if there is any sign of our friends. Meanwhile, if Isabeau comes, you will see her.”

Mere Durand remonstrated, fearing mademoiselle would lose herself. And indeed Elene, after going some distance, began to fear the same, and thought of retracing her footsteps, when the glimmer of a light attracted her. It was some distance off, towards the right, and it was moving.

Full of hope, she went towards it. This led her off the path and down the slope. Then the light was close at hand. A man was carrying it, and another walked beside him. But a brook, rather wide, ran between her and them. They saw her and stopped. The one not carrying the light asked courteously, “Can we be of any use, mademoiselle?”

Then Elene, as Isabeau had directed her, said “Qui va?”

In return, the man—or, as she saw when they came close, the young lad—gave the watchword of the night, “La parole de Dieu.”

“Then you are friends,” Elene said, much relieved. “I am glad indeed, for I need your help.”

“Permit me, mademoiselle,” said the youth, stretching out his hand to help her over the brook. She drew back, however; she did not want to cross. At that moment the man with the torch so moved it that it showed to each the face of the other. Elene saw a tall, slight, handsome lad, with fine, clear-cut features, dark eyes, curling brown hair, and alert, eager look.

He on his part saw a face, grave and refined, like some he had been wont to see long, long ago, but very pale and worn—not like that of an equal in age. In the yellow torchlight it did not look young at all to him. None the less readily, he leaped the brook and again proffered his help, with a grace worthy of –Gaspard de Montausier!

The older man followed, and they went back to where Mere Durand was waiting for Elene.

The torch now waved aloft by Gaspard caught the eye of Isabeau, who, in fact, was not far off, with the band of pilgrims whom she had joined—all anxiously looking for the missing ones. Soon they were all joyfully united, and walked on in company—Gaspard ahead with those who lit the way, Tardif insisting on giving his arm to Mere Durand, little guessing that the object of his eager search walked just before him with her daughter.

He liked old women of Mere Durand’s stamp; they had often shown him kindness perhaps having a secret admiration for a bold outlaw. So he felt it a pleasure to support her over the toilsome paths with his strong arm, and cheer her on when she began to complain of the length and roughness of the way. Presently she stumbled over a stone, and bewailed herself bitterly.

“Courage, mademoiselle,” said Tardif, as he held her up, “that’s one stone the less, anyway, between you and the Assembly.” Then, remembering he had adopted the rôle of a Huguenot, he thought himself bound to keep it up by some pious observation, and said: “Consider, for your comfort, what a good work you are doing, and how you will be rewarded for it.”

Whereupon Mere Durand stopped her moanings, to answer with righteous severity “Our own good works, monsieur, are not what we poor sinners ought to be thinking of, as you very well know.”

Tardif knew nothing of the kind; but as she had called herself “a poor sinner,” he felt there was room for a compliment; “and I can’t be wrong there with a woman,” he thought. “I am sure,” he said, “that mademoiselle is not a poor sinner, but a person of irreproachable life and manners. And even if there were any little frailties, the work we are about now would merit their pardon.”

Happily, Mere Durand did not hear the last sentence distinctly, but she caught the one word “merit,” and her Protestant soul was stirred within her. “Who dares to speak of merit with us worms of the dust?” she began indignantly, when a brisk voice beside them interrupted, “Ho, Mere Durand, is that you?”

The newcomer, whom Tardif blessed in his soul, was one of a group which had just joined their party. He was an old friend, and Mere Durand took her hand from Tardif’s arm to greet him. Tardif slipped away in the darkness to rejoin Gaspard, thanking his luck and saying to himself, “‘Tis well I got off! If I had tried a little more of their talk, she might have taken me for a spy. Queer folk these Huguenots! one knows not what to be at with them. If they like to call themselves worms of the dust, ‘tis not my affair. Save for Gaspard; if they put such a name upon him, a gentleman born, they shall reckon for it with me. Worms of the dust, forsooth I while the great king of France, with his millions at his back, bids them just say their prayers in Latin instead of French, and they stand up before him and answer ‘No!’”

If Tardif had understood, he might have added, “That is the kind of ‘no’ that shakes the world.”

Elene, meanwhile, reeked little what was the road, or whom they met. The night was so dark, she scarcely even saw who walked beside her in the ever-thickening throng—only she felt the hand of Isabeau in hers. Her feet were weary indeed, but she felt as if soul and body stood wholly apart, and the one had no power at all to touch the other. “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go up to the house of the Lord,” her heart kept singing to itself. And presently she became conscious, with a new thrill of joy, that all around her, they were singing too.

Far enough now from the haunts of man to sing the praises of God without fear, the crowd was lifting up its voice in grand old Huguenot psalms, rolling to the clouded skies such words as these:

“We’ll crowd Thy gates with thankful songs,

High as the heaven our voices raise;

And earth, with her ten thousand tongues,

Shall fill Thy courts with sounding praise.”

At last they reached the place of meeting, a secluded valley amidst lonely pasture-lands, where the few inhabitants were favorable to the Cause. It seemed, as they approached, as if the stars, invisible in the sky, had come down to the earth instead, for many torches of pine wood, swaying to and fro in the hands that held them, shed a flickering light over the mass of heads. To Elene it seemed as if every inch of standing-room must be filled already. But the crowd, with the magic of sympathy, quickly shook itself into order. The courteous strangers found seats for Elene and her companions on a rising ground, where they could see and hear, and remained beside them.

A rude platform, made of trunks of trees laid together, had been erected in the midst, and zealous hands were hastily draping it with black, which the women eagerly pulled off their aprons to supply. More people were arriving every minute, and crowding into every spot within earshot of the platform. And all the time the singing went on. Psalm after psalm was started, none knew or cared by whom, but all united in the sacred strains, and sent them rolling upwards to the throne of God.

At last a young man in peasant garb mounted the platform. A hush of expectation fell upon the crowd, a hush so deep that Elene clearly heard her young neighbor’s excited whisper— “It is—it is—the servant of M. Beauclaise.”

“Chut!” said the older man imperatively.

There was a movement in the crowd. Those who had room to kneel, knelt; the rest stood up in their places, with hands reverently clasped. Then the young pastor’s loud clear voice rang out. “O Eternel!” he cried, using the Huguenot rendering of the Hebrew “Jehovah.” And at that one word Elene broke down utterly and sobbed. For, thus uttered, it brought back to her the sad changes of earth; she heard again the voice of her father, as he offered the proscribed worship within closed doors at home. Then, with a great effort, she grasped herself again, to join in the passionate prayer that followed. These oppressed and tortured people cried with full hearts to God. Yet not for vengeance, not mainly for deliverance even: they suffered, but they thought more of their sins than of their sufferings. What they implored, with tense and absorbing earnestness, was not so much the rest from persecution, as the peace He could give them in it, the sense of His pardon, the shining of His countenance, the gift of His sanctifying Spirit.

After the prayer, the people still knelt, or stood with heads reverently bowed, while the pastor recited the ten commandments and the solemn confession of sin. Then, still kneeling, they all chanted, low and softly, the opening verses of the 5th Psalm.

The sermon followed. The text was from the Song of Solomon—that book so perplexing to the learned, yet so precious in all ages to suffering souls, with whom is the secret of the Lord. “I sleep, but my heart waketh; it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh.” The young Cevennol peasant whom a living fear of God and a passionate love of God’s servant had transformed into a saint and a hero, poured forth a torrent of untaught, untutored eloquence, which carried all his hearers with him. Or rather, it was his theme that swept both them and him away upon a mighty tide of emotion. That theme was not Protestantism, not liberty, not a creed, not a doctrine, not a cause, not even a principle. One brief word can tell it all—it was Christ. He was the Beloved of the soul. It was His voice each one of them had heard, through the sleep of sloth, of fear, of indifference. He it was who was knocking at each heart, and each heart was responding to the knock. For these children of sorrow were “athirst for God, even for the living God” that God who reveals Himself in the face of Jesus Christ. There, as ever and as everywhere—whether in grand cathedral or humble meeting house, on mountains or in deserts, or in dens and caves of the earth—He, when He is lifted up, draws all men unto Him.

For two full hours that sermon lasted, yet no one seemed to grow weary, or even to think it long; when we pay dearly for anything we like to get good measure.

Then there was more singing, followed by a stir about the platform, and a movement amongst the audience, some of whom were trying to press through the throng and come forward.

Elene rose as if to join them, but Isabeau held her back.

“Wait,” she said. “It is not time yet for you. You have taken the Holy Supper before, have you not?”

“Yes, once,” Elene whispered. At the remembrance of the hallowed scene—when they had the rare privilege of a visit from a pastor—her tears fell quickly.

“And you have not since in any way denied the Faith? This is for new communicants or for penitents.”

Elene sat down again, and noticed, as she did so that the youth beside her was on his feet—was moving through the crowd with bowed head and reverent air. His companion had not stirred. She thought she distinguished that young voice amongst the others as one by one the penitents renewed their vows, and the newcomers also “enrolled themselves as faithful soldiers, ready to follow everywhere their Divine Captain”; and she put up a special prayer that he might be found faithful.

Then followed the blessing and the distribution of the sacred symbols, of which almost the whole assembly partook reverently, many of them with tears.

Of course a long time was occupied in this way. Such Assemblies usually lasted three or four hours, and this was not one of the shortest. Even when all was over, the people were slow to disperse. Crowds pressed round the preacher, every one eager to have a word from him, even if only a word of greeting.

“Shall we go too?” Elene whispered to Isabeau.

“I think not, m’amie: there are too many. The pastor will be kept for hours talking to one and another. They ought to remember he has a long way to go, and must be very tired.” After a pause she added, “Can you see the two men who helped you so kindly anywhere in the crowd? Perhaps, if they happen to have no food with them, we might ask them to share ours.”

But the strangers had disappeared in the throng, and neither Elene, Isabeau, nor her mother could see anything of them—the rather as most of the torches were out now, and it was very dark.

When, after a brief interval for food and rest, the long homeward march was begun, Isabeau asked Elene anxiously, “Are you tired, dear?” For she thought the severe and prolonged exertion might well be too much for the delicately reared young lady.

They were just emerging from the valley and reentering the open country. The clouds had cleared away, but the moon, upon which they had reckoned so vainly, had recently set. Instead, the glorious company of stars shone out, resplendent in the clear luminous air of that southern clime. Through eyes that were full of happy tears Elene looked up to them. “How could I be tired?” she said. “Think, if it were my dear father who is now beyond you stars, whom God allowed to come back and sit beside me and talk to me just for one brief hour—could I be tired then, or wish the time were gone? And this was better. For One greater and dearer has come to us. And He will stay. But I cannot speak of it.”

Elene’s experience was not singular. Many a heart, in those proscribed assemblies, was thus uplifted out of sorrow and fear into mysterious and ineffable joy. It was no doubt in testimony to this that the sermons of Portal’s master and inspirer were published in a foreign land under the title of Manna of the Desert. The true Manna, however, was not the sermons, but the joy—that “joy, strange and solemn, mysterious even to its possessor,” which has been given—ay, a thousand times over—not in forbidden assemblies alone, but in dungeons and on scaffolds—in every possible scene of earthly desolation and suffering. And so it is given still, as of old, “in the desert.”

The Israelites, who gathered and ate it, yet knew not what it was. They called it Man hu (what is it?), for it was a mystery. Thus it is with the “Hidden Manna,” the joy God gives His children in the midst of suffering. Moreover, in the old symbolic history we read that as soon as the Israelites crossed the Jordan and ate of the new corn of the land, the manna ceased, and forever. Henceforth they had the grapes of Eshcol, the wheat, and the oil, and the wine, the milk and the honey of the good land; but never more, through all their generations, did they taste of the manna of the desert. Did those who remembered it strange mystic sweetness ever long for it amidst all the luxuries of Canaan? Do the host that have gone before us, “the spirits of just men made perfect,” eves cast a longing thought, amidst all the joys of heaven, to the one joy they can never taste again—the joy they had in the furnace of affliction, when Christ Himself walked with them there?

We cannot doubt, at least, that they remember it and that He remembers it too. Was not a golden vessel, filled with the manna of the desert, laid up within the very Ark of the Covenant itself, as a “memorial” unto all generations? Dare we say that in the very heart of Christ Himself, who is the true Ark, there lies enshrined forever the remembrance of that ineffable communion which those who partook of His sufferings had with Him in the desert of their tribulation?

Chapter 20: Someone Wants to Offer Sacrifice

“There is a power within me which withholds,

And makes it my fatality to live.”

—BYRON

THE return of Isabeau and Elene to their hut in the ruins was delayed by the illness of Mere Durand. Hardened by a life of labor and privation, and strengthened by an indomitable will, the old woman had borne up bravely through all the fatigue and excitement of the day and night. But when the great event was over, the inevitable reaction followed. She was brought with much difficulty to the nearest Protestant dwelling, a lonely farmhouse called Coque-lebas, and there she collapsed utterly. It had been her great wish, she said, to hear again the preaching of the Word, and to partake once more of the Holy Supper. Now this was granted, it was time for her to die. Only, she added, she could not help wishing it had been dear old M. Bayle who administered, instead of that peasant lad from the mountains.

However, after taking some warm soup and enjoying several hours of sound sleep, followed by a nourishing meal, she announced her preference for dying at home, and her intention of returning there on the following day. So determined was she, and so much better did she appear as that day went on, that in the evening two young men of the farmhouse carried her in a chair to the bridge, and she was able to walk the rest of the way, with the help of Isabeau and Elene.

After their return to the hut, whilst Isabeau was occupied with cares for her mother, Elene noticed a scrap of paper which someone, during their absence, had pushed under the door. It bore no superscription, and just the following words: “Mademoiselle, you ought to leave the place where you are at once. There are those who are seeking for you, under directions from an exalted quarter. Think of a great black dog, and you will remember the writer of this warning, and believe that it comes from a friend.”

“A great black dog!” said Elene to herself. “What have I ever had to do with black dogs?—Oh, I remember!—That kind priest who saved us, and took us to the convent! The ‘exalted quarter’ must mean the bishop. He would be angry with the nuns for letting me escape, and would have me hunted. There is nothing for me now but to go away and hide myself.”

Reflection only increased her conviction that the case was urgent. If she were tracked to her present resting-place, the consequences to Isabeau and her mother, who had hitherto escaped so well, might be frightful. So she made her plans, with the promptitude and decision which nature had bestowed and the stern teaching of peril had developed.

She had slept soundly the previous night, and she felt now as if she should never sleep again. There was little opportunity of consulting Isabeau, even if she had wished to do so, for Mere Durand was ill and feverish, and for most of the night her daughter was unable to leave her. Not until near morning did the continued silence convince Elene, who sat watching in her own little chamber, that both were really asleep. Then she stole noiselessly into the kitchen. Knowing how welcome Isabeau would make her to the black cloak she had worn at the Assembly, she put it on again, and also put in her bag a supply of rye bread and soft strong cheese. Pencils were not then in common use, and Isabeau’s one pen and tiny ink-horn she could not find. She had to content herself with pinning the note of warning to the window-curtain, where Isabeau could not fail to see it. Then, with a silent prayer that God would bless this dear friend, and reward her abundantly for all her loving-kindness, she stepped out into the darkness. She intended to go first to the farm of Coque-le-bas, and to obtain from its kindly inmates, if not shelter, at least direction and guidance for the way.

For the third time within four months she went forth not knowing whither she went. The danger was greater than ever it had been before, for she knew herself pursued; yet she had never felt so calm: the Presence which had drawn so near in the great Assembly was with her.

Nevertheless, the great physical exertion of that night had told upon her. She crossed the bridge and went for some distance into the open country; then she was forced to sit down to rest; and, spite of her urgent peril, sleep overpowered her—sweet sleep.

When she awoke she felt much better—sat up and looked about her. She was on the slope of a grassy hill, looking over a wide field, at one side of which was what seemed like a disused quarry. It was full daylight now; the sun had risen, and the light and heat were cheering. The place was quite solitary; not a living thing was in sight. “I am alone,” she said to herself, “and yet—no; God has not left me. He will keep and guide me.”

Then her thoughts turned to the Assembly, and all she had heard, and seen, and felt there came back to her mind. Scripture words of comfort quoted by the preacher, and fragments of inspiring psalms chanted by the great congregation, crowded upon her memory, until the place seemed no longer lonely, but filled with high companionship—even with the very highest.

Thus heartened, she could eat and drink; she even felt the need of it. She took out her bread and cheese and ate with good appetite; then began to wonder if there was no stream within reach at which she could quench her thirst. As she stood looking about her, someone approached her from behind, but his footsteps were so silent on the grass that she was not aware of him until his shadow fell over her.

Turning, she saw a very old man, very tall and of dignified appearance. As he came forward and stood before her, she saw also that his hair was snow-white and very long, and his beard equally white and longer still, reaching almost to his waist. Both hair and beard were well cared for, and his short cloak was of good material, though frayed and faded. So was the just-au-corps beneath it, and his long silk stockings were full of holes. He wore a belt of tanned leather, in which was stuck a long knife. His sunburned face was a mass of wrinkles, but his eyes were marvelously bright and piercing; Elene felt them go through and through her.

“Mademoiselle,” he said—and she at once recognized the voice of a man of culture— “I see you have food with you. Will it please you to give me a little? I can pay for it, and pay well.”

Elene could see that his form was worn and wasted, and his eyes, with all their sinister brightness, had a hungry look in them. Still, if he had money, why should he be in want of food, and that so near a town, where it could be easily procured? A possible explanation occurred to her—he might be a hunted fugitive, a brother in the Faith, perhaps even a pastor.

He observed her hesitation, and said, with a touch of scorn, “Mademoiselle need not look so doubtful. Does it not occur to her that I am the stronger, and could help myself if I chose?”

But at the semblance of a threat Elene’s spirit rose.

“Monsieur,” she said, “I do not give it to you through fear or for payment. But because I think you are hungry, I give it to you for the love of God.” As she spoke, she handed him the remainder of her bread and cheese.

“I take it,” said he, “for the love of bread, not for the love of God.”

“But you will give thanks to God for it?” said Elene longing to know if her conjecture was the right one.

“I give thanks to my God,” the stranger answered, as with a will he fell upon the food, which quickly disappeared.

Elene noticed that he did not make the sign of the cross, which looked as if he were a Huguenot; but then would any Huguenot have said, “Not for the love of God”?

When he had finished, he asked abruptly, “Where do you come from?”

“From Negrepelisse,” was the cautious answer. “And whither are you going?”

“I was going to a farmhouse called Coque-le-bas.” “Do they expect you there?”

“They do not.”

“That is just as well,” said he, with a smile, half scornful and half cunning.

Elene began to feel uneasy. Anxious to find out, without betraying herself, what he really was, she said, “Tell me, monsieur, I pray of you, what you meant just now when you said, ‘I give thanks to my God.’ Do we not all worship the same God, whether we be Catholics, or of the people called Protestants, or Huguenots?”

A wild discordant laugh rang out upon the air. Elene began to fear that a madman was beside her, alone in that solitary place. Yet the answer was quiet enough. “Tell me your God, and I will tell you mine.”

The thought of Him she was challenged to confess brought back her courage. She answered, with an upward look, bright with hope and confidence, “My God is the All Great, the All True, the All Merciful. So merciful, that when I cry to Him now in my heart, I know He hears me, and will keep me from all danger.”

“Will He? Aha!—that remains to be seen. And yet, perhaps, to so fair a worshipper—But I promised to tell you of my God. He is very great, and very powerful. In fact, the whole earth obeys and serves him. Especially the great of earth, kings, princes, nobles of the Sword and of the Church, who govern all the rest. Yet they do not know him. They think all the time that they are worshipping the other God, your God, ‘le bon Dieu,’ as they call Him. But they deceive themselves. Listen, mademoiselle. It is a great secret; but I will tell you all about it.” His voice sank to a mysterious whisper; and he came quite close to her, his lips almost touching her ear. With a new sensation of fear, she drew away from him instinctively.

He perceived it, and drew away also, a little. “Pardon me, mademoiselle,” he said, with the tone and air of a polished gentleman, “I alarm you. There is no need—at present. I pray of you be calm and listen to me.”

“I am listening. But, monsieur, I pray of you, do not blaspheme the good God.”

“I cannot, even if I would. For—listen to me—the good God is dead.”

“Poor soul!” thought Elene. “He is mad—quite mad.”

“Ah, that surprises you. But I will tell you more. Once upon a time—long, long ago—before the making of the world, there were two gods, the good God and the bad one, or as we say now, God and the Devil. But as the ages went on they disagreed and fought together; which indeed, in the nature of things, they were sure to do. The bad god was the stronger. He overcame the other one, and killed him. So he is reigning now.”

“God help you, poor lost soul! How terrible for you to think such things!” Elene exclaimed, her fear of him overcome by horror and pity. He was certainly a madman, but he seemed to be a harmless one.

He gave a kind of low chuckle; and then, with an air of solemn and superior wisdom, went on, “But the beauty of it is, the world does not know anything about all this. Men say, and think too, that ‘le bon Dieu’ has gone on reigning in His heaven for all these ages; as secure and as supreme as His image King Louis the Magnificent, the Sun King, the God upon earth, who is reigning in Versailles. But ask yourself if that is a likely story. Le bon Dieu, I was taught in my youth, gave us the Ten Commandments. Who thinks of obeying them now? King Louis, forsooth!”

“Still, everyone knows he ought; and that if he does not, God will punish him,” said Elene.

“Unless he contrives to buy Him off by paying money, or by punishing other people in His name, as King Louis, the Pious and Magnificent, tortures Protestants here, that God may not torture him hereafter for breaking those very commandments in the face of all the world. But a young demoiselle of quality, as I see you are, in spite of your dress, cannot he expected to know anything about these things. Still, even in your short life, what have you seen—what do you see—about you? Wrong, oppression, cruelty. Men slaying, imprisoning, misusing each other, and all in God’s name! At least let them tell the truth. They will find, I think, when they come to die, that it would have saved them something.”

The madman—for now she did not think, but know him to be such—fixed his glittering eyes full on her face, and went on, with the air of one who had reasoned out the whole subject; “Would not any king on earth punish most severely those who, though forced to obey him, persisted in denying him his name and his title, and ascribing his honor and glory to another? So will my lord and king, whom men in their foolish speech call the Devil, punish with fire and brimstone those who deny him; while he will honor and reward the few who, like myself, open their eyes to the truth, see the facts of the world as they are, and give their homage and their worship where it is justly due.”

“Oh, how horrible! This is worse than madness,” thought poor Elene. “He must be the wicked hermit Sceur Adele spoke of in the convent. She said he worshipped the Devil.” She tried to speak, but her throat was dry, no sound came from it.

“Do you ask me,” he continued, “the nature of that worship? In what it consists?”

With a great effort she answered, “No; I do not. But I ask you to consult some learned man, some bishop, if you will, such as Monseigneur Flechier of Nimes,” naming one who was held in repute for his learning and his eloquence, even by Protestants.

Again came that harsh, discordant laugh, jarring every nerve in her body. “Thank you, mademoiselle, for the kind suggestion! You would wish me to lay my head on the scaffold—if I were not noble, I should say my limbs on the rack or the wheel. For know that the worship of the Devil, like all other worship, consists in prayer, adoration—and sacrifice.”

A new fire, as he spoke, came into the glittering eyes. One bony hand stirred uneasily, showing nails like eagle’s claws; then was clenched again, as if with strong effort.

“Sacrifice!” Elene repeated.

“Why not? The Apostle Paul said, of old, that the heathen sacrificed to devils. They were wise in their generation.”

After a meditative pause he resumed, still gazing on Elene, whom his wild eyes seemed to devour: “They sacrificed sheep and oxen, for they knew no better. As if the Power behind the world could be satisfied with these! Men are wiser now—witness the hecatombs of Huguenots offered up by wheel and gibbet, by imprisonment, torture, starvation. The great truth has been learned at last—man must offer man. The Deity—call him God or Devil as you will—accepts at his hands no meaner sacrifice.”

Elene shuddered shrank together. What was coming next? The madman’s tones however had grown quieter. His words were as the words of one who mused, holding converse with himself. “By man, I mean of human race. Young, innocent, stainless must the victim be—none other will my Lord accept. It is long now since I served Him with burnt offering and with sacrifice. I have offered up a child—I have offered up a young lad. But better still, more precious and more acceptable, were a young maiden.”

He stirred, moved a little nearer, and the clenched hand opened again. Elene, with a desperate effort, raised her head, and looked him in the face.

What she saw froze her heart. He glared on her with frenzied eyes, and features transformed with passion—the true passion of the maniac, of the savage beast, of the human ghoul—the thirst for lifeblood hot and fresh from its source. Slowly, silently his right hand was moving towards the knife at his girdle. Elene ran for her life. In vain. A minute more and the inevitable happened—the madman’s clutch was on her throat.

“God is here—He will not let him kill me,” she thought, as the sharp steel flashed before her eyes. Next moment she had fallen to the ground with a violent shock. After that, she knew no more.

Returning consciousness brought with it the sense of pain, a sharp pain in her left shoulder, which in her fall had struck against a stone. She was still so dazed that this pain was the only thing she thought of. Brave girl though she was, she moaned heavily, and murmured, “My shoulder—oh, my shoulder!”

“You are in pain, mademoiselle,” said a kind voice at her ear, and looking up she saw a young face full of concern bending over her. “May I try to raise you? I think I could make you more comfortable.”

“Oh, where am I? what has happened?” she cried, as thought and memory began to return, and with them a thrill of terror.

“You are with friends, and quite safe,” said the kind voice again.

“Am I? Then that man—what has become of him?” As if in answer, a sudden terrible cry, a shriek of anguish and despair, smote on the ears of both. The lad sprang up, and ran as if to the help of someone, but presently returned again. “It is all right,” he said.

He found that Elene had raised herself without help; but the deathly pallor of her face alarmed him. “I must leave you again,” he said, “just to fetch a cordial.” “Oh, I am afraid—there was an awful man here, a maniac. If he should come back—”

“That I swear he will not, mademoiselle. Those my friend Tardif deals with seldom do.”

Gaspard ran down the slope and across the field, where the trampled grass showed plainly that Tardif and his foe had dragged each other in their deadly conflict. He and Gaspard had come upon the scene just in time. Seeing far off a man evidently threatening a woman, they ran to the spot, and Tardif dealt the madman a blow which made him loose his grip. At the same moment, Gaspard forced the knife from his hand.

“Look after the girl,” shouted Tardif, and locked his strong arms round his foe in a fight for life or death.

Each had the same thought. A little way off was the old disused quarry, which both were trying to approach, because each hoped to precipitate the other into it. They were well matched in courage, in cunning, and in fury; but one was in the prime of life, the other old, and in failing health; one was noted for strength and agility, the other had only the abnormal powers lent him by frenzy or fanaticism.

So when Gaspard approached, Tardif stood upon the height, breathless but victorious, gazing on the tumbled heap that lay, without sound or motion, on the stones beneath. He pointed to it without a word.

“Thou hast killed him!” said Gaspard.

“I hope I have,” returned Tardif the remorseless. “How is the girl?”

“Just conscious—I fear she will faint again.”

Tardif took a flask from his pocket and gave it to Gaspard. “Go and tend her,” he said, briefly. “I have work to do here.”

Left alone, he looked down upon his victim with grim satisfaction.

“Aha, M. de Rignac,” he said, “so this is the end of you and your devilries, and your human sacrifices to boot! You have gone at last to the god you worshipped, and the world has in it one bad man the less. No danger, though, of the breed running short! But whatever may become of your soul, your body is wanted still—or at least your clothes. Fine gentlemen like you do not run away from justice with empty pockets, and they have always friends somewhere to refill them for them. But the good Louis d’or, if useful, would be somewhat hard to get rid of with safety—for a man with the law at his heels. Not so much chance of spending them without rousing suspicion. Softly, though, Tardif, my lad, thy fortune is not made yet. If the rascal had a secret hoard, he may well have buried it in some of his hiding-places—which may be far enough from this.”

Before these reflections were finished Tardif stood beside his victim. Having easily satisfied himself that he was quite dead, he began a thorough search of his person. The clothing, which had once been rich and costly, was worn and faded, and in some places torn. It was now twenty-six years since M. de Rignac, the devil-worshipper, the child-murderer, had escaped mysteriously from the hands of justice. No doubt since then he had received secret supplies of money and clothing from his kinsfolk or friends, who were anxious to prevent the scandal of a public execution, but these must have been very uncertain and intermittent. Of late years too, as his malady progressed, the cunning and resourcefulness of earlier days was probably forsaking him, and he was beginning to forget, or omit, the careful disguises and other precautions he used to adopt.

Tardif feared at first that his search would be in vain. The short cloak was first torn off. That certainly concealed nothing. Just-au-corps and culotte were equally unproductive. But beneath the ragged shirt of fine linen, still marked with the “crown”—the sign of nobility—was a belt of soft leather much heavier than it ought to be. With an exclamation of joy Tardif pounced upon it, cut it open with his knife, and speedily extracted a goodly heap of shining Louis d’or. How he loved the look of them! He threw himself upon them, as if even there it was necessary to hide them from view. Once and again he counted them carefully. There were just forty-eight, no less and no more. But he would not leave the place until he had made a most exhaustive search for the other two which, as he thought, should have been there by rights. “The villain must have spent two of them,” he concluded, disregarding the greater possibility of his having had a hundred to begin with and having spent fifty-two! “But I cannot fool over them all day.” So saying, he concealed the belt and its contents about his person, and betook himself to the last and least agreeable of his tasks—that of disposing of the body, which he covered with a heap of stones. Then he joined Gaspard and Elene, who were now sitting together talking quietly. She leaned back against the bank, looking very pale and shaken.

“My brave friend,” she said, gratefully, extending her hand to Tardif, “I have to thank you for saving my life.”

“I have done few things in mine that gave me greater satisfaction,” he returned, thinking more of the killing of the man than of the saving of the maiden. “Is mademoiselle much hurt?”

“Oh, no; I was stupid enough to faint, being not long recovered from a fever. My shoulder was hurt a little, but it is now much better. M. de Montausier has put upon it his kerchief, soaked with fair water from the brook nearby.”

“Would I could have done much more, to serve Mademoiselle de Fressinieres,” said Gaspard, with a smile.

“Mademoiselle de Fressinieres! Then indeed we are in luck!” cried the delighted Tardif. “Does mademoiselle know we have been scouring the country in search of her, and of the infant heir of her noble house?”

“She does; I have just been telling her,” Gaspard answered for her. “And she has told me, what we suspected already—and what you, as I, will be grieved to hear—the babe is dead.”

“It is indeed a great pity,” Tardif said, and he said no more. This was quite as well, since his thoughts ran rather on the handsome reward he might have earned through him, and the deplorable fact that his inheritance would probably go now where honest folk would get no good of it, than on the fate of the child himself.

“I have told mademoiselle,” said Gaspard, “that the soldiers are still at the Château Mauzac, and that it is said Madame de Fressinieres has not yet conformed.”

“Yes; and very hard it is upon M. le Baron,” said Tardif. “The poor old gentleman hears Mass every day, and does all else he can to make his peace; yet there they are, and there they stay, for how long Heaven only knows.”

Elene’s low voice, not without a tremor in it, broke in here.

“But I pray you, M. Tardif, tell me what has become of that dreadful man?”

“He will never trouble you more, mademoiselle. He lies at the bottom of you quarry, as dead as the stones in it.”

“Quite dead? You are sure of it?”

“Why does mademoiselle want to know?”

“Because,” said Elene, though with evident reluctance, “if by any chance he lay there wounded—dying, perhaps—we ought to do something for his suffering body and still more unhappy soul.”

“Mademoiselle has a kind heart, but she need not trouble herself either about the body or the soul of M. de Rignac. For the first—as I told you already, he is dead as King Pharamond. For the second, he himself disposed of it long ago. When we were in Montpellier, we heard all about him, and were shown the place where his house used to be, in the very street M. Berbier’s kinswoman lodged in—the Rue des Augustins. Gaspard, you remember it all?”

“Yes,” said Gaspard, “and a horrible story it is. He murdered a poor little servant boy, and afterward a young child, a god-son of his own, to offer in sacrifice to the devil, whom he worshipped. He was condemned to death by the Parliament.”

“Ay, and had he been a poor man, the wheel or the fire would have been his portion. But, being a nobleman and rich, he had friends, and was allowed to sneak off somehow, and hide himself. ‘Tis said he roamed about the country, dwelling in caves and desolate places, and sometimes making believe he was a holy hermit, to get folk to give him what he wanted. Now, after six-and-twenty long years, this is the end of him. I, Gilles Tardif, have rid the world of a monster. I hope it will be remembered to me as a good deed when the balance is struck one day.”

“It ought to be remembered before that,” said Gaspard.

And Elene, who knew much more of the world than he did, added the remark, “No doubt there was a price set upon his head. Might you not tell your story to someone in authority, and claim that price?”

Tardif shook his head emphatically. “Pas si bête. No offense, young lady; but seeing that my own past will not bear inspection, as Gaspard here very well knows, and seeing that the dead man was a noble rascal, while I am only a base one, I should more likely get my reward on the rack or from the hangman than out of the coffers of M. l’Intendant. No, no! Let sleeping dogs lie, and sleeping villains too. We have got ourselves to take care of which will give us quite enough to do. Let us think about it now.”

“But tell me first,” said Elene, “how you and—and—M. de Montausier came to find me?”

Chapter 21: Thoughts by the Way

“Great thoughts, great feelings came to them Like angels unawares.”

MONCKTON DIILNE

THE finding of Elene by Tardif and Gaspard was in no sense the work of the great god Coincidence, the tutelary deity of the storyteller: it was the result of prolonged and careful effort. Commissioned and financed by Dr Berbier, they had gone to Mauzac, in the hope of getting hold of her and her little brother, and eventually bringing them safely out of the country. But they found them gone, no one seemed to know where. The whole place was in confusion, the truculent and greedy soldiers who had been quartered there working their evil will in storerooms, cellars, and stables, and threatening further mischief. Manon, nearly scared out of her wits, referred the inquirers to the Chaumonts, through whom they traced the fugitives to Negrepelisse. Concluding that the aim of Elene would be to reach the Cevennes, they went in that direction, after some consultation with the reserved and cautious Conseille.

But their efforts proved entirely unsuccessful. Even the sanguine Tardif, with all his faith in his own powers of “doing what he meant to do,” had to confess that they had lost the scent. They were almost in despair when, at a little inn, they came across the bride and bridegroom to whose wedding Elene’s blind acquaintance had been hastening. They were on their way to Rodez, where the bridegroom intended setting up as a blacksmith. The friendly carter had been a guest at the wedding feast, where he talked so loudly of the charms of the young peasant girl he had had the pleasure of accommodating in his cart, that the company drank her health with acclamations, and recommended him to give them another wedding soon, with the fair unknown for his bride. The bridegroom told the story again to Tardif and Gaspard, repeating the carter’s description of the extraordinary whiteness of the girl’s skin, and the beauty and delicacy of her hands. The result was, that he drank her health again in the best wine of the inn, and that Tardif and Gaspard returned next morning to Negrepelisse. Conseille could tell them nothing; but one of his daughters spoke with them privately, and told them under the seal of secrecy about the projected Assembly, for which she gave them the watchword. They went there in the hope of finding Elene, and actually did meet her, though in the darkness it could scarcely be said that they saw her. Yet Tardif heartily cursed his own stupidity and Gaspard’s for not having guessed who she was. “However,” he added, “‘tis all right now. The end crowns the work.”

“But it cannot have been pleasant for you to go to the Assembly,” said Elene, “since, I suppose, you are a Catholic.”

“So I am—with Catholics,” said he; “else I should be in the ditch myself, and not able to help you and M. Gaspard out of it.”

“We are very grateful for your help, of which M. de of which Gaspard has proved the value already. Where, think you, should we go now?”

“Back to Toulouse,” was the prompt reply. “We must report ourselves to M. Berbier, who sent us on this commission, for which I must account to him, He will befriend you and M. Gaspard, and help you on your way.”

“But,” said Elene, “I have my stepmother to think of. I must let her know about baby. Else she will break her heart.”

“Oh, if mademoiselle puts it in that way, I will see what I can do,” said Tardif the resourceful. So while Elene and Gaspard rested with their friends at Coque-le-bas, for the few days that her exhaustion rendered necessary, Tardif made another expedition to Château Mauzac, again succeeded in obtaining an interview with Manon, and sent word by her to Madame de Fressinieres of the death of her child. He gave her the note Elene had written, containing the comforting assurance that “le petit” had been tenderly cared for by the kind Sisters, and had lacked for nothing. Manon told Tardif, in return, the news (joyful to her) that her mistress had at length consented to become a Catholic, though it went hard with her.

“The soldiers threatened they would not let her sleep till she did it,” Manon said; “and, poor lady, she has heard of people driven mad by that treatment—which is what she thinks worse than death.”

When Tardif reported this to Elene, he added considerately, “I would not have told you so much, mademoiselle, but that I know you of the noblesse think it a point of honor not to change your religion. And it is a great consolation that, at all events, the soldiers must go now. They can do no more harm there.”

Elene had taken advantage of this interval to write Isabeau Durand a grateful and loving letter, telling of her meeting with Gaspard and Tardif, and her hope of being able, with their help, to leave the country. “That will be as God wills,” she said. “But since all my own—save my dear stepmother, on whom God have mercy—are now with Him, better would it seem to me, should He so ordain, that I should go to them. But there or here, or in the land of the stranger, shall I never forget thy kindness, dear Isabeau, my sister in Christ, and the only sister have ever known.”

The sons of the house at Coque-le-bas promised to carry the letter to Isabeau when next they went to the town.

The journey to Toulouse was short enough for even Elene to perform it on foot, while to the others it was nothing. For her sake, however, they arranged to stop two nights on the way. In their peasants’ dress they would awaken no suspicion, and the weather being warm and bright, they expected no hardship.

Tardif had recognized at once, and not without a pang of jealousy, that Gaspard and the young demoiselle were creatures of one kind, between whom there existed a sort of fellowship from which he was shut out. No fault of theirs, nor yet of his own. It was only that they knew each other’s language, and he did not.

So, after the first mutual explanations, and whenever there was nothing that had to be discussed in common, he adopted the habit of walking on before, or of falling discreetly behind, leaving them to each other’s society, while he pursued his private cogitations.

Gaspard was only about a year older than Elene, and in mind and character he was much younger. In most ways he was still a mere boy. His years of servitude with the smugglers had developed his active and perceptive qualities, but had been to the rest of his nature like a long sleep. However, he was awake now, in more ways than one; and many things which he could neither understand nor explain were stirring within him.

Elene, on the other hand, was a woman, who had felt, and thought, and suffered. In those days, very often, the Huguenot children had no childhood. It was said of them in the sixteenth century that “instead of playing, they talked together of martyrdom”; and it must have been equally true of the later generation, upon whom there had fallen “that worst terror of French or other history, the Revocation terror.” Witness the stories, which, if not well authenticated, would seem to us incredible, of the infant prophets and prophetesses of the Cevennes.

Wisely trained by her father, Elene had developed no precocious fanaticism, but a warm and living piety which sustained her through the troubles of her changeful lot. She was able in many ways to teach and to counsel her companion, who, for his part, desired nothing better than to learn from her. There can be no doubt that at this time the young Huguenot—without home, or kindred or resources, and bent upon an enterprise very likely to lead him to the galleys—was supremely happy. Three golden autumn days they walked together, past the pale stubble-fields, through shady woods and on again by vineyards in the sunshine where the rich fruit hung ripe. When they stopped to buy food, the peasants would offer grapes with their black bread. Bread and “the fruit of the vine” and living water from the brook: this was their fare-the sweetest Gaspard had ever tasted. All things in life were sacramental to him just now, because of that new and wondrous joy which had come to him on the memorable night when, in the breaking of bread, the Lord had made Himself known to him.

Naturally he and Elene talked much of the Assembly. “We waited a long time,” said Gaspard, “to get speech with M. Portal, that we might ask him for tidings of M. Paul Beauclaise.”

“M. Paul Beauclaise!” Elene repeated. “Why not give him his true name? Between us, surely, it may be spoken without fear.”

“I know no name for him but that. Nor did M. Berbier give me any.”

“He is M. Claude Brousson.”

“Oh!” cried Gaspard, in surprise. “I have heard my father speak of him—I remember it now. But I thought he was a lawyer.”

Elene, in reply, told him how the lawyer’s love for his brethren had changed him into a pastor of the desert. Berbier, no doubt, well as he thought of the lad, had been too prudent to trust so new an acquaintance with the perilous secret.

Too much moved for many words, Gaspard said, “He thought the Shepherd had found me. And I know that, at the Assembly, I found Him. For in truth He was there.”

“He was there.” So have witnessed abundantly, over and over again, the attendants at these proscribed assemblies of the desert. The preacher doomed to death, the hearers with penalties perhaps more dreadful hanging over them, and often ruthlessly inflicted—all with one voice have borne testimony to the joy they found there. For Christ indeed fulfilled to these His persecuted brethren, meeting in His name, His own promise, “I will be in the midst of them.”

Very different, meanwhile, were the self-communings of Tardif. His thoughts turned much on the hoard of De Rignac, of which he told no one, not even Gaspard. He said to himself that his “luck” (the only divinity he had much faith in) had sent him this gold in place of the reward he hoped to get from the friends of the infant De Fressinieres. They were beautiful those eight and forty shining Louis d’or. And more would come of them, for like ever comes to like, especially where money is concerned. He would go abroad with Gaspard to some foreign country. There, where his past was unknown, he would hold his head up, no longer a vagabond and an outlaw, but a man amongst men. He would trade with the money, and make more and ever more. Oh, yes, and he would carry on the smuggling trade, and get French wines, and other things, through some of his old companions—any clever man could manage that. So he would grow rich, and attain at last to—what? That was a question he never answered; but all the same he thought continually of the gold; he loved it, rejoiced in it, built his hopes for the future upon it.

Although revealing to Gaspard nothing of his plans, he gradually let him know that his thoughts were turning towards England, and that he liked the idea of accompanying him thither, even if (and this seemed more and more doubtful) he should afterward return to carry out his former project of conveying parties of Huguenots out of France.

The Assembly, that had meant so much to Gaspard and Elene, meant but little to him. Yet he could not help thinking of it sometimes. It had, in truth, surprised and disappointed him. He had gone there expecting to hear the secret hopes and projects of the persecuted Huguenots. He looked for fierce denunciations of the Catholic Church, for “curses deep as hell,” and vows of revenge upon their persecutors, for anticipations of their own deliverance through means of the English and other enemies of France. But neither in prayer nor in sermon was there a word of all this. “Either they or I must be dreaming,” he thought. “Surely it is they! Men and women in such straits, yet thinking only of their souls, and talking only of pardon and peace, and the Kingdom of Heaven while all the time the earth is being made a hell to them, and they sit still and bear it! Instead of the galleys, it is to the Bicetre they ought to be sent, for fools and madmen!”

Afterward, however, another thought found entrance into his shrewd though untaught mind. Evidently the things they talked about were to themselves intensely real, and supremely important. Like a man who sees a crowd all gazing steadfastly at a single point where he can discern nothing, he realized at last that there must be something there to see. And, looking where they did, he gradually began, for himself also, to see something, though very faint and far off. In fact, he began to feel “the powers of the world to come”— of that spiritual world, which is around us all, but which “the globe of many-colored glass” called Life hides from most of us, and especially from men like Tardif. But in him, as in every man, there was that which testified to its reality, and answered to its call.

“He was ‘ware of a sight and was ‘ware of a sound

Beyond seeing and hearing.”

That sound was the voice of God, that sight a dim, far-away glimpse of the meaning of good and evil, of truth, of righteousness, of love. Was the shining heap of louis d’or to distract his eyes from that new vision which was just dawning upon him?

Chapter 22: An Undesirable Relation

“Is there no stoning save with flint and rock?”—TENNYSON.

M. ANASTASE BERBIER, doctor of medicine, was seated—where we have seen him before, and in much the same frame of mind—in his study in Toulouse, a perplexed and worried man. As upon the former occasion, his worries were in no way professional; indeed, his affairs in that respect had taken quite a favorable turn. He had lately prescribed for one of the “capitouls” of Toulouse, with such success that the city magnate promised to employ no other physician, and also to recommend him to his friends. His scientific experiments were going on to his satisfaction he thought he was just on the brink of a considerable discovery; but as that was, more or less, his chronic state of mind, perhaps it does not count for much.

What did count for a great deal, and what was just then giving him grave anxiety, was the imminent peril of a dear friend. He could think of no way of safeguarding or succoring him—except, perhaps, through that clever knave Tardif something might be done M. Berbier gave Tardif credit not only for natural shrewdness, but for great skill in his own profession—that of smuggler and brigand.

Who better fitted to help a hunted man, beset by foes and with a heavy price on his head, to evade the myrmidons of law—he would not say of justice—and to get clear out of the country? But then, where was Tardif to be found? Since he had sent him, with Gaspard, to the Château Mauzac, to try if he could bring away the infant heir of the Fressinieres, he had had but one communication from him, and that one had been very disquieting. The soldiers were in possession; and before their coming, the babe and his sister had disappeared mysteriously. Certainly it was well they were away, but Heaven only knew what might, or might not, have happened to the helpless pair! And then, the condition of those left behind, at the mercy of savage soldiery who knew not what mercy meant! He had also received a piteous letter from the unfortunate baron. As for himself, he said, he had done all that was required of him; but his daughter, poor child, still continued obstinate, though he besought her, with tears, to yield to the necessity of the case. Could M. Berbier do nothing to help him?

Loud and angry voices in the salon beneath his study disturbed his meditations. “‘Tis that quarrelsome dog Jacques,” he said to himself; “I should like to break his head for him!” It was some time now since his protégé and servant, whom he called Jacques Fredon, had, by his orders, joined him in Toulouse. Gathering the skirts of his physician’s robe about him, he got up and went downstairs.

Jacques, who had been laying the table for supper, stood, an image of righteous indignation, with the spoons in his hand, over a ragged peasant girl who crouched before him in abject dismay. He was hurling at her a shower of abusive epithets, which his master promptly interrupted. “Stop that, Jacques, and tell me what has the girl been doing? Was she trying to steal the spoons?”

“Worse, monsieur—worse, a thousand times! She has come here to steal my name, my credit, my place—my life, if she could.”

“Nonsense, boy. Keep thy temper, and talk sense. Else I shall think,” he added, with a queer kind of smile, “I shall think she is thy wife, and has come to claim thee.”

“She might as well,” said Jacques, with a white face, “for she has the impudence to call herself my sister.”

“And a loving brother she has found, as it seems. But why so wroth with her, my lad? Little as thou rememberest of thy past, thou didst not think thou hadst fallen from the sky like a meteor stone—or that thy folk had a de’ before their name. If the girl is thy sister, thou shouldst be kind to her. But how did she find thee here?”

“I never do a good action but I suffer for it,” said Jacques Fredon, ruefully. “‘Twas the fault of that Gaspard”

“M. Gaspard, if you please. But what had he to do with it?”

“Made me write to the girl, through the cure. And then she must needs come here to hunt me. Who asked thee, little fool?”

Babette raised her pitiful, tear-stained face. “I thought you would be glad,” she sobbed.

“So he ought,” Berbier said, kindly. “Look up, my girl, and speak without fear. Thy brother is my servant, and I shall see that he treats thee properly. What is thy name?”

“Babette-Darcheau”—spoken with what the French call expressively “tears in the voice.”

“And whence art thou?”

“From a long way off. From the forest of Besogne, in Auvergne.”

“Poor child! And how camest thou all that way?”

“I walked—and I begged. People gave me food, and told me how to go. So I got to Montpellier. But they told me there that Philippe was gone to Toulouse. Then I went to the canal, where some kind people took me in their barge, and brought me here.”

“I wish they had drowned thee on the way,” said Philippe, of course to himself. “Did the old folk know of thy going?” he added aloud.

She hung her head. “No. But I had to go. When Gap went away, there was no one but me to carry the salt. I was not strong enough, and they were angry and beat me. Then they got a big lad, a young man who had been with the robbers, to do it. He was bad—I hate him! He wanted me to—to marry him, and they said I must, for then he would stay with them, and go on fetching the salt. So I ran away—like Gap.”

“The jade—” began Philippe.

“Silence!” said his master, sternly. “Give thy sister no ill words in my presence! Do not be afraid, Babette, we will be kind to thee. Thou shalt go now to Marie, my servant, who will give thee food and decent clothing. And if thou art a good girl thou canst stay here, and help her in the house.”

“But Philippe—my brother Philippe,” sobbed the girl. “Oh, Philippe, won’t you forgive me? I did not think you would be vexed—I thought you would be so glad.”

Philippe raised his hand and pushed her aside, not too gently. At that moment three other persons entered the room, and the astonished Berbier turned to greet Elene and Gaspard, who were followed by Tardif.

But Babette rushed between them like a whirlwind, and threw herself at Gaspard’s feet, her little shrinking figure and tear-stained face transformed as by a miracle.

“Oh, Gap!” she cried. “It is thou. Thanks to Our Lady and to all the Saints! Thou wilt take care of me! Thou wilt make him be good to me, and love me again as he used! See, Philippe, here is Gap! He will tell thee—”

“That thou art a fool, and that he is another himself—which is exactly what he looks at this moment,” sneered Philippe.

“Be silent, rascal!” said his master, angrily.

Certainly there was more than a shade of embarrassment in the face of the tall, handsome youth as he submitted reluctantly to the kissing of his hands and the embracing of his feet by the ragged beggar maid, who called him her dear, beautiful, big brother, and implored him to take care of his poor little sister, as he always used. He could not be unkind to Babette, the one friend of his miserable boyhood—and, moreover, had she not saved his life?

But what must Elene de Fressinieres think of it all?

Elene herself decided the question. She came to the side of Babette, put her arms about her, and tried to raise her.

“If thou art Gaspard’s sister, thou must be also mine,” she said, “for Gaspard is my brother too. But sisters do not kneel to their brothers.”

M. Berbier approached with ceremonial politeness.

“I presume it is Mademoiselle de Fressinieres whom I have the honor of addressing. M. de Montausier will you be so good as to present me?” But then, seeing the lad’s embarrassment and confusion, he brought the three travelers to his private room, after flinging a stern mandate to his sullen servitor. “Bring that girl at once to Marie, and tell her to take good care of her. And take heed, Jacques, that thou sayest not one ill word either to her or of her. She is thy sister.”

As soon as they were alone together, the three told their story. Berbier was much grieved to hear of the baby’s death, and the rather because he feared the objectionable kinsman would be the one to profit by it. Then Tardif told him of his late visit to the Château Mauzac. He found the household much relieved, he said, though the soldiers were still there, drinking, rioting, and stealing everything they could lay hands upon, in anticipation of their speedy recall. For madame had at last consented to renounce the heresies of Calvin.

Berbier expressed his satisfaction. “She showed her common sense,” he added. “And what said she, on hearing of the death of her child?”

“Nurse Manon told me she gave God thanks for him. But afterward she wept, saying she feared that now she would never come where he is, and his father.”

“Poor soul! God help her,” Berbier sighed, but it was in pity, not in prayer. Then he questioned them further as to their own adventures. When they came to their encounter with the devil-worshipper, De Rignac, he was greatly struck, and full of sympathy for the young lady who had gone through such a terrible ordeal. “Most people thought that villain dead long ago,” he said. “I was rather of opinion that he got abroad somewhere, under a feigned name. There was great talk of search for him at the time, but I doubt it ever meant much. You see, he was noble. Still, there was a large reward offered. Wilt do anything about it, Tardif?”

“Rather not,” said Tardif, shrugging his shoulders. “Monsieur is aware my merits are of a kind that bloom best in the shade.”

“And now,” said Berbier, “we must consider what is right to be done. Until we decide, Mademoiselle de Fressinieres must do me the honor of remaining under my guardianship. I will make her as comfortable as I can, and I believe she will be quite safe.”

Elene murmured her thanks, which were most sincere, and Berbier went on, “I fear M. de Montausier had best go to the inn with you, Tardif. Or, stay—if you will, Gaspard, you shall stay here with me. You will both be safe; I can answer for it. Marie never talks.”

“I do not fear her. But, monsieur, I do fear your young rascal of a lackey,” said Tardif.

“Fredon? Certainly he is no saint, rather the other thing. Still, I know him to the core, and I believe he would die rather than hurt me or mine.”

“Monsieur, I knew him before you did. And I do not share your faith. Oh, yes; certainly I go. The house is not big enough to hold Philippe Darcheau and Gilles Tardif together. But not to the inn where you sent me before— ‘tis too fine for me. The poorer the place, the more one learns in it.”

“But, my good Tardif, we must know where to find you.”

“You need not. Nor even Gaspard. I will come to your door every morning, and ask if M. Berbier wants wood for his stove. Then tell me what you please.”

“I will, friend. I may have more work for thee—before long.”

So Tardif went his way, and Berbier, having provided his two guests with needed refreshment, went his, to think what he could do with them.

The coming of Elene greatly complicated the situation. Strange to say, it was more difficult to deal with because of the baby’s death. The young lady might possibly have been sent out of the country with a party, in the character of the baby’s elder sister, or nurse. But alone—he could not see how to manage it.

There was one thing possible, indeed, and it had been done before now by modest Huguenot maidens of gentle blood and birth. She might make the perilous journey with Gaspard and Tardif in the disguise of a boy, the young brother of Gaspard. But not, if he could help it, should this desperate expedient be forced upon her. A better plan occurred to him. He would keep her in the house for the present as a patient of his own, suffering from some obscure disease, and sent to him for special treatment. Fortunately, there was a room where she could live in seclusion, as befitted her condition, and Jacques Fredon’s sister, who had turned up so opportunely (or inopportunely, from her brother’s point of view), might, if a capable girl, act as her personal attendant. Eventually she might, without exciting suspicion, be sent away for change of air, and thus be quietly got out of the country.

Gaspard, meanwhile, was more than welcome to live with him, as a son or a younger brother; Berbier only wished he might keep him with him altogether. But he fully understood now that this could not be. Still, he would ask him to be patient for a little while, until he himself saw clearly the next step that should be taken.

Tardif also must be patient—until the coming of tidings from Beam, which Berbier was expecting daily. Then, indeed, there might be work worth the doing, and worth the paying for, at any price. But at present this must not be hinted at, even in a whisper.

Chapter 23: An Interval of Quiet, and What Ends It

“For the world’s sake—called—elected—sacrificed.”—H. H. KING.

GASPARD very thankfully accepted the hospitality of M. Berbier, if only for the joy of remaining near Elene, who all this time was drawing him as the magnet draws the steel. It is true he did not see much of her, for the doctor insisted on her keeping up the role of an invalid, and passing most of the day upon her couch, with only Babette for companion and attendant. Babette, now decently attired in a white cap and apron, and a short gown and bodice of blue serge, looked quite a presentable little waiting-maid. But she was no longer the gentle, loving-hearted child Gaspard had left behind him in the hut of the Darcheaus. He thought it was first the unkindness and then the evil influence of her brother that changed and hardened her; but, little as he suspected it, he himself had a share in the transformation. Everyone knew that Philippe hated his sister; and no one wondered that in consequence her love for him was changed, if not to hatred, at least to bitter wrath. But the strange thing was that she also hated Elene, who was uniformly kind to her, teaching her to sew, and even to read. Though she never showed the slightest gratitude to her gentle, patient teacher, she eagerly accepted the lessons, especially the reading lessons. “When I can read,” she said to herself, “I shall be as wise as M. Gaspard; and then, perhaps, he will care for me again.”

One day Gaspard, to whom M. Berbier had given a few small coins for pocket money, bought a bunch of autumn violets and sent them to Elene by Babette.

Shortly afterward, in passing through the courtyard, he felt something touch his forehead. Looking up, he had a glimpse of Babette’s face at a window, and then looking down, he saw the violets on the ground at his feet. He caught them, and taking the steep and narrow stairs three steps at a time, confronted the delinquent. “What didst mean by throwing my flowers out of the window?” he asked, angrily.

“Did not know you were there.”

“What has that to do with it? Why didst not give them to mademoiselle, as I bade thee?”

She pouted, shrugged her shoulders, and muttered sulkily, “Mademoiselle would none of them.”

“Didst ask her?”

“Of course.”

“Then I go to ask her why she refused them,”

Gaspard answered, and went.

The next time he saw Babette, he spoke to her sternly:

“Babette, thou hast lied to me.”

“What if I have?” the girl said. No one had ever taught her that a lie, in itself, was wrong.

“This—that I can never trust you again.”

“Tell me something new, M. Gaspard. ‘Tis long enough since you trusted poor Babette Darcheauor cared for her. Oh, I know why! You are noble now, forsooth. You are not Gap any more, you are M. de—de—I can never remember that fine name of yours! And you—you—never remember—” Here her anger changed to a passion of tears, and she sobbed out the rest, “You never remember it was poor little Babette who found out where you were when you fell into the hollow tree—and saved your life,”

“I do remember it all, Babette, and I want to be your friend,” said Gaspard, with pitying kindness in his voice.

“Pretty friendship! Much you care what becomes of me! Mademoiselle is the only one you care for now. You would see me hanged tomorrow if it would save her dainty little finger from being hurt. Philippe was the first to turn against me and cast me off. And now—you!”

Gaspard’s pity was great, but his bewilderment was greater still. He had no skill to deal with her trouble, and no comprehension of it, except so far as it was caused by the unkindness of Philippe. Of his own share in it he had been until then blissfully unconscious.

Babette, however, knew him better than he knew himself, and was quite aware that Mademoiselle Elene was his princess, his star, while the poor little friend of his childhood (she thought) was just a forest flower, liked for a day and then thrown away and forgotten. Adoration for the one, careless pity and kindness for the other, might be the right and natural thing—but the other could not be expected to like it!

She was very angry, because her anger was the measure of her love. She loved Gaspard with all the passion of her narrow, ignorant, untrained soul. She would gladly have waited on him hand and foot, and that without reward or recognition. As Philippe told her tauntingly, “You would like to wax his boots for him, and invite him to kick you with them afterward.” As for Philippe himself, he hated Gaspard even more than he hated his unlucky sister. He was very jealous of Berbier’s affection for him, and not without reason, for Berbier often turned for companionship, and even for assistance in trivial matters, to the younger lad, who was bright and sympathetic, and at the same time thoughtful and intelligent. Gaspard, on his part, disliked Philippe and despised him. His conduct towards his sister seemed to him the essence of cruelty, and, moreover, of meanness and ingratitude.

Berbier also was disappointed in his protégé. “I had done better,” he confessed to Gaspard, “to have left him in his native ignorance, a stupid clodhopper, who, knowing no better, would have served me as faithfully as a dog and a horse. But I must needs in my folly, make a philosopher of the young rascal and fill his empty head with ideas too big for it. I should have left him at least a saint or two to be afraid of, if not to reverence. Yet still, and with all his faults, I can trust him, and trust him wholly, with my own life and my own interests. But,” he added, musingly, “there are lives more precious than mine. That is the reason why I keep thy friend Tardif waiting here. I have, in fact, in my thoughts a business of much difficulty and of great importance, in which I am minded to employ him; but I cannot speak of it at present. I think he is entirely to be trusted.” To which Gaspard assented heartily.

In the weeks that followed for Elene and Gaspard, a life of peril and excitement seemed to be dwarfed into a life of small things, like a broad swift stream compressed into a narrow channel. But under the protection of the much-respected doctor, they were at present in safety, as no, one cared to meddle with him or his household, and this in itself was a wonderful boon. They were well cared for, and the days were happy. They did not exactly fret at the delay, though certainly they were surprised at it, So was Tardif; and, unlike the others, he fretted at it. He began to think that if M. le Docteur had really anything in view for him it was time something came of it. Lingering idly about Toulouse with winter coming on so fast—for it was October now—was rather like burning a candle to look for a pin. Nevertheless he utilized the time, after his fashion, by fraternizing with all sorts of people in the great city—with peddlers, sailors, boatmen on the canal, even beggars and thieves—and gleaning from all these as much information as he could.

An event which touched not one of our friends in person, and yet in deeper ways touched all of them profoundly, brought the pause to an end. One morning Gaspard and Elene were together, busy over a Latin book of the doctor’s, which Gaspard, with much help from Elene, was trying to construe. Philippe knocked at the door. “M. Gaspard,” he said with ceremony—he always treated Gaspard with ceremony now— “you are to go to M. Berbier at once.”

Gaspard went. He found the doctor standing at the bookcase with his face turned away. For some moments he did not move. Then he turned slowly round, and Gaspard saw—what he had seen only once before, on the day his father clasped him for the last time to his heart—a strong man in tears.

“Oh, monsieur, what has happened?” he exclaimed.

Crushing down his emotion and steadying his voice, the doctor answered, “What, if there were the good God in Heaven you and he believe in, would not have happened. Claude Brousson is taken.”

A cry of pain was the answer.

“You know him as Paul Beauclaise. But even by that name we have never spoken of him together. It seemed wiser not.”

Gaspard bowed his head. Then, looking up with a gleam of hope: “But how know you? Perhaps it is not true. It has so often been said before.”

“It is too true. I have the tidings from a sure source—from my own correspondent in Pau. For many months past I have been in fear for him. In the summer I knew he was in Nimes, his native place, which is full of friends. While there, it appears he wrote a letter to the king.”

“A letter to the king!—He!—with a price on his head! It was—”

“Magnificent audacity,” said Berbier, supplying the word Gaspard could not find.

“But surely there could have been no use in it.”

“There was not. But that was ever his way. You could not shake his faith that there was some good in everyone, some sense of justice and mercy, if only you knew where to look for it. No doubt he thought the king did not know the accumulated miseries his Huguenot subjects were enduring—that his courtiers kept them from him. Which I dare say they do, in a measure. Our friend must have known very well what that letter was like to cost him. And, in truth, it set the spies upon his track. He was warned, and went to Foix, afterward to Bèare. My friend, a physician of Pau, wrote to tell me he was there, and that he had seen him. He thought him in sore peril, beset with spies. Then, Gaspard, it seemed to me that your friend Tardif was just the kind of man who could help him to get away once more from this miserable France, which is the grave of good men. He is cool, wary, full of resource, and not too scrupulous about trifles; and I know not what reward our friends abroad would think too great for him if he succeeded. So I have been keeping him here till I could hear more certainly where to send him. Too late now! Being tracked to Pau and denounced, M. Brousson went on to Oleron—where he was arrested.”

After a sorrowful pause, Gaspard asked, “What think you will be done with him?”

“I fear the worst. He is to be sent to Montpellier, to be judged by M. l’Intendant. I should pity the veriest scoundrel who was turned over to the tender mercies of Nicholas Lamoignan de Baville, of whom ‘tis said that he sups on new blood every night. But that man—” Gaspard saw the shudder that shook his frame, and could not ask him more. But he resumed: “My friend in Pau says he requested the Intendant of Beam. M. Pinon, to judge him himself. M. Pinon bears the character of a humane and moderate man, and is, moreover, a Jansenist. But it could not be; to Montpellier he must go.”

“Then,” said Gaspard, struck by a sudden thought, “he will pass through Toulouse. We may see him.”

“Not the shadow of a chance. Do you think they would allow it? My friend says he is most strictly guarded, no one permitted to come near him but the ‘Hoqueton’ who attends him. But go now and tell Mademoiselle de Fressinières. I cannot talk of it any more.”

Tardif heard of the arrest next morning, when he came as usual to the house of Berbier. He only said, “He earned it fairly, and now he has got it. There is nothing to complain of.”

Philippe agreed with him, a little too fully. “Serves him right,” said he. “Who pities him?”

Whereupon the unexpected happened. Tardif sprang upon him, seized him by the shoulder, and shook him like a rat. The weedy, loose-limbed lad was like a reed in the hand of a giant. Cries and struggles went for nothing; Tardif was paying off old scores, and he did it with usury. “There!” he said, when he let him go at last. “I have owed thee that since thou wast a mean-faced urchin of twelve, carrying salt in the wood of Besogne. Go now and whine to thy master.” Then saying, “I want Gaspard,” he went to look for him.

“Come out with me, Gap,” he said, briefly, when he found him. He very seldom used the old name now, usually saying “Monsieur Gaspard,” yet at times it seemed to come naturally to his lips.

They went out, walked to the riverside, and sat down in a quiet place near the Pont St Michel. It was a favorite haunt of theirs, when Tardif happened to wish for a few private words with Gaspard. This time however he seemed either to have nothing particular to say, or to be for some reason loth to say it. His first remark was general and vague.

“Water is useful. I was born near it, and I like it. Rivers are walking roads.” (He had never heard of Pascal, though he unconsciously quoted him then.) “So are canals. On a river or a canal many things may happen.” Then, after a silence, “I am not easy about that fellow.”

“What fellow?”

“Philippe, of course. Don’t you see he could send you any day to the galleys, and mademoiselle to prison or a convent?”

“Ay, but not without ruining M. Berbier, which is the one thing he may be trusted not to do.”

“There is nothing I trust him not to do—except it be something good. I wish we were out of this.”

“I think M. Berbier has a plan.”

“But he is slow—slow,” grumbled Tardif. “Here he keeps us hanging about, waiting for I know not what. I thought he had work for me—”

“Tardif, there was work he had thought of for thee. But now it is too late.”

Something in Gaspard’s voice and manner struck Tardif. It was in a different tone that he asked, “What kind of work?”

“You see, he has a correspondent at Pau. He knew from him that M. Brousson had gone thither—that he was still at large, but in great danger. He told me yesterday that it was his thought to send thee to him—secretly—to act, if he would have it, as his guide, and help him out of France. He thinks you could have done it.”

“Me!” cried Tardif, with kindling eyes. “Me!”

“He has formed a high opinion of thy courage and thy skill. He knows thou hast been fighting the law all thy life almost, and never yet hast got the worst of it. So he thought that in this case, thou—if anyone—could help.”

“That,” said Tardif, slowly and with emphasis, “that would have been worth doing.”

For once, by Gaspard, Tardif was taken at his own valuation, and mistaken. “Indeed it would,” said he, “there is nothing his friends would not have—”

“Stop!” cried Tardif, in hot anger, turning away from him. He felt at that moment as if a sudden flash of light had shown him the worthlessness of the gold he had been seeking. But the anger passed, though the illumination did not. He added presently, in a kind of shamefaced way, “I should have liked the job though.” No more was said about it.

Had Berbier been alone at this time, he would probably, as soon as he heard that his friend was to be sent for judgment to Montpellier, have arranged to go thither himself, that he might see the end, terrible though it was like to be. But the presence of his guests, and especially that of Elene, perplexed and embarrassed him. The thought of her fate, if she were detected in a palpable attempt to leave the country, was absolutely appalling. And he supposed that the danger of all Protestants would be increased just then by the arrest of the best known and most distinguished of their pastors, which would turn upon them the attention of the authorities, and quicken the activity of spies and informers.

Of Philippe, or Jacques Fredon, as he called him, he had no fears as long as Elene and Gaspard remained under his roof; but he did not feel so sure of what he might do if it proved necessary for them to separate from him, or if any chance deprived them of his protection. Without reference of course to his guests, he had taken care to impress upon Philippe the infamy which all honorable men attached to the role of informer. He related, for his benefit, what his correspondent had written from Pau. When the betrayer of Brousson came to claim his reward, M. Pinon drove him from his presence with the scathing rebuke, “Wretch, begone out of my sight! I wonder you are not ashamed to look men in the face, you who traffic in their blood.”

Berbier’s nature was deliberative, and rather slow-moving. While he waited on the one hand for some further news from Pau, on the other for some illumination as to the best thing to do for Gaspard and Elene, the days passed on. He came at last to the conclusion, with which Tardif agreed, that it would be easier to pass his protégés out of the country from Montpellier than from Toulouse, and that it was best in consequence that they should all go thither. Tardif and Gaspard could travel together; Elene was the difficulty. But a bright idea occurred to him at last. He would give out that he was going to consult the celebrated “Faculty” of Montpellier upon the perplexing case of his patient. She could travel in a litter, secluded from observation, and allowed to communicate with no one but himself and her personal attendant. This would be needful only for the start and the finish of their journey; the main part of it could be accomplished safely and easily in a barge on the canal. Once in Montpellier, he would know what to do. There were one or two of his old colleagues, who could be safely trusted with a hint that the disease of mademoiselle was no other than “Huguenotrie,” and the appropriate remedy—change of air.

He imparted his plans to Gaspard, and told him to tell Tardif. But Tardif meanwhile had been busy making plans of his own. One day, when he came to the house, his air of satisfaction, almost of triumph, struck Gaspard as something strange. “I have news,” he said.

They went to their favorite place near the Pont St Michel, and sat down. It was now late in October, and the weather was cold, but they recked little of that. “I also have news for thee,” Gaspard said. “The doctor has settled at last on a safe plan for bringing Mademoiselle Elene to Montpellier, if thou and I can manage the journey for ourselves, and meet him there.”

“Manage the journey!” said Tardif. “I mean to manage more than that. Tell me, M. Gaspard, what thing in the world do you wish for most?”

Gaspard hesitated.

“I do not mean going abroad to join your parents—but now, today—or tonight?”

“Oh, what use in saying?—what use in wishing for the impossible?”

“Impossible or not, you wish to see again the face of M. Brousson?”

“As well may I wish to see my father in England. Stay! Have you heard yet the news of the town? M. Berbier has. This evening they bring him here, and tonight, after dark, he is to travel with his guard in a boat on the canal.”

“Ay, and in that boat thou and I shall travel also. For I have guessed for some time that M. Berbier meant us to go to Montpellier, and I think, for my part, that he is—”

But Gaspard was not listening. He was staring at him in utter incredulity. “Thou wouldst not lie to me,” he said at last. “But this thing is impossible!”

“Why?”

“Dost think they would allow chance passengers a place in that boat?”

“No. But that boat, like all boats, needs men to work it: it will not manage itself. If one of the men is down with fever, and another, his son, must stay to look after him, the captain has got to find substitutes. I have shown him I am a man of my hands, and know all there is to know about boats and barges. He has accepted my services, and those of my son. That is all.”

“But how—how did you—”

Tardif cut him short. “That is all,” he repeated in the tone that ends discussion. Gaspard shrewdly suspected it was not all—nor perhaps would he have been greatly surprised to hear that the fever patient and his son were merrily drinking Tardif’s health with Tardif’s money in the neighboring town of St. Agnes—only he might have wondered where Tardif got the money to bribe them.

Presently Tardif let fall a few words, furtively, as if afraid of his own voice. “It is a night journey, and upon such there are chances.”

“Of what? Of getting speech with him?”

“Well, say I mean that. Now go to M. Berbier. Tell him we will start for Montpellier tonight, I have got places for us both in a canal boat—no more. Remember that. Get directions from him as to what we are to do when we get there, and be ready when I come for thee in the evening. And, Gap” (using again the old familiar name), “can I trust thee to stand by me, without pause or questioning, in whatever I may do this night?”

“Ay, canst thou! Tardif, I do not understand thee at all today. In God’s name tell me, what is it thou hast in mind?”

“There be many queer things which cross a man’s mind—and many impossible things which come to pass. Now go, and do as I say.”

Gaspard did not know, and he never was to know, with what shrewd and skillful management, with what address and tact—not to add with what unscrupulous lying—Tardif had secured for himself and Gaspard a place on that boat. He loved Gaspard as a son, and he would have done much to fulfill a strong desire of his, but there was far more than this in his astute and daring soul.

He had spent the best part of his life in a desperate conflict with the law. In that conflict he had often seen the law—the strong, hateful, cruel law—baffled and defeated, and that against the most desperate odds. Many a victim had he known who was saved from its pursuit, some even who were snatched from its grasp.

His thoughts ran upon an instance he remembered, that of a noted robber and murderer. But then he had friends to help him. Peste! Who would not help a friend who had such a doom before him—a doom which made the gibbet and the rope a welcome mercy? The awful wheel, the iron bar, the mangled limbs, the long, long hours of helpless agony—even the very boldest and most hardened shuddered at the thought! And it was a thought that, since that arrest at Oleron, had been in many a heart; certainly in that of Tardif himself, of Berbier, of Gaspard, and even of Elene, although no one of them ever voiced it in the hearing of the rest.

Chapter 24: On a Canal Boat

“The brave man is not he who feels no fear.”

NIGHT had fallen upon Toulouse—a chill October night, dark and cloudy. At the Bassin de l’Embouchère, the place of embarkation for the grand Canal of the South, a large well-appointed barge lay moored. The master and his men stood on the deck, waiting. Two of them carried torches, which shed a fitful light on their own forms and faces, on the planks laid down for entering the boat, and sometimes, as the wind swayed them, on the dark waters beneath.

“Here they come!” said the master at last. “Stand back, men, in your places.”

The approaching party could be seen well, and was well worth the seeing. The torches they carried shone upon the bright brass helmets and showy uniform of the men from the Marquis de Broglie’s regiment, with their captain at their head. In the midst walked two men in civilian dress. One was a capitoul of the city, in his robe of office; the face of the other was shaded by a broad-leaved hat, and he wore a scarlet mantle.

“But where’s the prisoner?” the master asked; and Tardif, who stood beside him, echoed the question.

There was a brief pause at the landing place, where the capitoul took his leave. Then the party, with the rhythmic step of trained soldiers, marched across the planks. The face of the man who wore the scarlet cloak was visible for a moment. Tardif felt his arm grasped, and heard Gaspard’s excited whisper, “‘Tis he!”

“Hush, fool!” said Tardif. Yet he could scarce contain his own surprise. No one could have looked less like a prisoner. There were no fetters on hands or feet to mark his condition. He wore the scarlet mantle—the dress of a well-to-do citizen traveling for pleasure—in which he had been arrested. His step was firm, and the toil-worn face, with its look of care and travail that Tardif so well remembered, had a quiet, peaceful expression, as of one going calmly about his usual work, with a heart and mind at rest.

Gaspard involuntarily moved a step forward as he passed. Claude Brousson looked at him, and their eyes met. Was there a gleam of recognition in those of the pastor? It seemed unlikely, but Gaspard held to his heart the belief that there was.

The party had supped on shore, and they soon settled to their rest in the cabin, which was given up to them entirely. On these canal boats, which were towed by horses, there was little work to do; it was sufficient if a couple of men kept watch at night, besides those on the towing path, who were driving the horses. The captain stretched himself in a sheltered corner, wrapped in his cloak, and the others did the same. But Tardif, who was steering, remained at the tiller, and Gaspard, to whom sleep was impossible, volunteered to share the watch. He crept to Tardif’s side as soon as all was still, and they talked together in whispers.

“Strange they have not bound him,” said Tardif. “But everyone says M. Pinon is a gentleman. Eh, M. Gaspard, what’s that you are saying? Pray for him? Yes, of course you do. But I” —he shrugged his shoulders expressively.

“Oh, but Tardif, you can pray.”

“Don’t you know I have given up aves and paters this many a year? But I can work, if you give me a chance. Not that I see a chance, mind you. I have taken stock of everything. Eleven men fully armed—and the boatmen too. No, they are not the fools to run any risks with a prisoner of such value.”

After a while, the two dropped into silence, each busy with his own thoughts. The night wore on slowly. Everyone except themselves seemed to be fast asleep. Some stir was occasioned at one time, by the passing of a lock, but after a little shouting and a moderate delay the boat resumed her silent, sleepy course through the dark still waters, and those on board resumed their slumbers, making up for lost time, as Tardif remarked to his companion.

“I wonder,” said Gaspard, “if he can sleep.”

“I wager he does,” Tardif answered. “Sleep is a strong master, who will be obeyed.”

“Think you there will be the chance of a word with him in the morning? If there were—”

“Hush, boy. Look!” Tardif interrupted.

Someone came slowly up out of the cabin, and he wore a scarlet cloak. His step was noiseless on the deck; not one of the sleepers stirred hand or foot, until he came where Tardif and Gaspard were. Tardif stepped back in his surprise, his hand still on the tiller.

“Stay, friend,” said Brousson, who thought perhaps that he was going to give the alarm. “I am as safe here as in the cabin. I have but come up to breathe for a few minutes the fresh air of Heaven. It is stifling downstairs.”

“Sit there, monsieur,” said Tardif, pointing to the seat Gaspard had left.

“Thanks, I had rather stand.” He was looking earnestly at the face of Gaspard, upon which fell the light of the lantern hanging at the mast. “My boy, we have met before.”

Gaspard was at his feet in a moment. “Oh, monsieur,” he said, “do you remember the wood of Besogne, the lair of the brigands, and the poor boy who carried the salt, and to whom you spoke so kindly?”

“Yes, my son, I remember all. I remember that the poor boy who carried the salt was the son of my old friend Gaspard de Montausier. Stand up, and let us talk together.”

“Do you remember, monsieur, the last word you said, not to me but to my friend here who came to look for me? You said, The wolf has not found him, but I think the Shepherd has.”

“And has He?” Brousson’s hand was on his shoulder. Half unconsciously they both turned, and stood leaning over the bulwark of the boat. They could dimly see the quiet water of the canal beneath, and beyond it the towing path, and the shadowy forms of the trees that fringed it. Low, and with a bowed head, Gaspard answered, “I think He has.”

“Then I have one thing more to thank Him for when presently I see His face. Tell me about it, dear boy.”

Gaspard’s voice was hard to find. The cheerful words moved him more than sad ones would have done. He faltered, “I can’t think of it now, for sorrow.”

“Nay, my child, do not grieve.” The hand which had rested on his shoulder came round him now. “Be brave. Remember that afterward thou wilt hear of me, but I shall not hear of thee. Speak, therefore, of thyself. For I think thou art God’s messenger, whom He has sent to me with a cup of water. He has been teaching thee since we met. How?”

“Your words, monsieur, burned in my heart. I could not stay there—I could not go on carrying the salt. Oh, I tried, indeed I did perhaps too long. The winter passed, the spring came, and there I was, still. For I knew just nothing of the world, outside that wretched hole, and I had no plan for getting away. I thought and thought—sometimes till I feared my head would burst. And I prayed. I knew I was changed, that I was changing every day. I had come to myself. I was not Gap the smuggler anymore, but Gaspard de Montausier.”

“And how, at last, didst thou get away?” asked Brousson, eager for the story.

“I had your letter, monsieur, to your friend at Montpellier. Besides, there was another reason. I wanted to find out the brother of my poor little friend Babette, the only living thing that cared for me in that horrible place—unless it were the dog. But my great reason was, that once at Montpellier I thought I could someway get abroad, and join my parents. So I went, trusting God to help me—and He did. At the Fair of Mende, He sent me the truest and best of comrades—Tardif, who is with me here.”

“Was not he one of the robbers I met you with?”

“Yes, but—I cannot understand him, monsieur—I don’t know if he understands himself. I think he was never the same man since that night he met you in the wood. He wants now to help some of our people out of the country. He says he can make more money that way than by robbery or smuggling. But I think it is not all that.”

“Was it when you went forth, not knowing whither, only because it was right to go, that you knew the Shepherd found you? If any man will do His will, he shall know of the teaching.”

“It was after that, monsieur. We went to Toulouse to find M. Berbier, who had left Montpellier and gone thither. He was most kind: when he saw your handwriting there was nothing he would not do for me. He sent us to Montauban, about a matter in which he thought Tardif could give valuable help, and there—But, monsieur, the story is long.”

“And my time is short. It would not be dealing fairly with my guards, who are most kind and courteous, to give them an unnecessary alarm. Tell me, therefore, of thyself.”

“We heard of an Assembly at a place near Negrepelisse. And as Tardif thought it might help us to find those we were seeking, we went. The preacher was the young man who was with you that night in the wood.”

“Ah, Henri Portal! And what said he?”

“I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. His words have gone from me—I can scarce recall one sentence as he said it. This, indeed, I know: he spoke of Our Lord—how he loved us—”

“Loved? Was that his word, Gaspard?”

“No, monsieur, his word was, ‘He loves us.’ He made me feel He loves me, wants my love, my service, my life, my all. And I said, I would give Him all, because He first gave all to me. Then I came to His Table, with the rest, to show it. And I think He was there.”

“My son—and my brother too in Him—I thank God for thee. Now listen, dear boy. His servant must not offer Him a worship which he thinks to be against His mind. But neither must he seek, uncalled, the martyr’s lot. Therefore, if thou canst find means to leave this land—”

“For God’s sake, sir, take off that cloak!” a rough voice whispered in his ear, and a hand pulled hastily at the scarlet mantle. Brousson turned round in surprise, and saw the eager face of Tardif close to his own. Absorbed in their talk, neither he nor Gaspard had noticed how near the bank Tardif had managed to steer the slow-moving barge. Anyone could step across. Now, having locked the tiller, he stood at the side of Brousson.

“The Lord hath delivered you out of their hands,” he said, his low voice vibrating with exultation.

“What do you mean, friend?”

“There is but a step between you and freedom, as you see. Every soul on board save ourselves is asleep, sound as a church. One moment, and you are on shore, and what can harm you then? The man with the horse will not; if he tries, I can deal with him. I will go with you, and the lad can follow us. Only take this cloak of mine in place of yours, which cries out, “Here I am.”

He would have pulled it off without ceremony and thrown it into the water, but Brousson’s hand arrested him. “My brave friend, I thank you right heartily. But this thing I cannot do.”

“Why? In God’s name, why? There’s no danger. Only be quick!”

“Nay, friend, it is impossible. I have given my word?”

“Sacre! what does that come to? An extorted promise is no promise. And how many broken promises is a man’s life worth, I should like to know!”

“Not one.”

In hot anger Tardif turned away. “Talk to him thou, Gaspard,” he said. “Thou and he may understand each other. I don’t!”

“Dear father in Christ,” Gaspard pleaded, his low voice thrilling with emotion, “can this thing be really wrong? God help me, I cannot believe it. And think what it means for us all!”

“I can think only of the word I gave, and the God who heard it,” said Brousson.

Tardif broke in passionately: “Listen to me, sir,” he said; “you refuse this chance—you stay here. Very well. Tomorrow you go to Montpellier. You are judged by M. de Baville, and of course condemned. Condemned—so much you know; but—may I ask—do you know to what?”

“I do.”

Tardif came close, closer still, until his face touched the other’s and his lip was at his ear, as he whispered through clenched teeth, “Do you know how long men take in dying—on the wheel?”

“I do.”

“Then you are not afraid?”

“I am afraid,” was the unexpected answer.

Tardif drew back with the surprise of it.

“Understand me,” Brousson went on; “not of death, but of what may come before it.”

“Yet you go to meet it, not because you must, but of free choice?”

“There is no choice for me. And also this I know: when the time has come, I shall be delivered from all my fear. For One will stand by me who has Himself been through the agony. I shall overcome in Him. But now, friends, I ought to go. For any moment some of the guard may wake and miss me, which would be neither for my credit nor for your safety. Tardif, brave and kind friend, I thank thee for thy generous thought. God reward thee. God bless thee, and bring thee safe to His Heaven. I charge thee to meet me there. Farewell.”

The rough, hard, trembling hand of Gilles Tardif met the sensitive, finely-molded hand of Claude Brousson in a strong, close grasp, which made an era in the life of the man who still had life before him. Then another hand was slipped silently into Brousson’s, and the two went together towards the cabin stair.

“Gaspard,” said Brousson, “help that man. He is worth it. I pray of thee to commend me also to my good and generous friend M. Berbier, who has shown thee so much kindness. Tell him I thank him; and I pray God to bless him, here and hereafter. And thou, dear boy, may God bring thee in safety to thy loved ones in England, and at last, with them, to the better Home in Heaven.”

“Dear father, will you give me a word of blessing also for Elene de Fressinieres, who was with us in Toulouse, and whom M. Berbier and Tardif are trying to save?”

“Elene de Fressinieres? Oh, yes; I knew her mother, and I heard of her death. God bless her—God bless you both with the blessing of Peace. Now farewell; for look yonder, the boat’s captain is stirring beneath his cloak. We must not be found together.”

A few minutes later, Tardif, who had resumed his place at the tiller, was rejoined by Gaspard, weeping bitterly. To the question, “Is all safe?” he answered, as soon as he could speak, “Yes, they are sound sleepers.”

“Gap,” said Tardif, after a pause, “I have seen many desperate men—men who feared neither God nor the devil, nor—what is more to the purpose—neither cold iron nor hot fire. Yet never one of them made me know what it means to be a brave man like M. Brousson when he said, ‘I am afraid.’”

Presently, with his disengaged hand, he took something from beneath his vest, and flung it into the water. Gaspard started and looked up. “A file,” said he, answering what had not been asked. “I took it with me—for, little hope as I had, one never knows what chance may do on a journey. But it was not wanted. Chance did better for him—and he would none of it! What a man wills, a man must. But the pity of it! Why, in God’s name, could he not have stayed in Germany or England, where he might have preached his religion on the housetops, if he would?”

“Because he loved his brethren, who are left here in the wilderness as sheep without a shepherd. And because he loved my soul and thine, Tardif.”

Chapter 25: A Few Long Days

“Know well, my soul,

God’s Hand controls

Whate’er thou fearest;

Round him, in calmest music rolls

Whate’er thou hearest.”

—WHITTIER.

GASPARD and Tardif arrived at Montpellier the next day, Thursday, the 30th of October 1698. They had had a long tramp to the city, from the Etang de Thau, where the canal terminated, and they arrived weary and dispirited.

“Too late!” Tardif said. For Brousson was there before them, having been removed from the boat at Beziers and brought by land to Montpellier, where he was taken to the citadel. They had seen him leave the boat, and marked with wonder that his face was still calm and even cheerful; but they could not exchange a word or a look with him.

On their arrival they went at once to the house of the goldsmith Fontanes, in the Rue des Augustins. M. Berbier’s aged aunt had died a month before; and if the doctor had wanted a reason for going to Montpellier, this event would have supplied him with a good one, for he was her sole heir, and had to settle her affairs. The lodgings were his, for the present, so he had given Gaspard a note to Fontanes, asking him to receive his pupil as his representative, and promising to follow him in a day or two. Tardif could stay there also, or, if he preferred it, seek quarters elsewhere. Berbier thought he might be trusted to take care of himself. But of Gaspard evidently he thought otherwise, for before they parted he extracted a promise from him that, after reaching Montpellier, he would not leave the house until they met again, “which,” he added, “I hope we shall do in two or three days, and that I shall bring Mademoiselle Elene with me in safety.”

All the more was Gaspard grieved at having missed the chance of seeing the face of the man he loved, on his entrance into the town.

Fontanes was reserved and uncommunicative, but he had a new assistant, one Blanc, a young man from Nimes, who asked the travelers if they had noticed how full the town was. “Ay, and the house too, for that matter,” he went on. “We have three gentlemen lodging here besides yourselves, messieurs. All on the same errand, and two from the same place, the good town of Nimes, where I belong—and not ashamed of it either. M. Brousson was born there. Our lodgers went out betimes that they might see him at the place, three miles out of town, where he was to be received by the officials of the Intendant. They say full four thousand people had gone there to see him, many from a long way off.”

“Did they see him?”

“Yes; they saw him very well. For M. l’Intendant had sent his own private carriage to bring him to the town.”

“Strange!” said Gaspard. Nor was this the only strange thing in the behavior of the notoriously cruel Baville to this prisoner of his.

“They said he looked more like a guest than a prisoner on his way to his trial,” Blanc went on. “And far less sad,” said one of them, “than when he saw him in Nimes four years ago. But then, to be sure, he was watching by the death-bed of his aged mother. Ah, there’s master calling. I must go.”

For three interminable days Gaspard ate his heart out in his lonely lodging. Tardif came and went, bringing him such scraps of information as he could manage to collect. At first he asked Gaspard to go out with him. “What harm could come to thee?” said he. “Thou art no babe in arms. And as to trouble or tumult in the town, it is full indeed, but still enough, like a full stream. I see many a man with a sorrowful face. And some there be that stand and gaze at the citadel, as if their eyes could pierce the walls of it. At least thou couldst do that.”

“No, Tardif. Have we not learned how a man ought to keep his word?”

“Right, lad! I was forgetting. However, I have some tidings that will comfort thee. M. Brousson is being used with all courtesy. He is not fettered, and M. l’Intendant sends him food from his own table. He has been already interrogated in private, and at great length; but the public trial will be on Tuesday.”

Sunday, the 2nd of November, seemed to Gaspard the longest day of his life. Much of it he spent in prayer; and he did not doubt that the captive in the citadel, so near and yet so far away, was doing the same. The thought that the same Friend was present with both, e and at the same time, came to his sore heart with healing power. Nor was that long Sunday a wasted day for him; for before it ended he had tried to say, indeed he had said, though with bitter tears, “Thy will be done.”

At night came a great relief, in the safe arrival of M. Berbier, Elene, and her sullen, though obedient and useful attendant, Babette. Lastly came Philippe, with the luggage of the party in his charge.

Berbier listened with emotion to the story Gaspard had to tell him, especially to the message to himself.

“That overpays anything I did for thee,” he said to Gaspard—and he said no more. But after a while he asked, “Do you know if they have sent him a priest?”

“Surely the last thing he would desire,” said Gaspard, innocently.

“But the first they would desire for him. Imagine the triumph to them if through the love of life he were to change his faith!”

Tardif came in presently, and with his usual adroitness in picking up information, was able to inform them that the Abbe Creuzet, a comparatively young man, but considered very learned and able, had been sent to Brousson by the Intendant. “It seems not to have turned out much amiss,” he added, “for I hear he says he is not—what is the word?—not far from the Kingdom of Heaven.”

“Not so bad,” said Berbier, “for the abbe to say of the heretic.”

“Excuse me, monsieur, ‘tis the other way about,” said Tardif; “‘tis the heretic says it of the abbe.”

Meanwhile the last sands of a noble life were running out. But even to the end, and in the midst of strangers and enemies, love and reverence went with Claude Brousson. ‘The Hoqueton,’ his warder and attendant, became his devoted friend, and showed him, we are told, ‘a thousand kindnesses.’ When he asked permission to write to the beloved wife and son whom his death would plunge into sorrow, it was denied him; but he was told he might give any messages he pleased to the Hoqueton, who would send them for him. He did so, and it appears that the mission was faithfully performed, though only one of the messages has come down to us. “He prayed God to give his son grace to follow his example, and to die for the holy Gospel.”

Almost in the words ascribed to another martyr, he said to him, “Tread thou the path thy father trod, Though it lead to thy father’s death.”

Early on Monday morning, Berbier went to the College of the Faculty of Medicine, just saying to Gaspard, “Stay till I come back. I will bring tidings.”

They were almost the only words he spoke, except in sharp rebuke to Philippe, who attempted to enliven the gloom that hung over the party by describing very minutely, and in great detail, the horrible execution of a noted brigand, which he had had the good fortune to witness, a couple of years before. We must not condemn him too strongly; it was the taste of the age.

When Berbier came back, he called Gaspard aside and said, “All will be ended tomorrow. The trial—or what they are pleased to call so—begins at seven of the clock. The great hall will be crowded to suffocation. The professors and doctors, and all the distinguished members of the university, will be there, especially those of the Faculty of Law, in which he is himself a doctor. Never knew I before of one of that degree tried for his life as a criminal. The heads of the Medical Faculty will take me with them as an ex-professor; and one, who is my friend, will lend me a robe. For I must see him.”

“Oh, M. Berbier, you will take me too!” Gaspard implored.

“My dear boy, I cannot.”

“Then, by waiting long at the door ere it opens, one can get in with the crowd.”

“One could—but you will not. Mademoiselle would be left alone, with only Babette, who serves her indeed, but who loves her not. And—the hours will be long.”

“Enough, monsieur, I will stay,” said Gaspard, in a low voice. “We will pray for him together.”

“Do, if it comforts you. But as for any good to him—” He broke off, resuming presently: “I must go to the university tonight, since tomorrow we have to start full early. I shall sleep there in my friend’s chamber—if sleep will come,” he said, with a sigh. “But I doubt there will be many sleepers in Montpellier tonight.”

Long before the late dawn of Tuesday, November the 4th, 1698, the streets of Montpellier echoed to the tramp of hurrying feet, and the great hall of the citadel was crowded to its utmost capacity. But Gaspard and Elene sat together quietly in the room above the goldsmith’s shop; or they knelt together, sometimes in silence, sometimes voicing by turns the prayer and the sorrow that throbbed in both their hearts.

Elene was the comforter now; and though at the time neither knew it, these sad hours brought them nearer than they had ever been before. There was this difference between them—Elene had heard much of Brousson, and deeply reverenced his character and his work; but, never having seen him, she had not come under the influence of what would now be called his strong personal magnetism. Gaspard, on the other hand, adored him with the splendid passion of that first pure hero-worship which is— “Dearer to true young hearts than their own fame.”

His spiritual life, moreover, was much less developed than Elene’s. He was still almost a babe, while she already knew what it was to strive and suffer and overcome. Although the secret of the Lord is so truly a secret that none but Himself can tell it, even to His own, yet those who have learned it already can greatly help those who are longing to know it. As Isabeau had helped Elene in Negrepelisse, so Elene helped Gaspard in Montpellier.

Gaspard, for his part, had not failed to give Elene Brousson’s message to herself. “He said, ‘I remember her mother well. God bless her. God bless you both with the blessing of Peace.’ Elene, he said ‘You both.’ He blessed us together.”

It was afternoon when Berbier came in, white and exhausted, scarcely able to stand. With a true woman’s eye for the need of the moment, Elene brought him wine. It was in the room, the table having been laid for a meal, of which neither she nor Gaspard had partaken, for the Huguenots were wont to couple prayer with fasting, and it was certainly appropriate now.

Berbier drank the wine, and a measure of strength came back to him. “My children,” he said, quietly, “our worst fears are realized—I can say no more.” But presently he broke out with sudden passion: “What use in all your prayers? Prayer does nothing—nothing! But God Himself, I suppose, could not soften the heart of Nicholas Lamoignan de Baville, which is hard as the nether millstone. If there is a hell—” He stopped suddenly, his voice failing.

There followed a dreadful silence. Philippe came in to take his master’s hat and robe. He looked full of pleasurable excitement, as one who had just got a much-coveted pass for the theater, to see some delightfully sensational play.

While he was still there, Tardif entered. “M. Berbier,” he asked, with the briefest of salutations, “have you heard the last news?”

Berbier, in silence, turned his face away; but Philippe, the irrepressible, began, “The Wheel—”

“May you taste it yourself, you scoundrel!” said Tardif. “He never will. They send him at once—to his God. It is only on the lifeless form the iron bar will fall. Ravine himself proposed it.”

“Thank God!” said Berbier, and he bowed his head and wept. Elene and Gaspard did the same. Horror, up to this, had frozen the fount of tears—not one had been shed. Now they flowed freely, softly, and with healing in them, like those that, in these blessed days of peace and freedom, we ourselves have shed for our beloved, when God’s own “finger touched” them, and “they slept.”

Philippe had sense enough to slip out of the room; but Tardif stood waiting quietly, as one who respected their sorrow, though, for his own part, things came to him in a different way.

At last he said: “M. Gaspard, I want you.”

Gaspard was standing, with Elene’s hand in his, behind Berbier’s chair. Being but a lad, he was more ashamed of tears than an older man, and was trying hard to recover his composure.

“Come with me at once,” Tardif commanded. “See him again you shall. I know how to manage it.”

When did Tardif not know how to manage anything he set his heart upon? Only that once, on the canal boat.

Berbier with a gesture gave leave, if Gaspard chose to go, and they went out together.

As they pushed their way through the crowded street, Tardif explained in snatches. “We are going to the citadel—to get up on the demi-lune—whence we shall see him right well—as he passes. The soldiers have driven the people off it—once and again. But the people come back. They will be better soldiers than I think for if they drive us off.”

“Oh, Tardif, what a crowd! I never saw the like.”

“You may well say that. I heard someone say there were full ten thousand people out today. And many from long distances. What’s the matter with you, boy? You are shaking all over. Don’t faint here, for heaven’s sake. What is it?”

“I don’t know. A great horror has come over me. I am sure something terrible is happening even now.”

It was true; although few people knew of it, then or afterward, until the researches of recent years brought old archives to light. In that hour Claude Brousson was sealing, in uttermost anguish, his lifelong devotion to his brethren. No man living knew so much about them, or held their lives and fortunes so completely in his hand. A word from his lips could send multitudes to the gibbet, the galleys, or the dungeon. During his various examinations, both in Pau and in Montpellier, many efforts had been made to draw from him some incriminating information, but he had baffled all with courage and address. Even Pinon, the Jansenist Intendant of Beam—whose conduct throughout betrayed the inconsistency of a man naturally humane who is forced into cruelty by circumstances—thought “the Question” might make him speak, since he had owned to his prison attendant that he feared—not death, but what he might have to suffer before death. “And,” wrote Pinon to Baville, “when a man fears pain, it is already a sign of weakness.” But it should be said that this letter was written before his last interview with his captive, in which his better self prevailed. Friendly words were spoken; Brousson promised to pray for the Intendant during the, short remainder of his life; and Pinon, with emotion he could scarcely restrain, recommended him to the kindness and consideration of his guards.

Pinon the Jansenist does not seem to have been well acquainted with the “Thoughts” of the great Jansenist Pascal, else he would have remembered that pregnant saying of his: “Who taught the Apostles the qualities of a perfectly heroic soul, to paint them so perfectly in Jesus Christ? They make Him capable of fear before the necessity to die has arrived; and then quite strong. They make Him troubled when He troubles Himself; and when men trouble Him He is quite strong.”

As with the Master, so with the servant. In the quiet of his prison Brousson admitted, “I fear what I may have to suffer”; when bound upon the rack he said to his judges, “Messieurs, you have only to do with me whatsoever you please. If you break all my bones, you will make me say no more than I have said already.”

He was true, to the very end. No word to the hurt of any living being fell from his lips. While he replied frankly to every safe and harmless question, to all of another kind he would only answer, “That is amongst the secrets of my ministry, which I cannot reveal”; or, “As that concerns only the worship of God, I cannot speak of it.” When, just after, he passed into the presence of his Lord, perhaps he was not sorry to have drunk those last drops from His own cup, and to have learned, as He learned by personal experience, all “the dread mystery of pain.”

That is the one knowledge, which if not learned cm this sad earth, we shall have, so far as we see now, no chance of learning in all the grand Hereafter.

And sweet indeed must taste “the manna of the desert”—the joy God gives in sorrow and in suffering—when the weary pilgrim tastes it here for the last time, before he enters the place where it can be tasted no more forever, because, thenceforth, he shall eat “the new corn” of the Promised Land.

Chapter 26: The Drums Cease to Beat

“Sorrow vanquished, labor ended. Jordan passed.”

“NOW, Gaspard, show thyself a man of thy hands,” Tardif cried aloud, as both of them, with all their might, fought their way through the crowd to the citadel. To him the struggle for its own sake was a downright enjoyment; and when it came to resisting the soldiers who were trying to keep the people off the demi-lune, no man dealt shrewder blows than he, with his stout cudgel. Any other day his exploits would probably have landed him in prison, but today the concourse was so great, and the excitement so intense, that many things passed unnoticed. “Here, come on with me,” he cried, and gave one hand to Gaspard, while with the other, which still held the cudgel, he thrust a soldier out of the way. Then, raising it, he pointed to the demi-lune, and shouted to the rest, “There, friends—there’s our fort. When we get it, we’ll keep it against all comers, soldiers or no.” And they did.

But Gaspard’s heart and eyes were far enough from the tumult and the strife around him. Already, from the coign of vantage the demi-lune afforded, there was much to see. A double row of soldiers lined each side of the path which led from the citadel to the esplanade, where stood the scaffold with its horrible appointments—fifty more, of the battalion of Auvergne, standing around it. But the multitude which thronged every available spot seemed to engulf and swallow up the soldiers. They even got amongst them, filling the spaces between the rows, and mixing in the very ranks. Military discipline gave way before them.

Hearing Tardif mutter some words, Gaspard bent his ear. “Pity one did not know there would be such a throng. Something might have been done—even yet.”

“No chance,” said someone at the other side. “No chance, with all these soldiers. Unless, indeed, the English were here to help. ‘Tis said he invited them.”

“That’s a lie!” said another voice, and a war of words began.

“He wanted to bring Schomberg into France.”

“Never! Not a word of truth in it.”

“Thou art a heretic thyself to deny it.”

“No, a good Catholic, but not one that believes all he hears.”

“Sacre!” cried another, “thou hast torn the sleeve off my new coat.”

“A plague on thy coat, I—”

“Hush!” cried Gaspard, with a ring in his young voice that silenced every other. “Look!”

The door of the citadel had opened, and three men came forth the Abbe Creuzet, the Hoqueton, and between them, leaning on the Hoqueton, Claude Brousson.

Clear and sweet arose the voice so soon to be stilled forever—and not in speech, but in song—

“To Thee, my Lord, in life and death,

My lips their praise shall bring;

And never, till my latest breath,

Thy honor cease to sing.”

Then a pause. The watchers could see that the Hoqueton was saying something, in which Brousson courteously acquiesced. He bowed, and sang no more. but his lips continued to move, as if in prayer. He passed beneath the demi-lune, near enough to be clearly seen by those upon it. “I cannot describe to you,” wrote an eye-witness, “the firmness with which he walked; he seemed to be going to a festival. His eyes were continually raised to Heaven, so that one would have thought he did not see or observe anyone on the way.”

Thus Gaspard looked his last upon the man he loved. From where they stood, the scaffold could not be seen. Nor could anything be heard, save the thunder of the twenty great drums which presently began to beat. But Tardif whispered, with his lips at Gaspard’s ear, “You are praying. And I think, since yesterday, prayer may help. Go on—till the drums cease to beat.”

The rest they learned afterward. At the foot of the scaffold, Brousson bade a kindly farewell to the captain of the guard who had come with him from Pau, and to whom he gave his watch. Even kindlier, we think, was his farewell to the friendly Hoqueton. His parting gift to him was the scarlet mantle, and the man took it, “weeping hot tears.” Then, after kneeling a few moments in silent prayer, Brousson ascended the scaffold, followed by the Abbe Creuzet. “Place me as you find it most convenient for yourself,” he said, turning to the executioner, and stretching out his arms for the cords.

But, after the first turn of the screw, the rope broke; and, already half strangled, he had to stand waiting while the executioner re-adjusted it.

The Abbe drew near with words o exhortation. Had not God permitted this little accidt.it to happen, just to give him a few more minutes in which to embrace the true religion, and be reconciled to the Catholic Church? He hoped M. Brousson would not be offended with him for urging this upon him.

Then, with an effort, in his half-choked voice, Claude Brousson spoke once more: “I thank you for your care for me. I could not be offended, for I know you speak from a good motive. God bless you—God reward your love to me—God grant I may see you again in His kingdom and glory.”

The words of peace and loving-kindness were still lingering on his lips when all was ready; and in another moment, without struggle or suffering— “scarce knowing how they set him free”—he passed into the presence of his Lord.

It was the hour of sunset. The thunder of the drums ceased suddenly, and the silence that followed was intense. Gaspard, on the demi-lune, heard it in every nerve and fiber of his frame. His ears throbbed with it, his heart stopped beating. It held him like a spell, until some voice near him—he knew not whose, and he never knew—broke it by saying softly, “With Christ, which is far better.”

Chapter 27: Two Purses of Gold

“Some souls there are who, when they smite it, bring

Forth from the hardest rock its hidden spring.”

—LYTTON.

M. ANASTASE BERBIER had come home from the prolonged and painful scene of the trial, exhausted with fatigue, and ill with grief and horror. The horror was partly removed by the tidings of Tardif; but the violent pain in the head which had attacked him in the hall increased so alarmingly, that Elene, who was left alone with him, was almost wholly absorbed in trying to relieve him.

The sounds from the outside world, the trampling of innumerable feet, the noise of the drums, even the thrill of their sudden cessation, came to her but faintly as she changed the wet cloths on his burning brow, or held to his nostrils the restorative essence he had told her where to find. Philippe, to do him justice, would have done these things, and very efficiently too, for he was an excellent valet; but he had taken some petulant word of his master’s for leave of absence, and gone off in high glee to witness—not the death scene, which seemed to him a poor and tame affair, but the subsequent breaking upon the wheel of the victim’s lifeless body. His absence was to Elene a blessing in disguise. To her woman’s nature the prophecy of the woman poet was fulfilled—

“A child’s kiss set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;

A poor man helped by thee shall make thee rich;

A sick man nursed by thee shall make thee whole.”

Only once, save for a brief request or briefer “Thank you,” did Berbier speak to her. When the drums ceased, he said just one word, “Pray.”

Elene hesitated. “We Huguenots,” she said, “do not pray for those who are gone Home. We thank God for them.”

“Not for him—for me. There is something beyond this world—and better. He has found it. I would have my soul where his is.”

So Elene prayed—very simply—for Berbier, for herself, for Gaspard, for Tardif, and for their persecuted people. Then, with faltering voice, she gave thanks for him whose prayers were all answered, and his desires all fulfilled.

The next day was almost a blank. It was like the day after death enters a home, when life seems to stand still, in silent reverence, before the dread visitor; only that here there was nothing left—nothing to claim the tender farewells of the living, or the last offices in which earthly love and reverence find their sad consolation.

Late in the evening Tardif came, drew Gaspard apart, and said to him, “Come out with me.”

After some hesitation, Gaspard consented, and Tardif brought him to the wine-shop where they had lodged on their former visit to Montpellier. Locking the door upon them both, he said, “No one can disturb us here. There’s not a safe corner in M. Fontanes’ house, nor any house that holds Philippe Darcheau. Well, boy, what are you going to do now?”

“I have not thought. It is too soon,” said Gaspard.

“It is just the right time,” returned Tardif. “What has been done works for your salvation. For, see, the town is full of Huguenots. They have come from Nimes, from the Cevennes, from the Vivarais, from farther places even. They must be let go home again. Even Baville can’t arrest them all. And I think he would not, if he could.”

“Would not?”

“Ay, would not. They say his Excellency is in a rather mild mood just now, wonderful for him. I know not. But, mixing with all sorts of folk here, I do know that Catholic and Protestant are better minded toward each other now than I ever thought to see them. There’s a spirit abroad as if that—that scaffold had brought a message of peace. Many an honest Catholic would like well enough to do his folk a kindness just now. And few, I think, would care to earn the informer’s pay.”

“Perhaps,” said Gaspard, “some may be led to follow his Faith.”

“I don’t know about that. The thing now is to get you and mademoiselle where you may follow it in peace. And, as I have said, the time is more favorable than it is like to be again. What think you of trying the sea? Since the Peace, there are Dutch ships about, and English.”

“But then,” Gaspard said slowly, “we have M. Berbier to think of. He has been like a father to Elene and to me. How can we leave him, ill and sorrowful as he is now?”

“If I know M. Berbier, he is not the man to keep you to your own undoing—as it would be, unless indeed you change your religion.”

“Would you ask us to do that—now?”

There was a light in Tardif’s eyes as he answered, “No. But I am making a plan to get you out of France, which may prove the easiest, the quickest, and the least toilsome. It will cost money, though.” Gaspard looked grave. “I know M. Berbier will help us,” he said after a pause. “But he is not rich—not very. And already he has spent much on us, and I suppose on the unsuccessful effort to find aerie’s little brother. I don’t want to take more from him.”

“Don’t know if it matters much. That scamp Philippe is like enough, in the end, to get hold of all he has. But, for all that, you need not come upon him. Wait a minute.”

Tardif undid a button or two, plunged a hand into his bosom, and, after some fumbling, took out a small heavy parcel, wrapped in a bit of scarlet cloth and tied up with a boot lace. Having opened it carefully, he poured out on the table, before the astonished eyes of Gaspard, a shining heap of louis d’ors. “Count them,” he said.

Far too much amazed to do it, Gaspard stood motionless, staring at the gold. There was fear in his face, as well as astonishment. How could Tardif have got all that gold, save by plying his old trade? Which indeed he could easily have done, in a great city like Toulouse, where he was left almost entirely to his own devices; and yet more easily here in Montpellier, with the town full of strangers, as it was then. “Tardif,” he said at last, “how did you get that gold?”

“I know what you are thinking of,” Tardif answered, with a laugh. “But no. I have done with stealing now. Unless, indeed, I could do the trick with my left hand, which is not likely. For my right” (he stretched it out) “does no more such work forever. That vow I made when his hand clasped mine on the boat.”

Gaspard caught the outstretched hand in his. “Dear Tardif, I would he knew it.” After a pause, he went on, “I knew thou hadst money in Mende, when we met.”

“Only a little. Tilat is gone long ago, and after it what M. Berbier gave me in Toulouse. Yet there, as you see, are forty-eight good louis—no, forty-three, for I have spent five—very much at your service, M. Gaspard. They are fairly won too.”

“And thou hast never told me.”

“No; and I take shame for it. Wait a moment—I am going to tell the truth now, and clear my soul. Dost remember that when I did one of the few good deeds of my life, and rid the world of that villain De Rignac, you found me standing there, looking down on his dead body?”

“I do.”

“I sent you back again to the young lady, you nothing loth—I have got my eyes, M. Gaspard. Then I clambered down, and examined my prize of war. Those were what I found; though there ought to have been fifty. Is there not a story about some saint who found honey in the carcass of a lion? though this was more like the carcass of a hound. Well, I pouched the gold, which was fair and right. What was not right was the keeping it from thee, my comrade. But I thought, M. Berbier is well off. He has neither son nor daughter—no one but that ill-conditioned Philippe, who is safe enough to feather his own nest. He loves M. Gaspard; he will give all they need to him and to the young lady, to take them out of the country. This is my prize of war. I shall go with them to foreign parts, bring it with me, and make much more of it by carrying on the smuggling trade in league with my old friends here. So I shall grow rich—rich—” He stopped, and his eyes turned, with a hungry gleam in them, towards the shining heap on the table.

“I don’t see that thou didst any wrong,” said Gaspard. “The gold was thine.” (It did not occur to either of them that, De Rignac’s possessions having been confiscated, the gold was really the king’s.)

Tardif went on, “Yes, it is mine. But—when I stood on the boat with him, I thought, ‘Money makes all things easy. I will use that gold to get him safe over the frontier.’ You know the rest. He would not gohe who said he was afraid. I took that hard, Gaspard. A man who lives my kind of life does not look before him more than he can help. Still, there was a voice that used to ring in my ears—often, too, in the midst of feasting and drinking— ‘Think of thy latter end, my lad. ‘Tis most like to be with broken bones on a bed of wood!’ and I could see the iron bar come down—and down—and down—and hear the cries of agony. Faith, I was afraid then, I promise you. So I took it hard, for him. I felt angry and bitter of soul because he would not go. You saw me pitch the useless file into the water. And I came near to flinging the gold after it, in my rage. But I thought, ‘No, I may use it for him yet, and that will be some comfort.’ So, Gaspard, it is for thee—thee whom he loved. Take it, as from him.”

“No,” said Gaspard, much moved. “There may be a better way than that. What would he have wished?”

“Wished it used for his people, such as thee, no doubt. ‘Twas for them he lived—and died. Put it up, and I will go back with thee to the Rue des Augustins. I want to know how M. Berbier is tonight. May he be well enough to speed you on your way!”

“Nay, nay, Tardif. Keep the gold thyself, at least until we have taken counsel with M. Berbier.” And then, in the gathering twilight, they set out for the goldsmith’s house.

“Let us go through the shop,” said Gaspard. “M. Berbier gave me a message for M. Fontanes, but he was out when I went with thee.”

They found the jeweler and his assistant both in the shop; but not wishing to disturb them, as they were talking earnestly together, they stood apart, waiting their leisure. As they waited, a customer came in. He passed close to Gaspard, who saw in the waning light a man of middle stature but of powerful frame, and with very strong, muscular hands. Tardif apparently saw something more, for he caught Gaspard’s arm in a grasp that hurt him, while he put a warning finger on his lip. Strangest of all, Fontanes’ staid and sober assistant took to his heels and fled, promptly followed by Fontanes himself.

The goldsmith however returned almost instantly, but alone, and with a ruffled countenance. Taking his place behind the counter, he asked the customer, “What is your pleasure, monsieur?” but he spoke in a voice of constraint, and without looking at him.

“I want a silver cup, monsieur—a good one,” said the man, who seemed civil and quiet enough.

Fontanes, still silent, took down several, and placed them on the counter. To enable his customer to examine them properly, he lit a lamp, which was always left ready there. Then Gaspard saw a hard, strong face, that had in it a strange look of aloofness, as of a man set solitary and apart from his fellows, either by misfortune or by crime.

He was just saying the cup was not good enough, and asking for handsomer and more costly ones. Fontanes turned to his shelves, from which he took some others, and laid them before him, briefly naming their price.

After careful examination and rejection of three or four, the customer took up a handsome three-handled goblet of the kind named after Henri Quatre. “I like the shape of this one, and the design upon it,” he said, “save at this side, where the Royal Arms, methinks, are out of proportion to the rest.” He pointed this out to Fontanes, who took the cup from him, but in doing so avoided touching his hand.

“I have another,” he said briefly. Throughout the interview he used as few words as possible.

The other one proved satisfactory. So did the price, heavy though it was and very satisfactory indeed, in the eyes of most tradesmen, would have looked the well-filled purse the customer took out to pay for it. But Fontanes drew back, and said, before he touched the gold, in a tone almost of loathing, “Excuse me, monsieur, but I am obliged to ask whence have you that money?”

“Not whence you think. I have had it by me for a year.”

“Were it otherwise I would not have touched it,” said the goldsmith, in a voice full of meaning.

Then the public executioner, for he it was, leant over the counter, and in a low, confidential tone, spoke out what was in his heart. “It seems, monsieur, you are such a one as a man may open his lips to,” he said. “Well, I have executed more than two hundred condemned persons, but not one of them has made me tremble like M. Brousson. When he was led into the torture chamber, the commissary and the judges were more pale and more trembling than he. He only raised his eyes to heaven, and prayed. If I had dared, I would have run away rather than put such a man to death. And if I dared to speak now, I could tell you many more things about him. Certainly he died like a saint.”

Then, as if he could not trust himself to say another word, he laid down his money in full tale, took up the silver cup, and left the place.

The horrible office he filled—in those days horrible beyond anything we conceive of now—was also often in those days hereditary; therefore it need not always have argued in its possessor the original callousness of heart that would have chosen it willingly. But what must have been the effect produced by its continual exercise? And yet this man, so sadly severed from his kind, and with so much to brutalize and degrade him, was still able to recognize, and to revere, the likeness of Christ, when he saw it in one of His servants. May we not hope that he too, as well as the Abbe Creuzet, saw his victim again in the kingdom of the Father?

The day just ended was the 5th of November 1698. Whilst these things were being done in France, men were keeping in England the tenth anniversary of the landing of William of Orange on her shores. As they remembered with thankfulness, “How the glassed waters lulled to aid the landing at Torbay,” they perhaps understood a little though only a little—of that from which God had saved them then by His mighty Hand and by His outstretched Arm. Never since—thank God!—have such scenes as those which we have feebly tried to portray in their horror and their glory been possible in England. And never again

“Till the sea wash her level with the shore”

—shall they be possible there, if God keep England true to herself and to Him.

Chapter 28: Henri Portal's Advice

“Sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,

The black minute’s at end.”

—BROWNING.

THE following evening, Gaspard was sitting alone in the room over the shop. The day had been a very quiet one. Tardif had not made his appearance at all, and Berbier, who was still ailing, had spent most of the time in his own chamber.

Gaspard was reading a shabby little book, which had been printed in Holland, brought surreptitiously into France hidden in some bale of foreign goods, and lent him by Blanc, the goldsmith’s assistant. It contained a few of the sermons of Jacques Saurin, the most eloquent of the exiled pastors. The words Gaspard read were a passionate appeal to the Most High, to the Eternal, embodying in one great and bitter cry the accumulated plaints of His persecuted people. “Oh, Lord, what hast Thou done to us? Ways of Zion covered with mourning, weeping priests, lamenting virgins, sanctuaries thrown down, deserts peopled with fugitives, members of Jesus Christ wandering over the face of the earth, children torn from their parents, galleys gorged with confessors, blood of our countrymen shed like water, bodies flung into the common sewer, or given as food to the beasts of the field and the birds of the air—ruins and ashes of our temple, melancholy remains of houses consecrated to our God —fires, wheels, gibbets, tortures unheard of until our time—answer ye, and bear witness against the Eternal!”

Saurin did not stop there; no Christian preacher would dare so to do—but Gaspard did. He knew that every item in the terrible indictment was true—true—true; true again and yet again, and with more and worse behind, if worse could be. He sat motionless, crushed, stupefied. Despair was stealing over him. What if God could not help? If God did not care?

He did not see, as he threw down the little book, that beneath the awful words some hand—and perhaps there was a broken heart behind it—had traced in faint, irregular characters, “I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it”; though it did occur to him to think that after all these were the words of Jacques Saurin the exile, not of Claude Brousson the martyr.

“M. Gaspard, there is an old gentleman below stairs who wishes to see you,” said Fontanes’ servant at the door, breaking in upon his sorrowful thoughts. Her words “un vieux monsieur,” meant to her just a gray-haired man, dressed respectably.

Gaspard hesitated, the dangers around him making him naturally suspicious of strangers. But thinking it best not to make difficulties, he said, “Bring him up, please.”

A man with gray hair and beard, and a staff in his hand, entered the room. They bowed to each other, and Gaspard, with the courtesy due from the young to the old, asked him to be seated, took his hat, and placed it on the table.

They looked at each other for a moment. “Though his hair and beard are nearly white,” thought Gaspard, “his face is like a young man’s—not worn or wrinkled at all. And it seems quite familiar to me. When and where can I have seen him before?”

“What a fine young man!” said the other to himself. “He has developed wonderfully since I saw him last.”

Then aloud, “Look well at my face, young gentleman, and say if you remember me. There is still light enough. Never mind my hair and my beard.”

Gaspard “looked well,” and into his sad face there came the dawning of a smile. He said at last, “But for what you tell me not to mind, I would say you were the preacher I heard at the Assembly near Negrepelisse.”

“Henri Portal, at your service,” and he stretched out his hand to him.

Gaspard, as he took it, asked wondering, “But how do you know me, and how did you find me here?”

“I could not but know again, from the light that was in it, the face of the youth that came up that night to make, or to renew, his vow of faithfulness to the Gospel, and who afterward, with tears that did no shame to his manhood, ate the Bread and drank the Cup of his Lord. And I saw you here on—on Tuesday—standing on the demi-lune. Afterward, I saw you enter this house.”

“But you, M. le Pasteur, how comes it you are here? Is it not terribly dangerous?”

“How could I not be here? I knew my master was to be taken from my head. And I thought, ‘Peradventure, if I see him when he is taken up, through God’s grace a double portion of his spirit—the first-born’s portion—may rest upon me.’ As for danger, every place is dangerous for me, especially since I have had the honor of a price upon my head. I could not keep away. He was—he is—my father in Christ.”

“And mine,” Gaspard said softly. “You, too, M. Portal, you helped me much that night. I think the Shepherd had found me before, but I did not know He had until then. I am troubled just now, though. Before you came in I was reading this.” He took up Saurin’s little book.

“Oh, yes, I have read it too: though I have read very few books, M. Gaspard. I was but a poor peasant lad. He taught me all I know—even to read and write.”

“Is it not the saddest thing in the world to doubt God, to think He has forsaken us—that he does not care? But our father in Christ did not feel that. He did not accuse God; he praised Him.”

“True,” said Portal, with kindling eyes. “How often have I heard him say, amidst perils and hardships that would have daunted the bravest, ‘God gives me a lively consciousness of His grace and His love. I am infinitely happier than if I were established in the best church in Holland. The consolations of God are infinitely more than I can tell you,’ or other words like these. And, I doubt not, as the darkness deepened, the light grew brighter. You saw his face as he went to death.”

Gaspard reverently bowed his head.

“And I believe,” Portal went on, “nay, I am sure, that if God should call M. Saurin to the same trial, He would give him the same peace, and the same joy. That is ever His way. Those who stand outside looking into the fiery furnace often doubt Him, while those who are walking in the midst of it rejoice and give thanks, for He is with them there.”

There was a silence, which Gaspard broke. “M. Portal, how do you know my name?”

“The woman who admitted me, when I asked for the young man lodging here, called you M. Gaspard.”

“Then I will tell you the rest. My real name is Gaspard Charles Louis de Montausier. My father and mother escaped to England several years ago—and my young brother with them.”

“How came they to leave you behind them, monsieur?”

Gaspard gave him in answer a brief sketch of his history, up to the time of his and Tardif’s arrival at the house of Berbier in Toulouse.

“You are right, monsieur,” said the pastor, “to try by every means in your power to leave this country and rejoin your parents. But you must be cautious! If you were taken, it would mean the galleys for life which, for you, would be far worse than death.” His eyes rested admiringly on the noble-looking youth, with his fine form and graceful figure, and the dawn of man’s strength in his beautiful and still boyish face. “‘Twere pity,” he thought, “to consign him to one of those ‘floating hells,’ to toil at the oar under the lash of brutal ‘comité,’ and in filth, starvation, and misery.”

Gaspard drew himself up. “I think,” he said, “they would find it hard to take me alive.”

“I daresay.” Then, reflecting that youth is hot headed, “Do you think to have anyone with you when you go?”

“Oh, yes; we have a guide, Tardif, who was with me that night. He is true to the core. He would have risked his life to save M. Brousson.”

“You say ‘we,’ monsieur. Who are your companions?”

“Save Tardif, there is but one. Do you not well remember that night, amongst the communicants, very beautiful young girl, with brown hair and deer violet-colored eyes?”

“Not specially. There were so many communicants. Was she amongst the newly admitted?”

“No; she had taken her first Communion at home and had been true ever since. But you could scam have failed to notice her. There is that in her loot which—which—I mean to say, there is no one else like Mademoiselle Elene de Fressinieres.”

Henri Portal looked with a new interest at the face of the young man, full at that moment of life ant animation. “But you have not told me how you me with this young lady,” he said. “Did you see her first at the Assembly?”

“Oh, no, M. le Pasteur! I saw her first at home, when we were both little children. She lived near us—we were play-fellows.”

“And you met her again—where? You left off your tale at your coming, with your guide, to Toulouse.”

Gaspard resumed it very willingly, though in rather confused, incoherent fashion. Still, he made the main thread of it clear enough to Portal. He made something else clear also; and the strange thing was, that it was something he did not yet know himself.

He came to their return with Elene to Toulouse, and their leaving Toulouse again for Montpellier. Then, with bowed head, and voice reverently lowered, he told of the night journey on the canal—all at least that he could tell of it—saying at the end, “He blessed me, and Elene. He said, ‘God bless you both, with the blessing of peace.’ He blessed us together.”

“I understand,” said Portal. “And better than you do, dear lad—half man and half child as you are,” he added to himself. “Then you mean that you and this young lady are to escape from France together, under the guidance of Tardif. But is no one else to go with you?”

“Yes—Babette, a young servant girl. She is not a Huguenot; indeed she knows nothing of religion, but she goes as servant to Mademoiselle Elene.”

“And what is mademoiselle to do when she comes with you to England, where you tell me your parents are? Has she friends there also?”

“No; but I have thought of all that. Of course my parents will receive her as a daughter, and love her—how they will love her! I will bring her to them, and say, Here is my dear sister.”

Portal smiled. “My dear boy, I do not think your plan is a very wise one,” he said, with a curious air of hesitation. “Have you considered that it will place the young lady, both during the journey and afterward, in a difficult and embarrassing position?”

Gaspard looked confused. “She will have Babette with her,” he said.

“No sufficient protection. Could you not defer your journey until someone else or better, two or three, and one at least of them a woman—can be found to join your party? And if delay, in your own case, is dangerous, as it well may be, could you not leave her with your friend M. Berbier, until some better arrangement can be made for her, which might be managed by him?”

“I will not stir from this without her,” Gaspard said hotly. “Not to save my life.”

“Do you love her, then, so much?”

“Love her? Of course I do.”

“Listen to me, M. Gaspard. A true man is very tender, very reverent, of one he loves. He would not have her hurt or sullied, even with a breath. He would protect her—with his life.”

“That is just what I want—to protect her,” said Gaspard, wonder and perplexity dawning in his eyes. “May I ask how old you are, M. Gaspard?”

“Eighteen.”

“And mademoiselle?”

“Nearly seventeen.”

“Then Mademoiselle de Fressinieres is a woman, and M. de Montausier is a man.”

So it was with the Huguenots in those awful days. Fear and sorrow ripen quickly. Gaspard and Elene were practically as old as youth and maiden well over twenty would be accounted now.

Gaspard started to his feet, and looked Portal in the face, the wonder growing in his eyes.

“There is but one way for a man to protect the woman he loves,” Portal went on slowly.

“Oh, yes, I understand,” said Gaspard, flushing crimson. “At least, I suppose I do. Of course—some day—if she will—in England.”

“Better here, and now.”

“M. le Pasteur!” cried Gaspard, as pale as he had been red before. “You do not jest—you could not. But this sounds like it.”

“No, my son—or I should rather say, my brother I only tell you, in all seriousness, what the necessity of these evil times seems to make the best way for you both. Otherwise, the journey will have for you, and still more for her, a thousand difficulties and embarrassments. She has none to control her, and I doubt not that, when you meet, your parents will approve the step I now advise you to take. Whatever happens, it will give you the right to take care of her. And even should misfortune overtake you, which God forbid, it may be easier borne.”

“But the thing is impossible. You know it would mean apostasy.”

“Do you forget that I am a minister of God, M. Gaspard?”

“You!” After that one word, Gaspard seemed struck dumb. At last he faltered, “But it would mean the gallows for you.”

“Is that so dreadful a thought just now?” asked Portal with a sad smile. “Yet, in fact, the danger to me is slight. Here, in this room, and in half an hour, it could be done. I know Jules Blanc, M. Fontanes’ assistant; he would be one of your witnesses. I can trust him; and I suppose your friend, M. Berbier, could be the other. To convince you that I have due warrant and authority to do this thing—and such as would be accepted in England, in Holland, or in any other Protestant state—it suffices to say that I was ordained last winter, in the Cevennes, by the laying on of the hands of M. le Pasteur Romanes, and of M. Brousson himself.”

Of the last statement Gaspard took in nothing, save that Portal had named M. Brousson. His mind was in a whirl. Amazement and perplexity struggled within him; and underneath all was the strange new thrill of something, still but half understood, which was awakening there. He was afraid of it—and yet he felt it might grow into rapture.

Portal was speaking again. “I would suggest, M. Gaspard—or rather, I should say, M. de Montausierthat you talk this matter over with your good friend the physician. Then, if he consent, you—or rather he—should speak to the young lady and ascertain her wishes, I must go now, and I shall be, all tomorrow, away from the town. But if all be well, and you wish indeed that this thing should be done, when the evening falls tomorrow, place two lights, close together, in the window of the chamber above this. I will see, and understand. If I am alive and a free man, I will be with you the next morning an hour before daybreak. See that all is ready, and Jules Blanc prepared to admit me. I need not tell you to keep the secret from all else, saving him and your guardian, M. Berbier. And remember, in the morning the windows must be close shut, and no light visible without. Now farewell. Whatever you decide to do, God have you in His good keeping.”

Chapter 29: The Fifth Sparrow

“There is a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow.”

—SHAKESPEARE.

LATER the same evening, Elene was kneeling at the bedside in her little chamber. As she named in her prayer the poor neglected girl who waited on her and yet could not learn to love her, it occurred to her to wonder that Babette’s sleeping place, at the foot of her own bed, was still empty. Nor had she seen her since early in the day, when she had given her leave to go out. She blamed herself now for having done this without sufficient thought. In that crowded town, so full of strangers, what might not have happened to the unprotected girl? She rose from her knees, intending to go downstairs and inquire about her, but just then a knock at the door announced the return of the wanderer.

“Come in,” said Elene; and then, “Oh, Babette, how late you are!”

Babette came in and stood before her young mistress. In the light of the little oil lamp Elene saw, and not without misgivings, that her face was flushed and excited.

“Plait-il, ma’amselle,” she said.

“Well, what kept thee so late?” Elene asked rather sharply.

“Plait-il, ma’amselle,” spoken with a deprecating air, was all the answer she got.

“It pleases me that thou shouldst speak out, and tell me all the truth. Where hast thou been, Babette?” And now Elene spoke gently, for she was nearly always gentle with Babette. “Some day she will love me,” she used to say to herself.

“Plait-il, ma’amselle,” Babette reiterated, standing still like a statue of perplexity. Then, suddenly, she flung herself in a tumbled heap at the feet of Elene. “Oh, ma’amselle, forgive me, for God’s sake, and for M. Gaspard’s!”

Elene was terrified. Could it be that this foolish, ignorant girl, whose personal dislike of her she knew full well, had in some way or other betrayed the secret of their Faith? or, what was more likely, aided and abetted Philippe in so doing? “Stand up,” she said in the tense accents of sudden fear. “Speak at once. Hast thou done us any harm? Thou, or Philippe?”

Babette did not stand up, but she spoke, and quite frankly.

“Philippe! He never gives me more words than a curse, with a kick to follow it. And, mark you, ma’amselle, he will not lose M. Berbier’s favor—no, not even for the pleasure of doing a mischief to his betters. While, as for me—”

“Then for what art thou asking my pardon?”

“Because, ma’amselle, I have been a bad girl to you, and hated you. And you knew it.”

“I knew thou didst not love me. Though why, I never knew. I hope I gave thee no cause. If I did, I meant it not.”

“You did not, ma’amselle. You were always kind. It is—it is—M. Gaspard.” And Babette filled up the measure of her eccentricities by a fit of hearty crying.

“Dry thine eyes, child,” Elene said at last, “and tell me quietly what is all this about. I have no heart for trifling. Thou knowest we are all in great sorrow now, M. Gaspard especially.”

“It is M. Gaspard,” Babette repeated, while she so far obeyed her mistress as to scrub her eyes vigorously with her blue serge petticoat. “He did not care for me any more—nor think of me, though I saved his life—once he had you, ma’amselle. Not his fault. You are a demoiselle of quality—noble, beautiful, rich too I suppose. He could not help himself; nor you either. God has put a big wall, mountains high, between rich and poor, between peasant and noble. I’m not angry with M. Gaspard, and I don’t hate you anymore. I think, if I stayed, I might come to love you. And I want you to forgive me before I go away.”

At last she lifted up her face, which seemed, through her tears, to be blushing and smiling. “She looks quite pretty,” thought Elene in surprise. “Really, I don’t remember ever seeing Babette smile before. But why dost talk of going away?” she asked. “Where wouldst thou go?”

Babette stood up now. “If I knew you would forgive me—” she began.

“Indeed, my child, I do, and that willingly. But tell me what thou meanest. For we do not mean to send thee away. Our thought for thee is quite other.”

“Ma’amselle, with your good leave, and that of M. Berbier, my master, I—I am going to be married.”

“Thou!” was all Elene, in her amazement, could find to say.

“Why not?” asked Babette with a touch of self-assertion, or rather of self-respect, which marked the change in her.

“Thou! a mere child?”

“I am nigh as tall as ma’amselle, with respect be it spoken. I don’t know when I was born—who would have cared to take note of it?—but I am sure I must be fifteen, or thereabouts. Girls marry as young as that.”

“Who told thee so?”

“Capiton,” she answered with a blush.

“And who is Capiton?”

“Marc Capiton, a corporal in the battalion of Auvergne”—the last words spoken with a touch of pride.

“Is he the man? But how knowest thou, poor child, whether he is a good man and true? Or even whether he will be kind to thee?”

“Oh, yes; he is kind and good. Kinder than any one I ever knew—saving always M. Gaspard.”

“But where hast thou met him? and how canst thou know him so well?—all in one day?”

“Not all in one day, an it please you, ma’amselle. ‘Twas the day after we came that I saw him first.”

“How?”

“Ma’amselle remembers M. Berbier was good enough to say I had been useful on the journey, and he gave me a crown to spend in the shops. So I went out to buy a ribbon for a breast knot; but the streets were so full I was frightened. As I was coming home, three or four soldiers came by. They spoke to me, and were rude. At last one of them tried to snatch the ribbon out of my hand, ‘to wear as a favor,’ he said in his impudence. I bogged him to let me go, but he would not, till another, who was passing along, stopped and took my part. He said he knew from my speech I was an Auvergne’s, like themselves; and for Auvergne’s sake they must let me alone. So I got safe home; and thought not much of the matter, till today, when I was passing a wine-shop, he came out and spoke to me—oh, so kindly. I know what you are thinking, ma’amselle, about the wineshop; but indeed he was quite sober, though he may have had a cup or two. He told me that, on Tuesday, some of the gentlefolk, who wanted to see everything, forced their way in amongst the soldiers. Marc says the officers tried to stop them, but the men gave way readily and let them in. They got many a broad piece for their courtesy—and Marc fared well. He would have had me drink with him, but I refused. So he brought me to the Cathedral, where we sat down and had a long talk, there being no one about. Think of it! He knows Besogne, the village we were living near. He has been there, and once he saw Philippe, when he came there selling the salt. When he knew who I was, he asked me about him. He was so good-natured, I told him how I had come all the way to Toulouse just to see Philippe again, and how he would have none of me, but gave me ill words and curses. He answered me, that it was a shame, and that for his part he knew someone who would not treat a pretty girl like that, but would be good to her, and protect her, and make her his wife. Saith I, ‘And where is he?’ Saith he, Here beside thee, sitting on this bench.”

“And what saidst thou to that?”

“I don’t know. Nor what he said after. I know what he did.”

“But, Babette, a soldier! Where thinkest thou to live?”

“That will be all right, ma’amselle. He says, now the war is over, a man’s discharge is easy got. He will get his, and take me home to Auvergne, where we will live.”

“But how?”

“Oh, as other folk do, of course. He says, if he stayed on, he might, to be sure, be quartered upon some Huguenot, where there would be plenty to eat and drink and plenty of plunder; but he does not fancy that kind of business. He would rather go back to the old father and mother, and to the old fields and the bit of a vineyard. After out talk we went to an inn, where we had a fine hot supper; then he brought me to his lodging, and got the woman of the house to walk home with me, lest my master should be angry. But he said, for sure, that he would come for me in a day or two, and bring me to the priest. And I know he will keep his word.”

Elene was not quite so confident. But, after all, she herself knew very little of the world; and, besides, she had no real power either to protect Babette, to control her actions. She could only say she would tell M. Berbier all about it and ask for his advice.

Babette, whose tongue, once loosened towards her mistress, wagged freely enough, went on, “Marc is a good Catholic. Wherever he is, he always remembers his duty. He says, when we are married we will go to mass regularly, and live like Christians.”

This was the first word Elene had ever heard from Babette which showed any care about religion at all, so she rather welcomed it. The girl went on: “But for all that—shall I tell you what he said about Tuesday, ma’amselle? He said M. Brousson was a grand gentleman; and that, for his part, he had rather have been following him as his captain in a good fight with the Germans than standing there to see him hanged.”

This raised Marc a little, no doubt, in the opinion of Elene. Still he was an unknown quantity, and she could not but wonder that even a girl so ignorant and thoughtless as Babette could entrust her whole life to him, on so short and slight an acquaintance.

Babette however seemed bent at last upon explaining herself fully. “You see, ma’amselle,” she said, “since M. Gaspard left us, and turned into a gentleman, no one cared about me—no, not a straw. Father and mother cared for nothing but the work I did for them. They would have given me to that lout Battiste, who cared for nothing but himself. Like as not, he would have starved and beaten me. So I ran away, and, being a fool, came after Philippe, who treated me—as you know. M. Gaspard too would have none of me. For he had you—you. Oh, I am not blaming you, ma’amselle, nor M. Gaspard either! It had to be. It was God that did it. He made me a poor girl, and He made you and him the grand folk that treat us as the dust beneath your feet.”

“Oh, Babette, do not say that! Indeed! I would have loved thee if thou hadst let me.”

“After a fashion. Not as you love M. Gaspard.” The lamplight showed a sudden crimson on the cheek of Elene. “Nobody loved me,” Babette went on. “And also I loved nobody. At least except—Then there comes to me Marc Capiton, tall and straight and brave, and says, ‘Babette, I love thee!’ And then I too, I say to myself, ‘Hold up thy head, Babette, there is somebody loves thee after all!’ So of course I go to him.”

At this point the lamp went out suddenly, and the maidens found themselves in darkness. They sought their sleeping places as quickly as they could. Both had much to think of; but Babette slept long before Elene did, and as she slept Elene heard her murmur once and again, “Somebody loves me—somebody loves Babette.”

The girl with the deep nature, and the thoughtful, cultivated mind, thought with pity of the ignorant child who could call her slight fancy by the sacred name of love, and give herself into the keeping of a stranger with so little doubt or hesitation. But at last it came to her that after all “le bon Dieu” gives of His blessings to all His creatures according to their need, and to their power of receiving them. Not one is “forgotten before” Him—not one poor little sparrow—no, not even the fifth, the odd one, thrown carelessly in to the purchaser of four for two farthings. Perhaps He was remembering poor, sullen, ignorant Babette, and giving her the best gift she could understand at present—somebody to love and care for her. Perhaps by-and-by He might give her some better thing—even that knowledge of His own love which Elene had tried in vain to impart to her.

Thinking thus, she fell asleep, before it had even occurred to her that her own prospects might be affected, and her own difficulties increased, by this new development in the history of her handmaid. But in fact these prospects were so uncertain, and so perplexing, that she had little encouragement to ponder them, and much reason to leave them to Him in whose sight she—happier in this than Babette—knew that she was “of more value than many sparrows.”

Chapter 30: Gaspard and Elene

“Say as you think, and speak it from your souls.” —SHAKESPEARE.

NEXT morning Elene was sitting in the salon, alone. She had not yet seen M. Berbier or Gaspard, but she heard their voices in the room above, M. Berbier’s chamber, and in long and earnest converse. She had taken the morning soup, her early meal, by herself; and was now busy in the manufacture of a new petticoat for Babette, of somewhat gayer color and finer material than usual, though still with due regard to the strict sumptuary laws of the time. She had got M. Fontanes’ servant to buy the stuff for her, out of a little pocket money Berbier had insisted on giving her.

While the needle in her skillful fingers flew in and out of the futaine, her brain was equally busy. Yet perhaps not so profitably, for more and more, as she worked and thought, her heart was sinking within her. She was a brave girl, and right bravely had she borne herself hitherto through the perils and sorrows of her young life. True, she had helps and comforts; she had often “drunk of the brook in the way,” and had therefore “lifted up her head.” She had been helped by the friendship of Sceur Adele, by the strong faith of Isabeau, by the protecting kindness of Berbier, above all by the companionship of Gaspard, which hitherto she had enjoyed with the frank simplicity of a child, She enjoyed it the more, because she knew herself a giver as well as a receiver, and thus she did not fail of the “greater blessing.” Having learned much that Gaspard did not know, she was able to teach him much; while he, on his part, inspirited, cheered, and refreshed her. She recognized in him, amidst all his ignorance, an inborn strength which not only matched, but would eventually outmatch her own. After all, it is the strong who best appreciate the strong. None but themselves know how those whom the world thinks made to be leaned upon (and very ready the world usually is to do it) rejoice when they find a stronger yet upon whom they, in their turn, can rest their heavy burdens, and perhaps, sometimes, their heavier hearts.

Very heavy, notwithstanding the helps she had enjoyed, was the heart of Elene that morning. It is often thus. Brave souls who have borne a stab without flinching have shed tears at a pin-prick. Did not Elijah the Prophet, who had dared King Ahab in his wrath without a trace of fear, when he reached the comparative safety of the desert, break forth into the despairing cry, “And now, O Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live”?

Some such cry was trembling just then upon the lips of Elene. A trouble comparatively slight was the occasion of this sudden collapse. Hitherto her thoughts had been mainly given to others. Her little brother, her stepmother, Isabeau, Gaspard, Dr Berbier, and of late M. Brousson, had occupied them, and kept them from dwelling on Elene de Fressinieres. But now, at last, they turned inward. So slight a thing as the loss of her humble handmaid—who yet represented to her the only companionship of her own sex she would have in the unknown, perilous journeyings before her—drove into her heart, like a sharp dagger, the poignant sense of her isolation. Mother, father, brother were all dead, and the young step-mother, in her estimation, was worse than dead. Not one familiar face of friend, or servant even, would be ever seen by her again. What then was there left for her? Why should she go to England at all? For Gaspard, it was different. He hoped to see the faces of his parents; he had them to go to. But she had no one. And then, the journey! She was afraid of it, though she knew not why. She had dared worse perils already, and had not been overmuch afraid. But this voyage somehow seemed different. She would miss poor Babette; the loss of her was the last drop in her cup of desolation. Then she thought of Isabeau. “Oh, if I could but have her to go with me!” she said to herself. But she recognized the utter impossibility of it, almost with a despairing smile, and a few slow tears, born of the self-pitying mood so rare with her, fell upon the garment she was making for Babette.

Suddenly Gaspard stood before her, tall, straight and manly, with a flush on his cheek and a light in his eye. In her pre-occupation she had not heard the opening of the door. After the usual greetings he said, “What a bright day it is! See how the sun shines. It might be May, instead of November. Wilt come forth with me a little, and breathe the fresh air? Since coming to Montpellier you have not been out of doors.”

Elene demurred. She wanted to finish her work. But Gaspard urged the point. “I have something to say to you,” he said, with a kind of inner tremble in his voice. “It concerns our journey.”

Then she rose, folded her work away, and went to fetch her cloak and hood.

“Where shall we go?” Gaspard asked when she returned, expecting from her looks that she would answer indifferently, “Where you please.”

But she said at once, in a low, decided voice, “To the Esplanade.”

“Will it not hurt you to go there?”

“Why should it? I want to stand upon the spot from which our martyr went to God.”

To the esplanade accordingly they went. It was just then a lonely spot: the shadow of death brooded over it. As they passed under the splendid arch erected a few years before to the glory of Louis the Magnificent, Gaspard turned to Elene with a strange smile. “Not this, but the scaffold that stood yonder was the true monument of glory,” he said.

They walked on, but presently stopped again. Gaspard pointed to the white mountains in the distance, with their robes of dazzling snow. “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help,” he said. Then, looking down, “Elene, It stood here, where we are standing now. All, you are weeping.”

“Not for him. No; even had I known him as thou didst, I would not weep. For his toils and sufferings are over now, and his Lord’s ‘Well done!’ has welcomed him Home. No; I was weeping for myself; I was thinking of my own, who have gone before. Perhaps they too have welcomed him there. All my very own are there now, Gaspard—my mother, whose death first taught me what sorrow meant; my father, the guide of my youth; my baby brother, whom I tried to save, but only sent him the sooner to his God. For my stepmother, I can only wish that she too was with them, and I have faith to think she will be one day. But of all of us, whom God had bound together, there is only one left now, to weep and pray.”

“Two—two to weep and two to pray.” Gaspard’s hand had moved to hers, and was holding it now.

“Oh, but, Gaspard, ‘tis different with thee! Should God prosper us to come to England, thou hast father, mother, brother, awaiting thee there—”

“So hast thou! For my father, my mother, and my brother will be thine also,” broke in Gaspard impetuously.

“I know they will be kind to me—as thou art. And the land of freedom will be a good land, where we can dwell in peace. But I cannot forget that in this land of France I leave—what thou leavest not—two hallowed graves at home, and one—a little one—in that convent garden. My heart clings to these.”

“Love the dead as thou wilt, dear Elene, but spare a little love for the living too,” said Gaspard’s trembling, earnest voice.

“I do. I would not be of those who refuse God’s good gift of water because in their cup there is no more wine.”

Gaspard’s heart was throbbing fast—so fast he thought she must hear it. “If wine means love, Elene, my soul is full of it. Oh, don’t you understand? I am only longing to pour out every drop into thy cup—or at thy feet.”

She looked at him in amazement, that changed into a sort of terror. This was not the kind, brotherly Gaspard she knew. “Thou art not like thyself this morning,” she said. “Nor thy words.”

“Because they are myself. Till now I was not myself; I was but a boy, a child. I was like this earth at our feet, upon which the sun shines and makes it hot, or the clouds brood, and make it cold; but it knows neither cloud nor sun, nor can say, ‘Now I am warm, now I am cold.’ Elene, my heart has been brimful of love to thee, I think from the day we met, after that thrice-blessed Assembly. And every day the love has been growing more and more, because the heart has been growing larger to hold it. Only, like the earth, it did not know, till another told it the secret that was its own.”

“Stop, Gaspard—oh, stop! Thy words are not good. They are hurting me.”

“Hurting thee, Elene? I would not hurt thee for the world. But I must needs tell thee how it is with me, and ask thee—”

“No, Gaspard, ask me nothing.” She withdrew the hand he had been holding.

“Only one word, Elene. Thou saidst just now ‘There remains but one.’ I ask thee to say instead, ‘There remain but two, who are one.’”

“This is no fitting time for such words, Gaspard. Think of it!”

“I have thought. M. Portal made me think, or rather, he made me know what I had been wanting all the time. M. Berbier too—he wishes it. Dear Elene, all will be well if thou wilt say but one word—one little word—to me. Say I may bring thee to my father and my mother—as my wife.”

Gaspard had blundered horribly. The shy, sensitive heart, all on fire with its first passion—of which the strength only equaled the shrinking timidity—had sprung at one bound to the opposite extreme, and dared far too greatly.

Elene started, and trembled violently. She had expected a different word, “My betrothed.” Even that would have sounded very formidable—but this. After an agitated silence, she faltered, “Come away, Gaspard. You should not speak here—not here!”

“Yes, here,” urged Gaspard. “For we stand on sacred ground, and I think this to be a sacred thing, and God’s will for us. I too would have said to M. Portal, ‘Not now,’ for it seemed to me like taking joy for myself when all were mourning. But he said we should do God’s will, whether in joy or sorrow, and he thought this was His will, and also that it would have been the will of him who has gone from us to Him. Elene, I pray thee, give me thy word here, on this spot. ‘Twill seem as if we had his leave. His blessing we have already, thou and I together.”

“Gaspard, thou art too strong for me.”

“Then I have prevailed! Thank God!” His voice rang with triumph. She did not speak; perhaps she could not. Again he took her hand in his. “Let me keep it, that means ‘yes.’ Take it away, that means ‘no,’” he said.

It is not recorded that she drew it away.

Chapter 31: Dismissals

“Each of us brings with him an element, more or less important, of the life of Humanity to come.”—Mazzini

M. BERBIER sat in his easy chair, trying to read a new work on medicine, which one of the professors in the university had given him; but though medicine was the study and the passion of his life, he scarcely understood a word of it. Philippe came in to prepare the table for dinner. “Where are M. Gaspard and Mademoiselle Elene?” Berbier asked of him, laying down his book.

Philippe shrugged his shoulders. “Monsieur and mademoiselle are gone for a promenade. They are gone a long time,” he said. “But no doubt they will soon return.”

“No doubt,” Berbier answered quietly.

In fact, as Philippe went out, footsteps were heard on the stairs. Then the door opened, and Gaspard and Elene came in together, hand in hand, Gaspard looking strong and manly, with eager face and uplifted head, Elene like a drooping rose in color and in posture, and with the mien of one who takes trembling the first steps on an unknown path.

“Well, my children?” said Berbier, in his gentlest tones.

Gaspard spoke up bravely. “Monsieur,” he said, “you have been as a father to us both, so we come to you together to ask for a father’s blessing.”

“My children, I am little worthy to stand in such place to you, and I have no right to do it. But since you are both deprived of your natural guardians, the one by exile, the other by death, I can but counsel you as far as I may. If mademoiselle had living parents, it goes without saying that they would, of right, dispose of he; but since she has not, she must decide for herself. Has she done so?”

“She has,” answered Gaspard, with a beaming face.

“Will she not speak for herself, then?” asked Berbier.

Elene hesitated a moment, then looked up, and, still flushed and trembling, said gently, with modest firmness, “I think they would wish it, if they knew.”

Berbier was well enough acquainted with human nature to be quite satisfied. “Then be it so, in God’s name,” he said. “I agree with your friend M. Portal that, under the circumstances, the step is a wise one. He shall do as he proposes, and perform the rite for you, after the fashion which, until a few years ago, was lawful and binding in this realm, as it still is in England, Holland, and the other Protestant States. Were my blessing worth anything— But here he broke off suddenly, mastered by emotion. Presently he resumed, “My children, as I call you—and would to God it were true! He knows I would give this right hand of mine to keep you with me, to love and care for me as a dear son and daughter, to cheer my solitary old age, and—it may be—to teach me some things I fain would know before I go hence into the great darkness.”

Deeply moved himself, Gaspard stooped down and touched with his lips the trembling right hand Berbier said he would give to have them. “Well would we both like it,” he said, “only for the Faith, and on account of my parents who are in England.”

At that moment someone sought admittance at the door. It proved to be Tardif. He had not appeared at all the day before, and evidently came now with some important news. Elene, startled, flitted past him like a flash of light and sought the refuge of her own chamber. For the others, his matter-of-fact, business-like air relieved the tension of strong feeling; and brought them down to practical affairs, and the immediate necessities of their position. Berbier told him what had just passed. “And they mean to do it—God help them,” he added.

Tardif promptly marched over to Gaspard, who had withdrawn to the window, and gave him a hearty clap on the shoulder. “Well done, young cockerel!” he cried. “Did not think thou hadst it in thee! ‘Twas thy notion, of course?”

“No, indeed” said Gaspard, turning round on him with flaming cheeks. “I should not have dared. ‘Twas M. Portal—the preacher at the Assembly, dost, remember? He was here yesterday. He is a pastor, and can do it for us.”

“God bless him then, I say, for a man of sense who has his wits about him. One can be religious without being a fool. But, having done the trick, he ought to come away with us himself.”

“That will he not,” said Gaspard.

“The more the pity! But, messieurs, I came to tell you that I have nearly everything settled now. There is an English ship—the King William—lying at Cette, the new port. They can come there, you know, now the war is over. The captain and some of the sailors came here to see the town. Half by good luck and half by contrivance, I came across the men, and got one of them to bring me to their captain—capitaine and captain are so like, ‘twas easy asking for him—and I found he spoke French; so we could talk with comfort. He is of your religion, M. Gaspard, and would be glad to do a good turn for your people. He was—was there on Tuesday. He will take you to England, if you can be got on board his ship with safety.”

“Ah, but the ships are searched now before leaving the ports,” said Berbier.

“I have thought of all that. His ship will be searched at Cette, before leaving the port. But I do not mean that we should go to Cette at all. I do not know that neighborhood well myself, but I have engaged a trusty guide, who does. He will bring us by the shortest route to a desolate bit of shore, well away from the port, near which the ship will pass. She will show a red light; and we, in a little boat which also the guide will provide, can row out to her easily.”

“I hope you are sure of the guide?”

“If he were caught, he would pay for it with his life.”

“But not if he betrayed you.”

“But yes, for assuredly I would shoot him dead.”

“Thou’rt a bold fellow. And whither goes the ship?”

“Back to England. ‘Tis a merchantman. ‘Twill be slow work, but sure. Also, ‘twill be fairly comfortable. I told the captain there was a young lady going, and her servant.”

“But Babette is not going,” said Gaspard with a laugh. “The fact is she—she too—is about to be married!”

This piece of news, which Elene had imparted to Gaspard as they walked home from the Esplanade, came with equal surprise to Berbier and to Tardif. The latter laughed heartily, and said “la petite drole” had stolen a march upon them all, with more cleverness than he expected from her. “But,” he added more gravely, “this makes what has been arranged for monsieur and mademoiselle more convenient, not to say necessary.”

“Yes, indeed,” Berbier agreed, when he had had time to take in the situation. “It would have been difficult enough for mademoiselle with only Babette for companion, but without her—not to be thought of.”

Necessarily a little talk followed about ways and means. “Hast arranged about the passage money?” asked Berbier. “Four—no, now only three to go.”

“That is settled already,” said Tardif. “It is my affair. And—it was not much.”

Berbier demurred. It was the last kindness he could do for “the children,” and he wished to do it, he said, adding after a pause, “M. Gaspard has told me of thy generous proposal in regard to De Rignac’s hoard. But it seems not right that he should accept, when I am more than willing to supply his wants. He has been like a son to me, and as such I would gladly treat him.”

“Monsieur can do what he wills with his own; but I have paid that passage money,” Tardif said doggedly; and after a little more talk over the details of the plan, he took his leave, promising to come again when all was ready for the journey.

As he passed out he encountered Philippe, and stopped him to say, “Ho! what is all this about thy sister? Parbleu! I think she is showing her sense. Any sort of a husband is better than a brother such as thou.”

“Oh, as to that!” jeered Philippe, “‘tis long enough since I washed my hands of the minx. Our fine mademoiselle was very welcome to my share of her though I daresay she is right in throwing her over for this Marc Capiton. To say the truth, I like her the better for showing spirit enough to do it. Anyhow, she will have no more chance of interfering with me, and spoiling my career.”

“Thy career only means a place for thee to fish in troubled waters. I hope, for thine own sake, that thou dost not think to bait thy hook with thy master’s guests. Try it, and take thy last look at the sun, for, as sure as there is a God in Heaven, I will kill thee with these hands. Though thou dost not believe in God”

“As much as thou, smuggler, thief, and brigand. If I meant to betray anyone, I should begin with thee.”

“And get hanged thyself, for company.”

“Talk about hanging is idle talk. Thou knowest full well I shall betray no one. ‘Twould in no way suit my plans. The doctor I will not touch; so all the precious lot he has seen fit to get about him are safe from me. Wouldst call me for that a soft-hearted, grateful fool? Spare thy sneers. Don’t you see that if I got M. Berbier ruined for harboring Huguenots, I should only be cutting off the bough I was sitting on? I don’t throw away my trump card to get a deuce or a tré. Already I am not only the doctor’s confidential personal attendant, but his agent in any business he wants to have done for him. And, mark me, M. le Medecin is by no means the man he was. The hanging of that friend of his has told upon him greatly. That man— ”

“Keep his name out of thy talk, rascal,” said Tardif, turning away. But he turned back again, saying to himself, “After all, one never knows when the knowledge of a villain’s plans may come in useful.” And, notwithstanding their mutual antipathy, Philippe seemed impelled to confide in him by the mysterious freemasonry of a common hostility to law. “Ask news of me some ten years hence,” he said, “if thou art not hanged by then. Thou wilt hear that M. Berbier’s adopted son and heir has taken his name. He is M. Jacques Berbier now, at your service, and by that time a very respectable person indeed. He will get more good out of M. Berbier’s earnings than M. Berbier ever got himself. And he will go to mass, make his salvation, pay the priests well, and all the rest of it. As to how he chooses to amuse himself in private at the same time, trust them to shut their eyes to that! Come now, confess—dost thou not think this is a much better plan for a man of spirit than cadging for blood money, getting cursed by Protestants and kicked by Catholics, and barked at by the very dogs in the street?”

Having thus proved, to his own entire satisfaction, that mitigated honesty was a more paying profession than unmitigated roguery, Philippe waited for an answer, since the opinion of so experienced a criminal as Tardif would certainly be worth having. But all he got from him was, “Very well; save thy skin and lose thy soul after thine own fashion.”

“I save what I have. I cannot lose what I have never had.”

“The truest word thou hast spoken yet. And naught care I, so that thou play no tricks on M. Berbier.”

“That will I not. And as for Babette, I am done with her, though I do not hate her as I used. She and her soldier may live and prosper, so they do it in Auvergne, out of my way. Keep thou out of it too, old smuggler and cut-purse. Farewell.”

Here also we bid farewell to Philippe Darcheau, or Jacques Fredon, or M. Jacques Berbier, as he wished to be, and actually in after days obtained his wish. His character had at least one merit—if merit it be—the merit of consistency. Amidst all changes of name, estate, and outward seeming, he remained essentially the same. To give him his due, he ministered faithfully, and even kindly, to the closing years of M. Anastase Berbier. It was an instance of this, that he took some trouble to procure for him the Latin Testament which he longed for in his last illness. What is more, he kept the book ever afterward in memory of the one human being—except himself—whom, since his childhood, he had really loved. Sometimes, when he chanced to look at it, he would ask himself, “What could Berbier have meant when he said to me in dying, Jacques Frecion, I have done thee great wrong. Better were it for thee and me if I had taught thee out of this book, in place of out of my own erring intellect.’ How could he have done better for me? Unless indeed he had not taken so much in his last days to curing poor folk who had no fees to give him, so there would have been more money left behind him. But peace be to his memory! He was a good friend to me.”

He had his wish about the little sister he used to love in the old, forgotten years. She crossed his path no more. Babette Capiton went back to Auvergne with her husband, to live the hard, sordid, narrow life of the peasant of old France. Few and faint were the gleams of light that fell across her path; little did she ever know of the joys and the wonders of the world she lived in, the world of visible things; and even less of that other world which is around and about us, though as yet we see it not. Still, He who does not forget the “fifth sparrow” took account of His little human bird. Marc Capiton proved himself what we should call in English “a good fellow.” Babette was grateful to him, and loved him sincerely. Still more did her heart—which had been crushed, perhaps as much by the pitying kindness of Gaspard as by the cruelty of Philippe—expand again beside the cradle of her firstborn. Gently into her “dimly lighted soul” there stole the thought that “le bon Dieu” was indeed very good, and that, if she trusted Him, He would take care of her precious little one, of Marc, and of herself. More than once she was heard singing “le petit” to sleep with the old words Gap used to sing as he tramped beside her through the wood of Besogne—

“The Lord’s my Shepherd,

I’ll not want;

He makes me down to lie

In pastures green, He leadeth me

The living waters by.”

Chapter 32: A Marriage in the Desert

“You well might fear, if Love’s sole claim

Were to be happy.”

A MARRIAGE in the desert! What pictures does it conjure up before the mental eye? A lone, secluded spot amongst the secret places of the hills? Or perhaps, a desolate plain strewn with rocks that have never yet echoed to the voice of human joy or woe? These are what we generally associate with the thought of a desert, and a marriage in such a place would be difficult, unusual, and romantic. But, in the France of which we write, and until a period much later than we write of, what were called “marriages in the desert,” though certainly “difficult,” were not by any means “unusual.” Whether they were “romantic” or no, depends entirely upon our definition of romance. Instead of desert sands, of mountains, or rocks, or caverns, we would often have to picture, as in the present case, a quiet room, perhaps in the street of some busy town.

Here it is the room we know, over the goldsmith’s shop, in the street of Montpellier called the Rue des Augustins. The room is lighted, somewhat dimly indeed, by a couple of bougies, placed upon a small table. The windows are closely shut and the curtains drawn, lest even a glimmer of light should be visible outside. Five persons are present—Dr Anastase aos Berbier, Jules Blanc, Henri Portal the pastor, and the two immediately concerned, Gaspard de Montausier and Elene de Fressinieres.

They had come together to commit a flagrant breach of the laws of their country—a breach that, if discovered, would consign the pastor to the gibbet, the bride and bridegroom, the one to the galleys, and the other to perpetual imprisonment, and the two witnesses to severe penalties. For a Protestant marriage, wherever it took place, was what was then styled both by friend and foe “a marriage in the desert”; and besides entailing all these punishments, was, in point of law, absolutely null and void.

Yet the thing was done, and so very, very often! Surely, if love and heroism and devotion are the core and heart of romance, and peril and adventure its outward signs and garments, such marriages have an overwhelming title to the epithet “romantic”! Henri Portal, in the disguise of a workman’s blouse, stood beside the little table, and repeated from memory the simple and solemn marriage service of his church. A man who had thought from his childhood, yet never learned to read till he was past twenty, was sure to have a retentive memory. In prayer or in exhortation, in question or in vow, he neither added nor omitted a single word.

To the two whose interest in the service was intimate and personal, it seemed like a strange and marvelous dream. Almost it might have been a part of the solemn wonders of the week, when

“Death was so near them, life cooled from its heat”

Yet not wholly so. For life—young, vigorous life—was throbbing in the two hands that clasped each other—the one firm and strong, the other no less strong perhaps for its very trembling—and in the two voices that spoke the vows which bound them together till death should part them. Not that death would part them, either—so they both believed.

Dreamlike as it seemed to them just then, the scene with all its accessories came often back to them in after years—the dimly lighted room; the pastor in his workman’s blouse, with the face and the hands of a peasant but the voice and air of a prophet; Berbier seated in his chair, looking on with an air of mild curiosity and benevolent interest; Jules Blanc standing near, alert and capable, ready to show the bride and bridegroom where to stand and what to say and do, as befitted the only member of the party except Portal who had ever witnessed a Protestant marriage.

Very soon all was over. Portal, after his farewell prayer and blessing, slipped out into the darkness, though not without Gaspard’s faltering but fervent thanks, and a cordial grasp from the hand of M. Berbier, which left in his two or three pieces of gold. “Glad to do it for him,” the doctor said to himself. “How is a man to live, who earns no pay for his work but a halter?”

The King William was to sail from Cette on the evening of the following day. When the dusk fell upon their wedding day, the bride and bridegroom set forth with Tardif to make their way to the coast.

Chapter 33: St. Christopher

“Finding, following, keeping, struggling, Is He sure to bless?”

IT was the night of Saturday, the eighth of November. There was no moon, but the glorious southern stars shone down upon a silent, desolate coast, laved by the tranquil waters of the Great Sea—the sea that washes the shores of the most sacred, the most famous, and the most beautiful lands upon earth. Not far from Cettethe newly constructed seaport for Montpellier and the adjacent country—was a solitary little creek, from which, in the darkness, a two-oared boat put off, containing three persons. Two men were rowing, and a girl, or woman, lay at the bottom of the boat, apparently asleep.

“Give me that oar, Monsieur Gaspard,” said one of the men. “The very sound of it shows that you can scarce keep it going. You are tired to death.”

“Oh, no, no,” said Gaspard, rousing himself, and trying to put a little more strength into his stroke. But in truth he was nearly spent, for the tramp from Montpellier had been long and weary. During the journey Tardif had encouraged his companions by dwelling on the favorable disposition of the Englishman, and his hearty desire to aid their escape; saying that once they were on board his ship and under his protection they would be absolutely safe. But upon anything which might happen after that, he was absolutely silent, scarcely responding to Gaspard’s eager anticipations of what they would do in England, whither he had assumed without question that Tardif was accompanying them. His chief conversation indeed had been about the needs of the hour—their food, their way, the places where they might venture to take a little rest. Gaspard had begun to think he was not like himself. Certainly, when safety seemed in sight, he was less cheerful and far less talkative than when perils surrounded them. And at last a suspicion, soon growing into a fear, arose upon his mind—Could Tardif be thinking of abandoning them, and remaining in France to seek more remunerative work in conducting other parties of Huguenots?

Then, at last, the time had come when he must speak.

“I could not rest now,” he said. “I am tired, of course, but not too tired to talk. Tardif, I have something to ask thee.”

Tardif rested on his oar, and bade Gaspard do the same. “We can stay here,” he said. “We shall see the lights from the ship. One, at the mast-head, will be red. Mind that.”

“Yes. But tell me, when we go on board, what will become of the boat?” The voice of an anxiety much deeper than he confessed throbbed through the common-place question.

Tardif also felt the time had come to speak. He said quietly, “I will row it back.”

“Oh, but—Tardif!”

“Be still, boy, for thy life! Thou’lt upset the boat.” or indeed Gaspard’s sudden motion was making it rock. “Dost mean to say thou wilt not come with us to England?” he asked in a voice of dismay.

“I do.”

“Ah! I’ve been afraid of it, these two days. Thou wouldst never talk with us of England, or of the life there, as thou used to do. But indeed, Tardif, thou must come. We cannot do without thee. And my father—I know I can speak for him—will do all that in him lies to show his gratitude to the preserver of his—his children. What wouldst thou stay for? To bring other parties out?”

“Perhaps. But also because I would see—what I want to see.”

“I think, Tardif, that in France we have seen too much already,” Gaspard answered, sadly.

Tardif hesitated, dipped his oar idly in the water, looked up at the stars, then down again at the sea, and spoke at last, in a tone half eager, half reluctant: “I want to see that which you and mademoiselle—I mean Madame de Montausier—and Monsieur Portal, and the other folk at that Assembly, have seen.”

Gaspard was deeply moved. “I understand,” he said. “Thou wouldst share our Faith. I am glad. But, all the rather, come thou with us to England, where all men believe and love it. They will gladly teach it to thee there.” To Gaspard England was the promised land, and he looked at it through the rose-colored spectacles of ignorant hope.

Tardif shook his head. “That is not the way for me,” he said. “No; I have got my charge. For the present I stay here.” Then, bracing himself up to the hard task of telling his mind: “‘Twas like this,” he began. “At the Assembly I got to feel that the ‘Religion,’ as you call it, was not just like the Government, a kind of thing that might grip me if I got wrong with it, and kill or torture me, unless I squared matters by paying money or the like. The ‘Religion’ meant—not something, but Someone. It meant God, the living God, with whom I had to do, and He with me. And it meant that one could know Him. Some people did. And there was a voice in me that cried out and said I would like to know Him too. Was it not queer?”

“No,” said Gaspard; “it was right.”

“‘Twas right for you. But me!—with the life I have led! All the same the thing in me that wants—wants that—goes on, and will not stop. I tried to think of other things and forget it. When I found that money of De Rignac’s, I thought, ‘Now I will go to England, first arranging to carry on the smuggling trade there with French wines, and such other things. I will start with this gold, and make more, and more, and more, and then live on it all like a prince.’ Yes, that was my plan, and though you did not know about the money, I let you think I would certainly come with you to England. But all that would not do. Then came that night on the canal.” His voice dropped low, and involuntarily his head was bowed in reverence and awe. “I saw the man who was going to his death—a terrible death. And who feared—he confessed it. Yet he went on steadfastly, because he knew that God was with him, and that presently he would be with God. That man took my hand in his, and told me to meet him there. And, God helping me, I will. But how? I thought, somehow, that if I could see his face again I might learn his secret. I did see him. But I only saw then that he had a secret.”

“Why did you not pray?” asked Gaspard. “God hears prayer.”

“I did not know how. It was all dark to me; at least until Wednesday night—that night I told you about De Rignac’s gold—when I had a dream. It was about my old home, and my uncle the priest, who taught me to read and write, and used sometimes to tell me stories of the Saints. I dreamed he came to Montpellier and told me one he used to be particularly fond of—he called it the story of St. Christopher. He was a very strong man, a giant. He knew nothing about God, being a heathen; but he thought that if he could find out the strongest person in all the world, he would worship him. First, he thought it was the devil—and if his country was like ours, I’m sure I don’t wonder. But he soon found out that the devil was afraid of the Cross, and the Cross, he was told, was the sign of Christ. So he went to a priest, and asked him how he should find Christ, that he might worship Him. The priest told him to fast and pray, and do penance. ‘That will never do for me,’ quoth Christopher. ‘If I fast I lose my strength, and would be no good to serve anyone.’ So he left that priest and went to another, who said to him, If thou canst not fast and pray, at least thou canst do a good work. Use thy strength for the Lord Christ. Take thy staff, go down to the swift, strong river that flows nearby, which those have to cross who go on pilgrimage to the great Church beyond. Often they are drowned; but thou, with thy great strength, canst bring them over safely, for Christ’s sake. ‘Good,’ said Christopher, ‘my strength is for that.’ He did it. He worked long and well, and saved many a life. And, at last, Christ came to him.”

“Did thy uncle tell thee that in thy dream? Or didst see it for thyself?” asked Gaspard.

“Oh, I saw it. I had somehow come to think I was Christopher, and that I wanted to see the Lord Christ, whom you pray to, as he did,”

“Tell me the end,” said Gaspard, who had never heard the legend of St. Christopher.

“At last, when he was old and gray, and his strength was failing him, he heard the voice of a little child, that cried to him, ‘Christopher, good, kind Christopher, carry me over.’ It was midnight, cold and dark. But he went out, took the little child in his arms, and carried him. The child grew heavier and heavier, and his strength failed more and more. At last, in mid-stream, he could go no farther: he was sinking. Then suddenly a great glory filled the place. It came from the little child, who had changed to a bright, splendid form, brighter than the sun. For He was the Lord Christ. And Christopher saw Him.”

There was a silence. Then Gaspard said softly, “So wilt thou, dear Tardif.”

“Perhaps—if, like Christopher, I spend my life saving His pilgrims for His sake. But, Monsieur Gaspard, there’s one thing puzzles me. He whom Christopher saw was a little child. But surely the Lord is not a child now, in Heaven, after all these years. No; if one day He should let me see His face, I think it will be like that of the man we saw going to his death, and He will look at me as he did, when he said, I charge thee to meet me there.”

Gaspard gazed at him, wondering. What had taught him this new language? But presently he said, “Perhaps you will never, with your bodily eyes, see anything. It is with the heart we see Christ—when we love Him. And we do love Him, because He first loved us. He loves thee, Tardif.”

“I can believe it now.” Then, with a sudden change of voice, “Look, Monsieur Gaspard, look! See yonder, the lights of a ship. And there’s the red one, God be praised! We must row towards it. And you had better wake madame. Stay, though—a moment first. Here is that purse with De Rignac’s gold you gave me to take care of, thinking I was going to England.”

“No, Tardif, no. That stays with you, to help Christ’s pilgrims out of France.”

“But you must not land penniless in England. It may be a long way from Plymouth, where you land, to this Canterbury you talk of.”

“Monsieur Berbier has given us more than enough. I had to take it, or grieve him sorely. He was like a father to us, all through. God bless him.”

“Then it shall be for Christ’s pilgrims, as you say. Your gift, though—not mine.”

“Nor mine. His for whom you meant it that night on the canal.” Then a thought occurred to him, which made him search beneath his clothing, with a careful hand, for something hidden near his heart. “That is my keepsake for thee,” he said, putting a small bit of folded paper into the hand of Tardif.

He could only ask, with a puzzled air, “What is it?”

“The prayer he wrote for me, that day we met first, when I was a smuggler boy in the forest of Auvergne. I have carried it with me ever since.”

“But ‘tis hard for you to part with it.”

“Not to thee—and every word is printed on my heart. Keep it, best of friends. ‘Tis all I have to give thee. And now I will wake Elene.”

Less than an hour later, Gaspard and Elene stood together on the deck of the English ship. They were watching, with wet eyes, the little boat, a dim speck in the darkness, where Tardif sat motionless, resting on his oars, till the ship should pass out of sight.

“We have seen the last of a true friend,” said Gaspard with a sigh.

Elene’s hand, strong in its tenderness, sought his and found it. “Mon ami,” she said, “He who goes to England with us, stays also in France with him.”

The darkness swallowed the little boat, and brooded over the tall ship as she moved away from the coast of France. Into the hearts of the two who stood upon her deck there stole a strange new sense, unfelt for years. It was the sense of safety. For they knew that above them, at the mast head, there hung the FLAG OF ENGLAND.

Chapter 34: New "Canterbury Pilgrims"

“Sometimes one moment can repay Unnumbered years of pain,”

—CAMPBELL

DECEMBER snows had fallen, but a bright December sun was flushing them with afternoon glory, when through the beautiful West Gate of Canterbury town, Gaspard and Elene de Montausier passed together. Their neat, plain clothing, in spite of its indefinable air of foreignness, attracted no particular attention. They both looked very weary and wayworn, for they had walked far that day. Still they were gazing about them with an eagerness that betokened much more than natural interest on entering a celebrated place for the first time.

As they passed the Church of the Holy Cross, Elene paused to look at it. “Come on, m’amie,” Gaspard said gently, but with suppressed excitement. “That is not the Cathedral.”

Presently Elene pointed to a large, handsome house, built after the French fashion. “Does not that remind thee of home?” she said.

“Perhaps the English copy our houses,” he answered. Neither of them knew that they were looking at a real French house, built, like others in Canterbury, a hundred years before, by earlier Huguenot refugees. “But we do not expect to find them in a fine street like this,” he went on. “The Cathedral—’tis there we must go first. A Protestant cathedral!—only think of it, Elene!”

As they went on from Peter’s Street over the King’s Bridge into High Street, and, following the directions they had received, turned from that into Mercer’s Lane, they exchanged no more words; for they knew beforehand what to do, and each heart was beating too fast for speech. Gaspard’s face was white with emotion, while Elene’s changed every moment, now flushing with hope, now paling with sweet, shy terror, as she longed with trembling for the welcome he had promised her so confidently from his parents. Little note did either take of the quaint and curious houses where the mercers held their traffic. Emerging into the open space beyond, their wondering eyes rested on the grand, elaborately sculptured Christ Church gateway. They knew it was the entrance to a world of splendors and of glories; but they only thought that within it were “The Precincts,” where some official would be surely found, able to direct them to Monsieur Dubordieu, the exiled pastor who held worship there for his countrymen, and who would tell Gaspard where his parents lived.

They stopped, and looked at each other. “M’amie,” said Gaspard, “you are trembling all over. Sit down and rest a little,” pointing to a bench close at hand. “I will go and seek some verger or sacristan, who will tell us what we want. Then, all will be easy.”

“No, Gaspard—I can’t rest now. I feel as if I could walk to the world’s end, if thy father and mother had to be sought for there. Let us keep together.”

While they spoke, a noisy crowd of boys, evidently fresh from the restraints of the Grammar School, came rushing towards them, talking, laughing, and squabbling after the manner of their kind. They stopped at the gateway, barring Gaspard’s progress; and as they chatted and wrangled, another lad came running after them in frantic haste, crying out breathlessly, “You’ve got it, Gaspard—you’ve got it!”

Gaspard, who was standing in his way, turned quickly round, amazed at the sound of his name. “Monsieur, je suis Gaspard de Montausier,” he began in French, to the equal amazement of the English boy, who stood and stared at him open-mouthed.

But the right Gaspard darted out of the throng, and flung himself upon his namesake. “Say that again, for God’s sake!” he cried in French. “Say that again.”

“I—I am Gaspard de Montausier. And you?”

“Cyril Gaspard, without the ‘De Montausier.’ And your brother.”

“Here’s another Frenchy come over,” shouted the English boy, grasping the situation at once. “And a brother of Gaspard’s. You fellows, give him a good English cheer, by way of a welcome.”

While the brothers embraced, they did it, and so heartily that Gaspard’s next words, “I bring you a sister too,” were completely drowned. The first thing Cyril heard was the breathless question, “My father—my mother—where? How?”

“Quite well, and close at hand. I’ll bring thee to them in a trice. Come on.”

He would have dashed on, but Gaspard stopped him. “Stay—stay for thy sister.”

“Sister? We have none,” said Cyril; then for the first time he looked at Elene, who was standing by Gaspard, with flushed cheeks and kindling eyes, her own tremors forgotten in the sight of his exceeding joy.

“Dost remember our little playfellow, Elene de Fressinieres?” said Gaspard, drawing her forward. “She is here—and she is my wife.”

Dumb with astonishment, Cyril gazed at the two. But, though scarcely fifteen, he was a gentleman of France, so he promptly recovered himself enough to remove his schoolboy cap, and offer his arm to the young lady with a bow. “It is quite near, mademoiselle madame,” he corrected himself. “In the main street.”

“Not in one of those great houses?” asked Gaspard, surprised, as they turned again into Mercer’s Lane, at a more moderate pace.

“Yes,” said Cyril. “‘Tis in one of the houses built by our people, who started the silk weaving here a hundred years ago. We live in the top story, which used to be the warehouse. My father helps the merchant in his business—Oh, Gaspard, how glad they will be! We pray for you every day.”

They soon reached a house in the main street, built after the French fashion, like the one they had noticed before, though not quite so large. “Here we are!” cried Cyril. “I’ll run up first, and tell them. You follow—with her.”

He ran up the high, narrow stairs to the very top, and flung open the door of a large room, sparely furnished, but with a good fire blazing on the hearth. A gray-haired man, with a calm, resolute, thoughtful face, sat reading by a small table, while a worn and faded but sweet-looking lady, dressed in black, was placing some food upon a larger one.

Monsieur Gaspard de Montausier, now plain Master Gaspard, looked up from his book, and, seeing his son’s excited face, asked eagerly, “Well, boy, hast got the scholarship?”

“Scholarship!” cried Cyril, with ineffable scorn. “I’ve got our Gaspard And, father, Elene de Fressinieres has come with him. He says she’s his wife! Here they are!”

The next moment—when he saw his father’s face, and felt his mother’s arms about him—Gaspard knew himself repaid for the dreary years in the smuggler’s hut, and the perils and wanderings that followed. But the woman’s heart of Madame de Montausier made her resign him quickly to his father’s embrace, and turn to the trembling Elene. “My daughter!” she said, as she folded her to her motherly breast.

Broken, agitated talk followed. Presently, feeling Elene’s hands, which were cold as ice, Madame de Mnntausier drew her gently towards the fire. The others followed and sat down, Gaspard beside his father, one hand in his, and one in his mother’s, who still held that of Elene in her other hand. She spoke to her gentle words of sympathy and welcome from time to time; and learned in answer that, save for Gaspard, she was now quite alone in the world. Cyril sat at their feet in blissful content, already making a hero of his tall, manly brother, who had done and dared such wonderful things, of which he was disposed to think his marriage quite the most wonderful. “Everybody talked,” he said to his school friends next day. “Everything was told together—and nothing was told at all.” And certainly there remained still much to be told, for it is not the deepest things of the heart that come first to the lips of those who meet after a long separation.

After a little while Monsieur de Montausier said, rising from his seat, “My children, we forget how weary you must be; and most like you are also famished with hunger. Come—the table is spread. God has been good to us, and given us, in this land of our exile, bread enough and to spare.”

“It seems more like the land of Heaven to me,” said Gaspard. “Here we are, together once more, in peace and safety, and able to worship our God as our hearts desire. What lack we yet?”

“Ah, my son, you will soon find that we are not yet come to the rest of the inheritance which the Lord our God giveth us. England is a good land, which the Lord loves, and has His eye upon continually. But England is not Heaven.”

“I know that here too there must be sin and sorrow,” said Gaspard— “and death. Mother, I see you are in mourning; yet our grandmother has been long dead. And there was no one else.” But, as he spoke, there flashed through his mind the thought that during the years of his absence a baby brother or sister—or more than one—might well have been lent to them, and taken home again. So his voice was low, and had a touch of hesitation in it, as he asked, “For whom?”

“For him whose name is dear to thee, and to us all, as the household name of father or of brother. Here and in every land that has given us refuge, all the exiles of France wear the garb of mourning for the friend of all, Monsieur Claude Brousson.”

“Mother, it was he who sent thee back thy son. But for him, I might still be smuggling salt in the forest of Besogne. And yet, mother, I shall wear no garb of mourning for Claude Brousson. For I saw him go to his death, and his face was that of one who was about to look upon the Face of Christ.”

“Oh, Gaspard, tell us,” Cyril broke in eagerly.

And Gaspard told the story which hitherto they had heard but in bare outline. His words were few and simple, because they came up from the calm depths of that “crystalline sea” which sleeps beneath the tide of surface emotion.

His father was the first to break the solemn pause that followed. He said quietly, “Let us give thanks to Almighty God.” Standing with his wife, his two sons, and his new daughter around him, he clasped his hands, and raised his eyes to Heaven. “O Eternal,” he began, “we praise Thee, we bless Thee, we thank Thee for all Thy mercies. And especially for Thy great mercies to us, and to these, Thy children and ours, whom Thou hast brought home to us this day.”

Here his voice faltered, and stopped. But presently he resumed, in words not his own, nor his Church’s, but which he had heard in the grand Cathedral near, and changed, as he spoke them, into his own tongue.

“And we also bless Thy holy name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and fear. And most of all for Thy faithful servant, the ‘man greatly beloved,’ whom Thou hast made exceeding glad in Thy Presence, and crowned him with glory and honor—beseeching Thee to give us grace so to follow his, and their, good example that with them we may be partakers of Thy heavenly kingdom. Amen.”

Epilogue

YEARS faded and died, changing boys into men in their prime, and these in turn into hoary veterans. An old century was almost ending when Gaspard and Elene de Montausier entered the gate of Canterbury. A new one was far down its second decade when we see them again.

Charles Gaspard—as our old friend calls himself now, to avoid the repetition of his baptismal name—is seated at supper in the same house where he met his father and mother, but not in the same part of it. The largest room on the first floor is now the family reception room, and looks as much like a French salon as an English room can be made to do. Gaspard is a prosperous merchant, and a man much esteemed, both amongst his exiled compatriots and his English fellow-townsmen. His fair and honored wife, Madame Elene, sits beside him. His father and mother, in a hale old age, are here also, and his brother Cyril, now a clergyman of the Church of England. Three little girls sit at table near their mother, and two boys are waiting on the guests, of whom there are several, the occasion being a festive one. The most venerable among them is the aged Pastor Dubordieu. His silver hair and beard betoken his length of years, but he is still able, with assistance, to perform the duties of his office. He has done so this day on behalf of the youngest member of the family—the only one not present at the little festival, although it is given in his honor.

In a lull of the conversation, which was carried on in French, the pastor turned to Gaspard: “That is a fine babe of yours,” he said, “on whose forehead I had the privilege of setting the seal of the New Covenant today. But, if I may ask, how came you to choose the name of Christophe for him? I thought you intended him to bear that of your heroic guide and helper, Gilles Tardif.”

“So I did, and I pray God may make him what Tardif has been a succorer of many.”

“Greater love hath no man than this”—the pastor began.

“Yes, he laid down his life, but not until after he had helped so many of our brethren out of the house of bondage. ‘Twas wonderful he escaped so long.”

“And now,” said the pastor reverently, “his reward is won.”

Both were silent for a space, thinking of the token that had come to them a few weeks before. Only a scrap of paper, a leaf torn from a little notebook, with faded writing upon it—and a dark red stain. The covering letter was from one of a party Tardif had been guiding into Switzerland, through the mountain passes he had learned to know when amongst the robbers. It told how, when nearing the frontier, the fugitives had been betrayed and pursued, and how their intrepid guide had bidden them go on their way, while he remained to parley with the enemy. But, anxious for his safety, they waited, concealed in a neighboring wood. Presently they heard a shot, then all was quiet. At all risks they ventured to steal back. They found the pursuers gone, and Tardif stretched on the grass, dying, but able to smile at them, and to drink the water one of them brought. Then he found voice to say, as he feebly groped for something hidden in his clothes, “Send this to M. Gaspard de Montausier—in Canterbury—which is in England. His parting gift to me.”

Gaspard broke the silence. “My boy is named for him,” he said. “Not Gilles, but Christophe, for that is the name I think he would wish to be remembered by. You recall the legend of St Christopher?”

The pastor bowed his white head, assenting.

“He knew it,” Gaspard resumed. “It came to him like a guiding star, when he was seeking, and could not find, that which his soul desired. For there had dawned upon him that vision of Christ, that dim foreshadowing of what His Presence means, which they who once have seen can nevermore forget. They needs must follow on and on and on, until they find Him. The pagan giant taught Tardif that the way to follow was to do His Will, and that he could do it, just as Christophe did, by conveying His people into safety and peace. Now he has found Him; like Christophe, he sees Him face to face.”

“And I doubt not,” said the pastor, “he has heard His voice saying, ‘Forasmuch as ye did it unto these, ye have done it unto Me.’”

“Therefore,” Gaspard went on, “in gratitude and love, I have called my boy Christophe, and I shall tell him why as soon as he is able to understand. He shall love the memory of Gilles Tardif, who saved his father. And I shall give him, as a precious treasure, that morsel of paper with the handwriting of Claude Brousson and the life-blood of Gilles Tardif upon it.”

A silence followed, for all at the table had been listening to the words of Gaspard. At last the Reverend Cyril Gaspard, in his cassock and his Oxford hood, leant forward and asked, “Monsieur le Pasteur, have you heard of any fresh arrivals since I was here last?”

“Yes, one—a family from Languedoc. And they have news—marvelous news, as it seems to me. They are still at Plymouth, where they have friends. But they have written a letter, which I have brought with me, to share its contents with our friends who are here. Claude, my boy,” he turned to a handsome dark-eyed boy, Gaspard’s eldest son, who stood near, drinking in every word of the conversation, “go thou to where I left my cloak, and bring the pocket-book thou wilt find in it.”

Claude darted off, but returned in an instant, saying there was no book there.

“Ah, this memory of mine!” sighed the old pastor. “Please, Monsieur le Pasteur, I can run to your lodging and fetch the book,” said Claude.

“No, my son. Tomorrow, after service, I shall read the letter to our brethren. And now, I can tell its import. There has been, somewhere in the South, a great assembly of the faithful. Our brave young brother, Monsieur Antoine Court, of whose zeal and courage we have heard ere now, has been solemnly ordained and set apart there for the ministry of the Church under the Cross. And our brethren have so ordered and arranged their matters, that, with God’s aid and blessing, this Church of our fathers is to be once more a visible ‘Church,’ as you call it in your prayer-book, Master Cyril.”

“Where the pure word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly administered,” Cyril eagerly supplied the words.

“Duly administered, by pastors regularly ordained through the laying on of hands,” Dubordieu went on.

“Magnificent!” exclaimed the guests; and Gaspard added, with deep feeling, “God be praised!”

“But yet,” interposed Gaspard père— “it is still, ‘the Church under the Cross.’ Do you forget, my friends, that the law of his country dooms every pastor thus ordained to the gallows?”

“That may be changed, now that our great enemy, Louis Quatorze, is dead,” someone observed.

“The law lives on,” returned Gaspard père. “And it may live on still—for a hundred years.”

“And if it does,” returned his son, “I have yet faith to believe there will never be lack of candidates for the calling which has, as its one unique and glorious prize, the crown of martyrdom.”

Dubordieu’s eye rested on the glowing face of the boy. Putting his hand on his shoulder, he drew him gently forward: “Perhaps,” he said, “there is one here.”

Claude Gaspard raised his head proudly, and lifted his young voice unabashed in the presence of his elders: “I had rather be a pastor of the desert, than anything else in the world,” he said.

His father drew the boy close to him without speaking. But one of the guests asked, “Rather than Archbishop of Canterbury?”

“Yes,” said Claude Gaspard.

“Well spoken, nephew mine!” said Cyril. “But see thou speak with all reverence of good Archbishop Wake; for he is, to us and ours, a warm and generous friend.”

(And so he proved himself in after years, contributing liberally to the support of the seminary in Lausanne, founded by Antoine Court for the education of the death-devoted Pastorhood.)

Meanwhile Dubordieu, with the caution of age, began to fear that he had spoken rashly. “My young friend Claude,” he said, “must of course consult his father’s wishes in the choice of a calling.”

Then, from the depths of a heart which had struggled and suffered and overcome, his father spoke: “If, when he grows to man’s estate, my son is of the same mind, and also if he gives token of faith to face the perils, and gifts and graces to perform the duties, of so honorable a calling, I shall bid him God-speed with all my heart. For this path is the path of victory. The Church under the Cross is the Church under the Sign of Conquest.”

Done and Dared in Old France

Table of Contents

Note

Chapter 1: In a Forest of Old France

Chapter 2: The Edicts of Louis the Magnificent

Chapter 3: "Gap"

Chapter 4: Gap or Gaspard?

Chapter 5: Gap's Adventure

Chapter 6: Paul Beauclaise

Chapter 7: Defender and Consoler

Chapter 8: Gap Is No More

Chapter 9: At the Fair of Mende

Chapter 10: Wayfarers

Chapter 11: Gaspard Finds What He Seeks, and Does Not Like It

Chapter 12: Monsieur Anastase Berbier, Doctor of Medicine

Chapter 13: Plans and Proposals

Chapter 14: The Story of Elene

Chapter 15: "To Save Baby"

Chapter 16: Baby Is Saved

Chapter 17: A Lonely Wanderer

Chapter 18: Elene Finds a Friend

Chapter 19: "The Manna of the Desert"

Chapter 20: Someone Wants to Offer Sacrifice

Chapter 21: Thoughts by the Way

Chapter 22: An Undesirable Relation

Chapter 23: An Interval of Quiet, and What Ends It

Chapter 24: On a Canal Boat

Chapter 25: A Few Long Days

Chapter 26: The Drums Cease to Beat

Chapter 27: Two Purses of Gold

Chapter 28: Henri Portal's Advice

Chapter 29: The Fifth Sparrow

Chapter 30: Gaspard and Elene

Chapter 31: Dismissals

Chapter 32: A Marriage in the Desert

Chapter 33: St. Christopher

Chapter 34: New "Canterbury Pilgrims"

Epilogue