The Scourge of God

"Can there be no peace?"

"None! Peace! How can there be peace when none will make it? These Protestant rebels are the aggressors this time. Ask for no peace. It is war, a war which means extermination. A month ago I should have said extermination of them alone; now God knows who, which side, is to be exterminated. Louis is weakened by these attacks from without, from every side; all over Europe there is a coalition against France. And half her enemies are of the Reformed faith, as they term it. It is said that the old religion is to be destroyed, abolished. Yet Louis, France, will not fail without one effort; dying, we shall drag to destruction numberless foes. Urbaine, if we do not suppress these Camisards we have an internal foe to deal with as well. Do you think one Protestant will be spared?"

"I may not see him again ere I set out for Versailles," the girl whispered, terrified at his words.

"Then he must take his chance. At best he is but a quixotic fool."

"Let me remain here; if there is danger let me share it."

"Never!" Baville said. "The nobility are threatened, the 'Intendant' above all. Your place must be in safety. Oh, that your mother would go too! Yet," he added reflectively, "her place is by my side."

"And mine is not? Do you say that?" And she touched his face caressingly with her hand.

"Your place is where I can best shield you from the least threat of danger, my loved one; where danger can never come near you." And beneath his breath he added the word "again."

Speaking thus to the girl upon his knee, a girl scarce better than a child, seeing she was now but seventeen years old, Baville-of whom the greatest of French diarists has said that il en étoit la terreur er l'horreur de Languedoc-was at his best. For if he loved any creature more than another on this earth-more than Madame l'Intendante, more even than his own son-that creature was Urbaine.

She was not in truth his daughter, was of no blood relationship to him, yet he cared for her dearly and fondly and the love was returned. As the history of this girl was known to many in the province, so it shall be told here.

Early in his Intendancy, when Baville (already known as an esprit fort by the ministers round Louis) had been appointed to this distant Government, with, to console him, an absolute authority, he had returned one winter night from a raid that he had been making on a village in the Cévennes which, to use his own words, "reeked of Calvinism" and was full of persons who refused to comply with the new orders that were brought into force by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was then but newly married to a sister of Gourville, the colonel of a local regiment of dragoons, and his wife's welcome to him was somewhat cooled by the announcement which he made to her that an intimate friend of his had perished in the raid, leaving behind a motherless child of whom he proposed to constitute himself the guardian.

Apprised of the fact that Ducaire was the name of the intimate friend, Madame l'Intendante shrugged her shoulders and contented herself with saying that it was the first time she had ever heard of him.

Later, after reflection, she laughed a little, quoted some words of M. de Voiture as to les secrets de la comédie which were no secrets either to actors or audience, and, in the course of the next two or three days, uttered pointed remarks to the effect that if politics failed at any future time, doubtless M. l'Intendant might earn a pleasant livelihood as a weaver of romances and of plots for plays.

"En vérité" she said, with her little laugh, "Jean de la Fontaine is old, also Racine; profitez vous de l'occasion, mon ami. Profitez vous."

Then, because they were alone in Madame's boudoir, Baville rose and stood before his wife and, speaking seriously, bade her cease her badinage forever.

And after the conversation which ensued, after, also, the story which Baville told her, Madame did cease her flippancy, and henceforth had no further qualms of jealousy.

In truth, as the child grew up, she too came to love it, to pet it as much as her husband did, to-because she was an honest, tender-hearted woman who, beneath all her pride for Baville's great position, had still many feminine qualities in her breast-weep over it.

"Pauvrette!" she would sometimes whisper to little Urbaine, long ere the child had come to understanding, "pauvre petite. Neither mother nor father either. Ah, well! Ah, well! they shall never be wanting while we live-say, Baville, shall they?"

And the Intendant, the man of "horror and terror" to all around, looking down upon the babe as she slept in her little bed, would answer before God that they should never be wanting.

Both kept their word. Urbaine Ducaire grew up, petted, caressed, beloved, the light of the Intendant's home, the flower, as he told her sometimes, of his life; a thing far, far more precious to him than the son, who, instead of being any comfort to them, was revelling in the impurities of Paris.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ATTACK

Between where the mountains of the Cévennes rise in tumultuous confusion, with, towering above them all, the gigantic Lozère and La Manzerre whence springs the beauteous Loire; between this vast mountainous region, which gives to the mind of him who beholds it the idea of a world falling to ruin and perishing of its own worn-out antiquity, and the Rhône, the road to the north winds through a fertile valley-a valley where the meadows and the orchards and the vineyards run down to the river on which the rafts and boats float along until the stream empties itself into the Mediterranean at last; boats from which are wafted the perfume of the new-mown hay, or the fruits which they are conveying. A valley this in which are little houses set in among the pear trees and the chestnuts, and covered with bird-swarming ivy wherein the southern oriole builds its nest and rears its young; houses in front of which the fair roses of Provence grow in great clusters as they have grown there for centuries, and over which the pigeons whirl in their flight.

Once, not twenty years before the period of this narrative, and before a reformed wanton had urged a superstitious king (already then growing old and shuddering at the phantoms that arose from his evil and unclean past, as well as from the fear of what his enemies-the whole world! – might wreak upon him in the shape of human vengeance) to wage what he termed a holy war, this valley had been one of a thousand in France where peace and contentment had reigned. Peace and contentment coupled, it is true, with, in most cases, a simple humble life, yet still a life free from care. An existence scarce disturbed by aught more serious than some trifling ailments of the children who ran about barefooted in the long lush grass, or plunged into the cool stream that watered the land, or by the sound of the passing bell telling at solemn intervals how one who had lived there all his days was going to his rest. A life spent in the open air all through the summer time, or by the blazing chestnut logs when the snows of winter kept all shut up in their cottages, carding, weaving, combing, earning their living thus as in the golden prime of July they earned it by gathering fruit, or cutting the corn and sheaving it, or rearing the cattle.

Now all was changed, all but the beauty of the land. The red-roofed houses on whose tiles the topmost boughs of the pear trees rested, borne down with fruit, were closed; the wicker basket in which the thrushes and blackbirds had sung so joyously, not deeming their lives captivity, were empty; so, too, were the stalls where once the kine had lowed and the horses trampled as daybreak stole over the mountain tops. All were gone now. The old grandam who had looked after the children; the children themselves; the stalwart fathers; the dark-eyed, brown-bosomed women whose black tresses hung down their backs and served as ropes for their babes to tug at.

Gone-but where?

Half of the men to the galleys, to toil until their hearts burst and they died, worn to skeletons by belabourings and thrashings, starvation and ill usage; the other half to the mountains, there to meditate upon, and afterward to take, a hideous, black revenge on those who had driven them from their homes. The old women gone also, some to fester in the prison cellars of Nîmes, Uzès, Alais, Niort, and Montpellier. The black-haired mothers to do the same, to groan in the dungeons for water, even though it were but one drop to cool their tongues; to shriek to God to take their lives, even though they were sacrificed in the flames of the market place; to pray to their Creator to let them die and join their slaughtered babes once more; see again the husbands from whom the gibbet and the wheel had torn them forever in this world.

Because they were Protestants, Reformés, Huguenots! That was their crime! The crime that had roused the woman in Paris-la femme célèbre et fatale-to urge on her husband the devastation of the Garden of France.

Down this road now, which wound between the base of the Cévennes and the banks of the rapid Rhône, upon a sunny afternoon in September-when all the uncut corn (there being no one to gather it) was bending on its stalks upon which, later, it would rot, past a burned and ruined church, past, too, a wheel on which a dried, half-mummified body was bound and left to shrivel-there came a cortége. A cortége consisting first of a troop of dragoons of the regiment of Hérault, their sabres drawn and flashing in the sun, their musketoons slung ready at their backs, their glances wary and eager. Ahead of them rode their captain, a man tall and muscular, burned black almost from constant exposure to the sun and by taking part in many campaigns from his youth, commencing in Germany and Austria. This was Poul, a Carcassonnais, who, since the outbreak of the Cévennes rising, had been distinguished as one of the most determined opponents of the attroupés. Also he was a marked man, doomed to death by them, and he knew it. But over his midnight draughts of Hermitage he had sworn often that, ere his fate overtook him, many of the canaille should also meet theirs.

Behind his troop of dragoons, numbering thirty-five men, there came a travelling carriage, large, roomy, and much ornamented, and drawn by four horses. In it there sat Urbaine Ducaire on her way to Langogne, the first stage on the road to Paris. By her side was seated a middle-aged gouvernante or companion, whom Baville had told off to accompany her until she reached Avignon, where she would be safe outside the troubles of Languedoc and where she was to continue her journey under the protection of the Duchess d'Uzès. Above the carriage was piled up her valises and portmanteaux; also upon it were three footmen armed with fusils, all of which were ready to their hands; also a waiting maid who was always in attendance upon Urbaine. To complete her guard, behind the great carriage marched a company of the fusileers of Barre and Pompidon, headed by a mounted officer.

Passing the broken and mutilated corpse upon the wheel, Poul pointed to it with his glove and laughed; then, reining back his horse until the dragoons had gone by, he looked in at the great window and remarked to Urbaine:

"Mademoiselle perceives the canaille are not always triumphant. As it is with that crushed rat there, so it will be with all. Time! Time! Our vengeance will come."

But the girl, after casting one horrified glance at the thing which was shrivelling in the broiling September sun, had shrunk back affrighted into the depths of the great travelling carriage and thrown up her hands before her eyes while the gouvernante, addressing Poul, said:

"Monsieur le Capitaine, why call our attention to that? It is no pleasing sight even to a devout Catholic, moreover a bitter one when we remember the fearful retaliation that has been exacted. Have you forgotten the Abbé du Chaila, the curé of Frugéres?"

"Forgotten!" exclaimed the rough Carcassonnais, "forgotten! Ventre bleu! I have forgotten nothing. Else why am I here? Beautiful as is the freight of this carriage," and he made a rough bow "it needs no Capitaine Poul to command the dragoons who escort it in safety. Any porte drapeau, or unfledged lieutenant, could do that. Nay, it is in hopes that we may meet some of these singing, snivel-nosed Calvinists that I ride with you to-day. Oh, for the chance!"

"Send him away," whispered Urbaine; "he terrifies me. Would that my father had chosen some other officer."

Ere, however, her companion could do as she requested, Poul had turned his wrist and ridden again to the head of his troops, a fierce look of eagerness on his face, a gleam in his coal-black eyes. For from ahead of where the cavalcade had now arrived-a shady part of the road, on one side of which there rose precipitously some rocks crowned with bushes, while on the other was a meadow-he heard a sound which told him his wish was very likely to be granted.

A sound of singing, of many voices in unison. Voices uttering words which reached the ears of all, causing the dragoons and fusileers to look to their arms and the women and footmen to turn white with apprehension.

A sound of singing that rose and fell upon the soft afternoon air as though somewhere a conventicle was being held. And these the words they sung:

Dieu! que Juda connait: Dieu! qu' Israel adoreSalem est ta demeure et Sion ton autel!Ton bras de nos tyrans a rompu Tare sonore,La glaive qui dévoreEt le combat mortel.

"Ha!" called out Poul, his dark face now more suffused with rage than before, "they are near at hand. Swords out, mes dragons, avancez-en double ligne de Colonne; here is more garbage for the wheel. En avance les fusiliers-the carriage behind. Tambours battants. En avant!"

And while the women screamed, Urbaine burying her fair head for a moment on the gouvernante's shoulder, the dragoons fell into double line, and the fusileers of Barre and Pompidon, passing swiftly on on either side of the great carriage formed up behind them, their drums beating scornfully.

At first they saw no enemy, scarce expected to see any, since all knew by now that these mountaineers fought on the system of those dreaded Indians whom some of this force had already encountered on the shores of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi-namely, by sheltering themselves behind every available tree or rock, or even shrub, from which they fired on their foes with deadly effect. But they heard them. Heard again the solemn hymn they sang in the hour of battle, of death, and of vengeance:

Aux éclairs de ta foudre, à sa fumante trombe Le cœur manque an vaillant, le bras échappé au fort Le char d'airain se brise, et le coursier succombe,Et le guerrier qui tombeS'assoupit dans la mort!

Then a moment later they saw their foes, or some of them.

Upon the summit of the rock sixty feet above their heads, amid the stunted trees and bushes that grew thereon, they saw appear a strange crowd. Men, tall and swarthy, some old, some almost boys, while there was one of the latter whose fantastic attire-a vest of bleached Holland garnished with silver buttons, culottes of chamois leather, gold-gallooned, ivory-hilted sword, scarlet mantle and black felt hat, with long white ostrich feather-would better have become one of Luxembourg's dandy cavaliers than an attroupé of the mountains. Also three men, venerable-looking, yet fierce and stern, two having beards that flowed over their chests, all of whom joined in the hymn that was being sung by a larger body that was ahead of the place where the Royalist troops were-ahead, yet advancing toward those who had been caught in the snare, advancing singing and firing. And by the side of these three, who were Prophets-Inspirés-there stood a girl, black and swarthy, too, a bracelet on her arm and in her hands a musketoon, which she raised and, aiming at the carriage below, fired.

With a shriek the gouvernante fell back on to the cushions dead; with another, Urbaine flung her arms about her, moaning, while now, from all around, the sound of firing was heard, and, pealing high, above all else, the voice of Poul, howling orders, yelling curses, laughing defiantly. Yet why he laughed none knew, for already the saddles of the dragoons were being emptied rapidly; the ground was strewn, too, with the bodies of the fusileers of Barre and Pompidon, those who still lived being driven back.

Fear paralyzes sometimes; sometimes also inspires with a terrible and desperate courage. It was thus with Urbaine Ducaire at this moment. She screamed and moaned no more, let the poor dead woman's body lie back in the carriage, put out her hand to the door that was farthest away from the rock on which the visible portion of the enemy was, and endeavoured to turn the handle.

Yet, ere she did so, she saw a sight that might well have unnerved her, have struck her dead with horror.

Upon the rock-side of the vehicle she saw Poul fighting like a demon possessed, or, better, like a doomed brave man. She saw his sabre dart through one fanatic's throat, then through another's breast; she heard his hoarse, triumphant shouts and terrible oaths, also his words of bitter scorn and hatred of the canaille as he thrust at them, then nearly fainted at what she saw next: A lad standing by the side of the girl armed with the musketoon, while still she fired as fast as she could load it-a lad who adjusted a huge stone in a sling, and then, watching his opportunity and whirling the latter round his head, discharged the missile, which crashed with fatal effect full on Poul's forehead. And as the brave, rough soldier, with a cry of hideous, awful agony, fell to the earth, the youth, shouting in his rough patois that the soul of David had descended through countless ages to enter his body, leaped down the crags of the rock, fell upon the unhappy man, and, seizing his sword, began to hack his head off.

"I can bear no more," Urbaine murmured, "no more! Pray God the next bullet fired enters my heart! Otherwise I must die of horror." And she sank to the bottom of the carriage, her head on the dead woman's knees, sank back and lay there in a stupor.

Whereby she knew not that, even as she did so, across the meadow a man had ridden on a rawboned horse as fast as he could urge it, had gained the road, and, swiftly dismounting amid the rain of bullets and stones from above, had wrenched open the carriage door and lifted her out in his arms. Knew not that in his strength he had tossed her on to the neck of the horse and quickly remounted, having but one hand to use in doing so, and that, amid a storm of more bullets, he had carried her off from where the carnage still raged, while in his ears he heard more than once the cry-

"Voilà ton Poul! He is well trussed. Eat him!"

CHAPTER XV

SHELTER AND REFUGE

That night as darkness fell upon the earth, and while, high up in the heavens, the bonfires burned which the attroupés lit regularly on the tops of the Cévennes in the hopes of thereby luring their enemies into their strongholds and fastnesses, Martin spoke to Urbaine, saying:

"Mademoiselle, I know not what is to be done. Had the unfortunate horse not been slain by that last bullet we might have got back to safety. To Montpellier or, failing that, to Lunel at least. Now it seems hopeless. You can go no farther and-and I can not leave you alone while I seek assistance, which, even if I did, I should not obtain. There is no assistance for-for those who are not on their side."

"I can not understand you, monsieur," Urbaine said quietly. "You are yourself a Protestant, my father told me-nay, did you not so inform me that morning in our garden at Montpellier-yet you trouble to save me from your fr-, those of your faith. I am deeply grateful to you, only I do not comprehend."

For a moment his clear eyes rested on her. In the dusk that was now almost night she saw them plainly. Then he answered very quietly:

"Is it not enough, mademoiselle, that you are a woman? Must I, because I am a Protestant, have no right to the attributes of a man?"

"I-I ask your pardon; forgive me. I would not wound you-you who have saved me. And I thank you. Only, here, in Languedoc, we have learned in the last few weeks to expect no mercy from the Protestants."

"Like all who have turned against injustice and cruelty, they are now themselves unjust and cruel. One may respect their turning, even their uprising, yet not their methods."

Then for some moments there was silence between them.

They were seated, on this warm September night-for six weeks had passed since the murder of the abbé-upon a bank outside a deserted cottage a league or so from where the ambuscade and slaughter of Poul and the soldiers under him had taken place. Above them, all around them, in the little garden, there grew the sweet flowering acacias which are at their best in the valleys that lie between the Loire and the Rhône; the air was thick with their perfume. Also the gourds lay golden on the ground, uncut and ripening to decay. The scarlet beans trailed in rich profusion of colour on their sticks, illuminated, too, by the fireflies that danced around. And from the distance of a pistol-shot off there came the murmur of the arrowy river as it dashed down between its banks to reach the sea.

Yet all was desolation here, and death. Death typified by the poor merle that lay forgotten and starved in its wicker cage, left behind when those who once dwelt here had fled a fortnight ago to the mountains at the report that De Broglie's chevaux-légers were devastating the land. They fled leaving behind them, too, the three-months-old calf, and the fowls, and all the simple household creatures, having no time to do aught but shift for themselves and bear away to safety those other harmless living things, the children.

"What is to be done I know not," Martin went on. "At any moment they may come this way; they know we have escaped so far. Then-then-it may mean instant death; at best, captivity in the mountains."

"For me," she answered, speaking low, "for me? I am Baville's adopted child-the child of his dear friend. But for you-you are of their-"

Then she paused, leaving the last word unsaid as she saw again his calm, sad eyes fixed on her. Once more she pleaded for pardon.

"Forgive, forgive me," she said. "I am vile, ungenerous to speak thus. Yet we must part at last. They have no charge against you."

"We part," he replied, "when you-when both-are safe."

They knew not why at such a time as this, when action should have been everything and no moment wasted, in spite of the girl's fatigue and prostration, silence should fall upon them; why they should sit there as though courting a fate that might come at any moment, for at any moment, above the hum of the near river, there might be heard the voices of the revolted Cévenoles. Beneath the branches of the acacias that o'erhung the dusty white road would perhaps be seen the unbrowned barrels of their guns or the scythes with which, since many of them had as yet no weapons, they were armed.

A silence between these two broken only by the twitter of birds in the branches, or by a sigh that rose unchecked from the girl's breast as, in the starlit dark, she turned her eyes on the features of the man by her side.

"Come," he said at last, rousing himself, "come. It is madness to remain here. We must move on even though we encounter death by doing so. It is not likely that all have returned to the mountains after their victory; they may pass by here at any moment. Can you proceed at all, mademoiselle?"

"I can at least try. Yet to where? To where?"

"I do not know the land very well," he answered, speaking in the slow, calm voice which had impressed her so much a month ago when the Intendant had, with strange indifference (as it seemed to both of them), presented Martin to Urbaine and left them to pass some hours in the orange garden of the Intendancy, he contenting himself with telling the girl that her new acquaintance was from the north and was not of their faith. "I do not know the land very well. Yet is there not a garrison near here? I think so. Called the-the château of-the fortress of-Servas."

"Ah, yes!" Urbaine cried, clasping her hands, "the Château de Servas. Between Alais and Uzès; not far from here. If we could reach that we should be safe. The commandant is known to my father-to De Broglie. He would protect us."