The Scourge of God

"It would be best," the bishop said.

Baville made a sign to the greffier of the court who advanced toward him; then, after giving the man his instructions, he turned to the bishop and said: "Monsiegneur, they have been sent for. In a moment they will be before you. They are close at hand."

They were so close at hand that they entered the court almost at once, escorted by the greffier, the pastor walking by the side of Martin and both returning the salutation of Baville, who, true to the outward bearing to which he had trained himself, bowed with civility. In his heart he had long since determined that Buscarlet was one of the most dangerous of the Protestant ministers with whom he would have to deal, for the simple reason that it was impossible to find any flaw in his conduct which would justify him in transporting him to the galleys or New France; and therefore, until that flaw was discovered, until the opening was given him, he did not betray his determination by outward rudeness.

As for the stranger who was before him, he scarcely knew what his course of action should be. The story he told of himself might be true, in which case he had no possible authority for molesting him, while, even though it were false, he would have great difficulty in proving it to be so.

Also, as happens frequently to those of the most astute minds, he had forgotten to put one leading question to this stranger: To ask him if he-who had been the lodger of this pestilential heretic, and who, by a strange chain of circumstances, was the only other witness of the abbé's murder who had remained behind in Montvert-was himself a heretic.

Had forgotten it; though now it seemed to Martin, as he stood there looking round the room filled with men all bitterly hostile to the Protestant faith, that the question could no longer remain unasked. Would that bishop, sitting there calm and impassive, also omit to ask it? That field marshal omit it too, whose apostasy and fierce vindictive hatred of those he had deserted was known and talked of wherever half a dozen of the Reformed faith gathered together to discuss their persecutions and their persecutors? Also those priests and those six hooded monks who had followed in the soldiers' train? Scarcely could he deem it possible!

Well, he was prepared with his answer. No denial would issue from his lips, no lie be told. Therefore he took the place to which the Intendant motioned him, and, sitting, down by Buscarlet's side, prepared calmly to await whatever might happen.

Had he been able to see behind him he would have observed that which, even though it had carried him no consternation, must have astonished him; for on the face of one of those cowled monks, the man even throwing back the hood from off his forehead to stare more intently at him as he endeavoured to catch a second glance of Martin's features, he would have noticed a look of profound astonishment-the look of one who sees another in the last place of all where he would have expected so to see him, and who, while thus seeing, can scarcely force himself to believe his own eyes.

"Monsieur Buscarlet," said Baville, quietly and with no accent either of impoliteness or reproof in his tones, "what happened at Montvert the other night amid some who were once your flock must be clearly told to all assembled here. From you I must demand an account, as I have the right to do. Later I shall ask this gentleman, Monsieur Martin, if he agrees with that account."

As he said the words "Monsieur Martin" the cordelier started. Then over his shaven face-a face unrelieved by either eyebrows or eyelashes, so that those who looked at him might doubt if indeed his cheeks were ever touched by razor and if their lack of hair was not due to a defect in Nature-there came that look of new-born recognition which all have seen spring into the countenances of others.

"Martin!" he uttered, "Martin! Ay, that was the name. The name he was called by. It is he. What does he here? He of the house of de Rochebazon, and consorting with heretics!"

CHAPTER XII

"I AM A PROTESTANT."

An hour later the meeting in the Hôtel de Ville had broken up, yet not before Buscarlet had said words such as he had better have bitten out his tongue than have uttered; for, after he had told his tale truthfully (as nothing would have prevented him from telling it) and had described all that had taken place from the moment when, singing their psalms, the men of the mountains had passed down the village street, bidding all the inhabitants keep within doors-narrating, too, how he had besought them to spare the abbé and return good for evil-the Intendant had remarked almost angrily to him:

"Yet, in spite of all you say, the rebellion against the king's authority, the murder, and all other violence has happened, as it always happens, in a place of strong heretical leanings. Oh, you Protestants, as you term yourselves; oh, you of the Reformed faith, as you blasphemously name yourselves-ever are you at the root of all rebellion, of all eruption, all attacks upon those who are God's anointed. Yet you can never triumph. Never-here in France."

As he spoke he revealed to those around him what were his true feelings in regard to all that had taken place, though indeed some of them knew or suspected those feelings; revealed that it was the resistance to the king's power, the constituted authority, which he was determined to crush more than the resistance to the ancient and, in this place at least, cruel faith of the land. These were indeed his feelings, this his guiding motive. He was above all things a courtier, a king's man; and though for thirty-three years he never quitted Languedoc for a single day, he becoming its Intendant in 1685 and retiring from it in 1718, Versailles with its powerful master was the star on which his eyes were ever fixed. Nay, he himself had said that Le roi était son Dieu, and that to do him service was all he lived for. As for the outraged Romish faith, let Rome repay that outrage. His duty was to crush rebellion, and he did it well. When he finally left the province, he had caused twelve thousand Protestants to suffer either death, imprisonment, or transportation to the galleys.

But now from Buscarlet there came a denial of Baville's charges against his creed. Rising from his seat by Martin's side he spoke, while all in the room gazed in astonishment at the old man, never expecting to hear the words he uttered.

"Your Excellency," he said, "have you weighed well your words ere you uttered them? Scarcely, I think. All rebellion comes from us, the Protestants, you have said, all attack upon those who are God's anointed. Is this so? Pause, sir, and reflect. Who was it who first uttered the maxim that bad kings should be deposed? Who were those whom Henri of Valois saw force their way into his palace of the Louvre, carry off his furniture, reverse his arms, destroy his portrait, break his great seal, style him Lâche, Hérétique, Tyran? Was it not the Sorbonne who declared the people absolved from their vow to him, erased his name from the prayers of the Romish Church? Who slew him at St. Cloud? Jacques Clement, the monk-was he a Protestant?"

"Henri de Valois was himself a murderer," the bishop made answer. "Himself slew the Guises at Blois."

"How many Protestants have been murdered by orders of our present king? Yet there is not one in France who would raise his hand against him," the pastor continued. Then, as though carried away by one of those ecstasies which caused men, especially men among the refugees of the mountains, to seem almost inspired, he continued:

"Your Excellency has said we attack those who are God's anointed. Do we so? Who formed the rebel league to exclude Henry of Navarre from the succession? Who was it struck that great king to the heart in the Rue de la Ferronnerie? Ravillac! Was he of the Reformed faith? Who would have turned Louis off the throne he now sits securely on, have set up the Prince of Condé in his place? Who? Who? Not Protestants for sure! Name one who has slain a king or attempted to slay one in all our land."

"Monsieur Buscarlet," Baville replied, still containing himself, "there is no accusation against those of your faith as to their desiring to slay King Louis. But they have revolted against all constituted authority, against all who here rule for the king, against his priests. Your statement as to what misguided men of our own faith have done helps you not. Two wrongs do not make one right. And because it is by the Protestants that the sacred soil of France is threatened, the Protestants must go. Nay, more: those who rebel must pay the penalty."

* * * * * * *

"Monsieur," said Baville, coming in two hours later to another room in which Martin sat, he and Buscarlet having been requested to leave the apartment in which the council were, after they had both testified to all that had happened at Montvert on the night when the abbé was slain, "Monsieur, I have heard strange news of you. I wonder you did not see fit to tell me with whom I had the honour of conversing."

"With whom you had the honour of conversing!" Martin replied, looking at him in astonishment. "I think, sir, you forget. I told you my name, also where my property is-in France."

"Pardon me, you did so tell me." And, even as he spoke, Martin observed, to his still further astonishment, that the Intendant's manner had become one of almost deference, certainly of increased courtesy, though he had never been in any way impolite to him since they had met at Montvert. "You did tell me that. What you omitted to inform me of, quite within your perfect right, doubtless, was that you were of the de Rochebazon family. Sir, permit me to congratulate you. There is no nobler house in all France, in Europe."

"Your Excellency, I have not the honour to be of the house of de Rochebazon-"

"Not?"

"But, instead, a relative of the late Princesse de Rochebazon."

And as he spoke he did not doubt, nay, he felt sure, that he had given himself into this man's power. If he knew so much of the de Rochebazons as he seemed to do, he must know that the late princess had been an Englishwoman. Baville would also be aware, therefore, what his nationality was. Yet, still strong in the honour which lay deep within his heart; strong, too, in his determination to profit by no evasion of the truth when the telling of it was absolutely necessary, he announced his kinsmanship with her, looking straight into the Intendant's eyes as he did so.

In an instant he recognised that he stood in no peril at present. Whatever Baville might know of the family of de Rochebazon, it was evident he did not know that the princess was not a Frenchwoman.

"Monsieur," Baville replied, "it is the same thing. And, sir, I welcome you to Languedoc, you, a member of a great family which has stood ever by the throne, the Church. I hope you will make my house-it is at Montpellier-your resting place while you remain in the Midi. You will be very welcome."

"I thank your Excellency, but it is impossible I should accept. You will remember I told you I have a mission here-one that I can not put aside even amid the troublous times which have now arisen in the neighbourhood. I must prosecute my mission to the end."

"To find the lost man you spoke of?"

"To find him."

"Is he a de Rochebazon? If so, he should be very near to a great inheritance-an inheritance which, the Franciscan tells me (the monk who recognised you as the gentleman who attended the last moments of Madame la Princesse), the Church has fallen heir to."

"The monk! What monk? Yet-I remember. There were two at her bedside: one who watched continuously, another who came at the last moment. Which is he?"

"I can not say. Yet I will bring you into intercourse with him if you desire it. He is here to assist in stamping out this accursed Protestantism, in helping to convert them to the true faith."

"Your Excellency hates bitterly these Protestants."

"I hate the king's enemies. And all Protestants are such."

As the Intendant uttered these words Martin told himself the time had come. He must speak now or be henceforth a coward in his own esteem. It was for nothing that his father had cast off forever his allegiance to James, had openly acknowledged that henceforth he abjured the religion to which James belonged. Not for nothing, since by so doing he had stood his trial before Sir Francis Wytham and Sir Creswell Levinz, narrowly escaping Jeffreys himself. Not for nothing, since he had been fined and imprisoned, he who had followed the Stuarts into exile, almost ruined.

Yet all would be for nothing-his father's tribulations, his own repudiation of the wealth his aunt had amassed for him-all would be worth nothing if now he stood here before this man and, hearing the cause reviled for which both father and son had sacrificed so much, held his peace like a coward.

The time had come.

"Your Excellency," he said quietly, "stigmatizes Protestants as accursed; also as the king's enemies. Well, as to being accursed I know not; it may be even as you say. But I do know that I am no enemy of King Louis. Yet-I am a Protestant."

"You!" Baville exclaimed, taking a step back in sheer astonishment. "You! Yet a kinsman by marriage of the de Rochebazons. It is impossible."

"Nevertheless it is true."

Baville shrugged his shoulders, then suddenly turning round on him, he said:

"Your sympathies, then, are with these rebels here. You approve, perhaps, of what you saw on the bridge at Montvert two nights ago. Are here, it may be, to foment further troubles."

"You mistake. I utterly disapprove of what I saw. Would indeed have saved the priest had it been in my power. It is not by cruelty that wrongs are righted."

"In Heaven's name, then, if these are your sentiments what makes you a Protestant?"