The Scourge of God

"Conviction. As conviction made that de Rochebazon a Protestant whom I am here to find some traces of, alive or dead."

They had remained standing face to face with one another since the Intendant had come into the room; they were face to face still as Martin told how the missing heir to the de Rochebazon name and wealth had himself changed his religion, and, being face to face, he saw a strange look, a shade of startled perplexity, come into the countenance of Baville. Also he noticed that he paled perceptibly. Then the latter said:

"De Rochebazon, the de Rochebazon, turned a Protestant! turned Protestant! -c'est incroyable!-and came here to Languedoc. When-how long ago?"

"I do not know. Possibly forty years ago. Your Excellency," and now the clear blue eyes of the young man looked into the equally clear dark eyes of the ruler of the province, "do you know aught of him? Can you put me in the way of finding him?"

"I-no. Why do you ask? I came not here till '85. And-and-alas! that it should be so. It is their own doing. The Protestants and I have been at enmity ever since. They have made my rule a bitter one. It is their own doing, I repeat. Their own fault."

"They have not risen until now. Done no overt act!" Martin exclaimed.

"Unfortunately, they have done many. You do not know. And they have resisted the king's ordinances." Then changing the subject swiftly, he said:

"Monsieur Martin, you tell me you are here to seek this missing man; that you have no intention of aiding these rebels. I am glad to hear it. Yet, remember, if you remain here you do so at dire peril to yourself. If you take part in any act of rebellion, if you join in any way in their uprisings, proclaim yourself in the least as an opponent of the law and order which must be re-established at all costs here, then you too must be responsible for whatever may befall you. Do you think you can stay here and also remain neutral?"

"Are there not others in France who, being of my faith, are doing so? Are there not still De Colignys, De Rohans, De la Trémoilles, De Sullys in France, surrounding the king's person? Yet they are loyal to him and he molests them not; accept their service; lets them worship God in their own way."

"They are not in Languedoc," Baville said briefly yet very pertinently. "And the day will come when they will all return to their own faith. Otherwise France is not for them.[1 - Baville judged accurately. Of all who are descended from those great Protestant houses, there is not one now who is not of the Roman Catholic faith.] Nor will it be for you or yours."

Martin shrugged his shoulders at the latter part of this speech, since no answer was possible. France was not for him under any circumstances when he had once carried out his dead kinswoman's request, had found and done justice to Cyprien de Beauvilliers or his children, if he had left any, or, failing to find them, had at last discontinued his search.

"Meanwhile," continued Baville, "I would counsel you to reside at Montpellier. There, for the present at least, your co-religionists are not troublesome, and up to now I have not had to exercise the strong hand. Also," and now he bowed with the easy grace which had never forsaken him though he had been absent from Versailles for seventeen years, "if you will permit me, if you will accept of any courtesy at my hands-at the hands of Baville, the hated Intendant-I shall be pleased to be of service to you. As a connection of the house of de Rochebazon I may do that, while as a private gentleman, who does not obtrude his religious belief upon me, I shall be happy to assist you in your quest. Though I warn you I do not think you will succeed."

"You think the man I seek for never came here, or, coming, is dead?"

For a moment the other paused ere answering, his handsome face indicating that he was lost in thought, his clear eyes gazing searchingly into the eyes of the other. "I do not know. I can not say. It is most probable that if he ever came he is dead."

"Leaving no children?"

"How can I say? At least-if-if he is dead he must have died and left no trace or sign. Died without divulging who he was."

Then Baville turned to the door as though to go; yet ere he did so he spoke again, repeating his words:

"I should counsel you to make Montpellier your resting place. If aught is to be learned I may help you to learn it there."

"I thank you. Doubtless it would be best. Yet there is one request I must make to you; it is to-to deal gently with Buscarlet. On my word of honour as a gentleman, he has had no hand in these recent troubles. He besought those mountaineers who descended on Montvert to spare the abbé."

"There is nothing against Monsieur Buscarlet at present which calls for severity. Yet if he does not change his faith I know not what may be the end. If these Cévenoles do not desist, or are not stamped out, the retribution will be terrible."

"On all?"

"I fear on all. The Church never forgives. The Church will cry for vengeance against the Huguenots, and I, the ruler, must hear that cry."

"And answer it?"

"And answer it; for their resistance is rebellion, and rebellion must be crushed. Warn him, therefore, to be on his guard. To preach, above all, obedience to the king. Otherwise there is no hope. The prisons are already full of his brethren. Bid him beware, I say. They term Louis the 'Scourge of God,' and they speak truly. He will scourge the land of all who oppose him. And if not he-then his wife."

CHAPTER XIII

URBAINE

From the Mediterranean the warm, luscious breezes of the south sweep up to where Montpellier stands ere they pass the city and waft to the summits of the Cévennes the perfume of the flowers and the odours of the rich fruits which grow upon the shores of the beauteous sea. And from Montpellier itself, from the old Place de Peyrou, may be obtained a view that is unsurpassed both in its beauty and in its power of recalling to the memory the loathsome cruelties which, perpetrated in the days of Louis the Great King, have smirched forever that beauty. Far away, too, where rise the tips of the mountains of Ventoux on the confines of fair Provence, the Alps begin to show-those Alps over which the weary feet of escaping Protestants had been dragged as their owners sought the sanctuary of a more free land. Below lies a beautiful valley watered on one side by the Loire and on another by the Rhône, watered once also by the blood and the tears of the heartbroken dwellers therein. A valley teeming once again with the fruits of the earth, and with now all signs erased of the devastation which he, whose statue stands in that Place de Peyrou, caused to be spread around; erased from human sight, but not from human recollection.

Upon the other side lies Cette, of scant importance in these times as seacoast towns and harbours are reckoned, and dead and done with-lies there basking and smiling beneath the warm sun that shines alike in winter as in summer. Cette, the place which, in the minds of the forefathers of those who now dwell there, bore the blackest, most hated name of all the villages bordering the blue sea. For here the galleys harboured, here fathers and husbands, brothers and sons, were flung to horrors and miseries and the life of an earthly hell-a hell whose pangs knew no assuagement till death, most welcome, brought release.

From where Baville sat in his open window Cette could be seen; the harbour in which half a dozen of those galleys lay waiting for their victims. On a table before him were papers for the sending of other victims to the prisons of the surrounding towns; also the sentences of death allotted to many rebels, death in hideous forms. Some to be hung upon the bridges of their own town, some to be broken on the wheel, some to be burned in market places, some to have their forefingers struck off (a form of punishment peculiar to the neighbourhood and to those who had been captured in the present uprisings), and afterward to be hanged.

Also on tables at either side of him were orders to the colonels of local regiments to place themselves under direction of Julien; orders to others to provide forage and stabling for so many horses and accommodation for so many men; orders, too, for provisions and forage to be sent in to Montpellier and Nîmes for the victualling of the forces quartered there. And to all and every one of these he had already affixed his signature, "Baville" – a signature which here carried as much authority as if, instead, it had been "Louis."

Yet it was not about these papers that Nicholas de Lamoignon de Baville, Comte de Launai-Courson, Seigneur de Bris, Vaugrigneuse, Chavagne, Lamothe-Chaudemier, Beuxes and other places, as well as Conseiller d'Etat, Intendant de Justice, polices et finances-to give him his full names and titles-was thinking on this bright morning, nor on them that his eyes rested. Instead, upon a far smaller thing-a thing on which one would scarcely have thought he would have wasted a moment's attention-a little plain cornelian seal which he was turning over and over in his hands and regarding carefully through a small magnifying glass.

"Strange," he muttered to himself, "strange if, after all, after years of meditation and inquiry, I should thus have lit upon the clew! Strange, strange!"

He struck, as thus he mused, upon a little bronze gong that stood by his side and ready to his hand, and a moment later the door was opened and a man of about his own age came into the room in answer to the summons; a man whose plain garb, made of the local Nîmes serge, and wig à trois marteaux, proclaimed almost with certainty that he was a clerk or secretary.

"Casalis," the Intendant said, he having put the seal beneath some papers ere the other entered, "there is in the library a book entitled, Devises et blasons de la Noblesse Française, is there not?"

"There is, your Excellency. Prepared a year ago by Monsieur le Comte-"

"Precisely. Fetch it, if you please."

The man retired, and, after being absent some few moments, came back, bearing in his hand a large, handsome volume bound in pale brown morocco, the back and sides covered with fine gold tooling and with Baville's crest stamped also on each side-a splendid book, if its contents corresponded with its exterior.

"Shall I find any particular entry for your Excellency?" the man asked, pausing with the volume in his hand.

"No, leave it. I may desire to look into it presently."

Left alone, however, Baville looked into it at once, pausing at the names under "B" to regard with some complacency his own crest and arms beautifully reproduced in colours on vellum.

Then he turned over a vast number of leaves in a mass, arriving at the letter "T," and re-turning back to "R," finding thereby the page which was headed "De Rochebazon." And emblazoned in the middle of the vellum in red, gold, and blue was the coat of arms of that great family; above it was the crest of the house, on a rock proper a hawk with wings elevated-the motto "Gare."

"So," said Baville to himself, "he was of noble family, was a de Rochebazon. Had I looked at this book when the Comte de Paysac sent it to me, compared it with the seal, I should have known such was the case a year ago. Yet what use even if I had done so? What use? One can not recall-undo the past."

And Baville-even Baville, the "tiger of Languedoc," as he had been termed-sighed.

He took next the seal from the papers where he had pushed it and compared it with the Comte de Paysac's book, though even as he did so he knew there was no need for such comparison; the crest upon it was as familiar to him as his own. Then he muttered:

"It is pity Monsieur le Comte did not make his work even more complete. Some information would be useful. As to whom he married, to wit, as to whom this young man may be, who is related to the late princess. Also as to the family of the princess-I should know that. I would the count were still alive."

As thus he mused a shadow fell across the path that wound before his open window. From behind the orange tubs which formed a grove in front of that window there stepped out a girl who, seeing him there, smiled and said, "Bon jour, mon père." Then came on to the window and, leaning against the open frame, asked if she might come in, might bring him some flowers she had plucked to decorate his cabinet.

"Always, Urbaine," he said, "always," and he put out his hand as though to draw her to him. "Come in, come in."

Had this been a darkened room, a sombre cabinet into which no ray of sunlight ever stole, instead of being, in truth, a bright, gay apartment, the presence of the girl whom he addressed as Urbaine would have made it cheerful, have seemed to bring the needed sunlight to it; for, as she stood there, her long white dress giving fresh radiance to the room, her fair hair irradiated by the beams of light that glinted in through the dark-green leaves of the orange trees, she seemed to cast even more lustre around, making even the grave, serious face of the Intendant look less severe. In her hands she carried a mass of roses and ferns on which the dew sparkled, also some large white lilies.

"Come, Urbaine," he said to her, "come, sit on your accustomed seat. When you are at Versailles you will have no father's knee to sit upon," and, caressingly, he drew her toward him, while she, sitting there, arranged the flowers into bunches.

As he mentioned Versailles she sighed and turned her eyes on him, then said: